I have an orchestral percussion part (Percussion 1) where a single player covers 8 different instruments.
To handle staff placement and automatic instrument labels correctly, I currently have the player set up with 8 different percussion kits (green labels), one per instrument. This works well in terms of assigning each instrument to the correct line on a 5-line staff and getting the correct instrument names to appear automatically.
However, I am running into an issue with instrument labels at the start of the piece. For example, the first instrument used is Tambourine, but its first entrance is at bar 5. Dorico places the “Tambourine” label at bar 1 instead, even though there is no music until bar 5.
What I would like is for the instrument label to appear at the actual first entrance (bar 5), above the staff, rather than at the beginning of the flow.
Other than manually suppressing and adding labels in Engrave mode, is there a more idiomatic or automatic way to handle this in Dorico?
Thanks in advance for any guidance.
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I did try this, but it does not improve the situation in this case. This is the first instrument played in the flow at all, and Dorico still places the label at the very beginning of the flow (bar 1), rather than at the first actual entrance of the instrument later in the piece. For instruments whose first note occurs much later, this makes the label musically unhelpful.
The workaround I have settled on is to hide the initial label and then add a Percussion Legend at the first entrance, adjusting its paragraph style to match the instrument/change labels. This produces the desired visual result, but it is effectively a manual solution.
Perhaps you have checked the “Show instrument change label at start of flow”?
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It might be easier just to add Staff Text and use the Instrument Change Labels paragraph style.
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This solved the problem of the instrument change label appearing at the beginning of the flow. However, it does not appear when the instrument is played, so I still need to add that label manually. This is one step closer though. Thank you
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