Hello. I am trying to create a Percussion Map for Garritan JABB3 to use across a range of compositions for monitoring. I haven’t been able to get far enough to see any consistency in the fault happening, but at a certain point everything freezes.
I’m doing this: In Play/Percussion Maps, I copy the general Midi kit map and rename it. I unlock it. I then try and amend the data (names, techniques etc) using the dialogs in the percussion map screen as described in the Dorico Help for Percussion Maps using the data from the JABB3 handbook. Up to now I have successfully cleared one midi note and altered another, but at some point the whole lot just freezes. No part of Dorico is accessible. I wondered if it was my fault using 16 part xml files in a limited 12 voice application (Elements) but it is happening with a 2 voice test .dorico file.
The only way I can leave the problem to attempt to fix it is by force quitting Dorico, even though in the Force Quit Applications window the application is not shown as frozen. This has happened on every occasion I have tried to create a percussion map in Dorico. I don’t want my compositions accompanied by a percussion track of whistles and guiro. Any advice welcomed.
I am using a new iMac running OS Catalina 10.15.3.
Thanks.
Sorry to hear you’re running into this problem. As far as I can remember there aren’t any other modal dialogs that can be opened from the Percussion Maps dialog, but that’s what this sounds like: a sub-dialog is open, but it’s behind the Percussion Maps dialog, and so the program appears unresponsive because it’s waiting for you to clear the child modal dialog before you can keep working in the Percussion Maps dialog.
Can you try and catch Dorico in the act by making a screen recording (you can use QuickTime Player to do this), and stick that on Dropbox/Google Drive and provide a link so I can see what’s happening?
That’s quite possible - possible that I wouldn’t have seen it that is (incidentally, is there a ‘bring to front’ toggle on windows by the way? I find that I have to select the ‘e’ button twice for the VST Player window to appear on top of the play window. I know I could look for it or press F3 etc but it’s a hassle and I’m sure it’s just me not (yet) knowing what I’m doing).
I’ll do what you have suggested. Thanks.
Hi Daniel. You are quite correct. One of the child windows (type of instrument/technique) was indeed waiting for a response and it was behind the Play window proper. Now that I realise that, the whole process is quite robust in my mind, whereas before I was reluctant to press any button. As I mention above, subordinate windows do appear behind others, like the VST Player control window appearing behind the Play window. Insofar as it has to be looked for, is there a way of automatically making it appear on top, like a send-to-back/front toggle?
Anyway, thanks very much. Sorry that it was such a trivial mistake to make!
Some time later…I’d also like to know what ‘Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog’ means in the cold light of day!.. I did that to keep my changes in the process of creating the map. When I tried to save the map to a default plug-ins folder it would not (for some reason) accept the operation (pls. see attached). But I figured the map was saved in the list of maps available to that specific composition. It was certainly visible in the list. But, it didn’t save to either location. So 50 entries later…it’s not there. Am I missing something else?
Thanks.
I’m glad you were able to figure out the first problem: the child dialog shouldn’t really be able to go behind its parent, and we’ll have to look into that. (The issue with VST instrument windows is a bit different for boring technical reasons, because the VST instrument windows are owned by the audio engine process, and hence they don’t exist in the same z-order realm as Dorico’s own native windows and dailogs.)
I’m not sure what the ‘Permission denied’ error message would have been. Could you please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and upload the “Dorico Diagnostics.zip” file created on your desktop so I can take a look and see if anything jumps out at me from the logs?
In the meantime, if you go to the effort of recreating the map, it might be a good idea to click OK periodically and then save the project to avoid the potential for losing the whole thing until we figure out what’s causing the problem.
Thanks Daniel. I did save the drum map as I went through long experience of not doing so in similar environments, which made it doubly irritating to not see it on reloading. But I may well have not saved the .dorico file, as it was only a test.
Re the fault message, Dorico was attempting to put the drum map in a folder that was unacceptable. I’ve since exported the drum map to a user folder (though in reality as it’s a Dorico component rather than a user file - alright, midway 
I’d rather have it with either JABB3 files or Dorico components).
I like the Quicktime method so I’ve done one of those. It defaulted, now, to the folder I put the last drum map in, so I had to navigate to the system folder where Dorico initially tried to place the file - and couldn’t. I tried to make some permission changes in System preferences but couldn’t.
(Edit: I notice that I didn’t Unlock the copy even though i deleted a key - that might not help)
Please also find attached a Diagnostic report.
Dropbox link: Dropbox - File Deleted - the quality seems very poor for 70MB, sorry.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (428 KB)
How did Dorico come to choose a folder inside /Library as the default location for saving a percussion map? It should choose something in the user domain, typically your Desktop folder or possibly the default Dorico Projects folder inside Documents. You presumably must have chosen this folder explicitly.
Can’t answer that, but I didn’t choose it, unless it was by some unconscious act. In fact I had to go to File Manager to see where it was as I didn’t recognise the name. For a moment I thought it was within Library/Audio. I haven’t had any reason to go to that folder, so I don’t think that is likely. Not impossible, but implausible.
The same folder was also opened when I clicked Import Library, so it went to the same place for both export and import, even though it wasn’t good hunting ground for .dorico files.
Having said all that, I finally put the drum map in Applications/Garritan Jazz and Big Band/ and loaded it from there into a composition. Both Import and Export button go to that folder now.
I don’t know how Dorico constructs the pathnames and it seems odd that it chose the one it did. I don’t think I set it up, though I don’t know. But, at least my drum map is accessible which was my major worry.