I’ve been working on making a drum transcription template inside Dorico. To do so I’ve created a Drum Set with a few customizations to the staff that I require: (several extra toms, cymbals, cymbal choke, etc) and made my own Percussion Maps and playing techniques for certain midi notes (snare can be a ghost note, or a regular note, ride cymbal can be played natural, or on the bell. I’ve loaded them all into the template and it works perfectly fine within the template.
The problem I have is that if I try to import this kit and if I import my percussion map and pick the same drum set layout inside a regular new Dorico file, I have all the same instruments, but none of the playing techniques and note heads I’ve created and assigned to these instruments seem to import and show. I’ve attached one screenshot that is from within my template (it shows all the custom note heads) and the other that lumps Hi-hat open and closed as simply “Hi-hat”. Has this been documented to happen? Am I missing a step?
You do not mention what type of template you are working on, a playback or a project template. I think the techniques with their noteheads as defined in the setup are only maintained in a project template. A playback template does not contain the part defined in the instrument setup which links the techniques defined in the expression map with the specific noteheads in your score.
If you export a drum kit however with all your techniques and noteheads defined and then import that in another file it should work.
By the way if you always want to have your custom techniques available when you load an instrument you can also add and edit playing techniques in the instruments editor.
So Library>Instruments, then chose an unpitched percussion instrument and edit the percussion playing techniques (button in the top right corner). You have to do this before you add the instrument in your score as the edit button disappears in the instrument definition once you have it in your score.
Thank you for this response! It’s a project template, or just a regular Dorico file --I don’t really use much of the playback functions in Dorico (or Finale previously). I’m just confused because the midi note assignments are certainly transferred over, just not the key switches that cause open Hi-hats to become circled-X note heads. Perhaps it’s to do with my notepads that I created not being transferred also, I’ll have to find out if that’s a possibility. Thank you!
