I would like to request a feature that aligns with Elaine Gould’s recommendations for percussion notation. Specifically, I need the software to display the word “Percussion” (then “Perc.”) only once per system, along with the player numbers, and on each staff, the corresponding instrument. This feature should automate the process while maintaining the independence of each musician’s parts.
Thank you for considering this enhancement!
Big +1 from me. I struggle with doing examples (c) and (d) without feeling like I’m breaking Dorico. I’d love to know if there’s a proper method to achieve these, if already possible.
Which one of these do you want exactly? Some of these may be possible already using Player Labels instead of Staff Labels in Layout Options / Staves and Systems. The following 4 setups are easy to automate with just a few clicks:
One big issue is there’s no automatic way to get the instrument being played to show at the beginning of systems other than the first if you use the abbreviated Perc. label like Gould’s example (d). Obviously you can use Text and hide it in the parts, but that’s a PITA. Other staff labelling methods of dragging Text around for labels are also definitely a pain, as there’s not a good way to have the group label centered between an even number of staves. The above examples just took seconds though and are global changes without any dragging around.
I was thinking of the last of these examples. Having the term “Percussion” (“Perc.” too) more than one time per system is technically unnecessary - unless we are specifically typing “flute 1, flute 2…”, which thanks to Dorico it is not a problem anymore!
I miss an option to group the perc as we can group flutes 1 & 2 for example, then automatically numbering the players and showing the instrument that they are playing at the start of every system: full name for a new instrument, short between brackets (and/or without them!) for those that come from the previous system.
I share here an example from a score published by Faber Music:
Word for word, you’ve described my struggles with this sort of percussion layout, which is so common in film music. Is there a consistent way of achieving the Faber example with minimal “hack” required?
I’ve been told through the Facebook group about a truly brilliant but temporary and far from desirable solution:
Numbering the percs as 1, 2, 3…, adding manually every single label that we need at the start of every system, exporting pdf and finally adding the term “perc.” on every page on a pdf editor.
It is a great idea, but I’m sure Dorico can do (even) better!
Just had a thought …
The example below is pretty simple to achieve using Player Group Labels:
There’s no setting to rotate this, but there is a Paragraph Style to specify the font for the Player Group Label separate from any other style. If someone had enough font editing skills to combine both “Percussion” and “Perc.” each into single glyphs in a new font (if the font is an SIL Open Font License font), and rotate the entire word (as a single glyph) in the font 90 degrees, then the user could use either single glyph as the full and abbreviated Player Group Name, and it could appear correctly in the score.
Yes, this is a significant limitation in Dorico. Then you’d need instrument labels at the start of every system: full names for new instruments and abbreviations in brackets for instruments carried over from the previous system.
It would be very helpful if Dorico could automate this labeling process.
Absoltely! This Perc notation is a standard for many composers and publishers. As you well said, it is common and practical for filmscoring, but also for concert music and contemporary scores. It looks so clean!!
