Plea for bonehead's guide to linking drum notation to playback instruments

Dorico
1

Please point me to or describe a set of simple steps for setting up/modifying a percussion kit notation-wise so that it plays specific percussion sounds from a VST. At this point all I want to do is learn the basics: how to hook up any arbitrary “natural” sound to any arbitrary staff position and notehead. (I’ll deal with playing techniques, expression maps, and all that later.)

I’ve already spent several hours on the forum, in the manual, and on YouTube and Google. I’ve seen/read about a million videos and posts about percussion maps (this one, for example) and I have a general sense of how those work, on their own. I’ve encountered a like number of presentations as to editing percussion kits. I must have missed something, but forgive me for that. I’m exhausted and frustrated and come here for help.

So assume I want to write 5-line staff percussion notation for instruments that aren’t in the default percussion kits, and that the resulting notation will play corresponding sounds from one of the kits supplied with Groove Agent SE. What do I do first, second, third, and nth?

You can ignore my tortured flailing below and just put the steps here:

Thanks,
Steve

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As shown in the screenshot, here I am in the Play tab, assigning a GA kit to a drum kit player. I chose the Beat Agent Brush Kit. For illustration purposes, I’ve put a snare brush swirl on E3 since that pad/note was unused in the default kit, so you can see one of my target sounds.

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Now what? I know I need to make a percussion map that specifies the instrument by note, but do I need to connect the map to the GA kit I’m using? If so how? If not, can I just use arbitrary names for the instruments in the map? Of course, the names should be meaningful to me, but the question is whether the instrument names in the map are functionally independent of the VST’s instrument names.

And once the map is properly set up, how do I identify/connect up the individual percussion instruments in the map to staff locations when I’m in Edit Percussion Kit? Do I first have to create a new instrument in Library→Instruments? I can see how to create a new instrument with an arbitrary name, but does the name have to match a name in a percussion map and/or in the VST if I want playback? If not, how is the connection made?

Inside the Edit Percussion Kit box I know how to move instruments around and to change/add them. But here’s same question from the last paragraph, asked the other way around: In Edit Percussion Kit, can I arbitrarily connect any instrument named on the staff to a VST sound through a percussion map? If so, how? Or must I first have created a new instrument for that connection, so that choosing the instrument makes the connection to the VST without further steps?

PS: I realize that theoretically I could make the Swirl sound a playing technique. Let’s not go there yet.

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I went through this on my first and second day of the Dorico trial period (I’m on day 3). This was a beast of an issue to tackle after only using the program for a few hours. Anyhow, I sorted it out with the good help of others on the forum. Once you have your kit set up (you mentioned that you already know how to do that), go to play mode (play mode or play view? – I’ve only been using the program for 3 days and don’t have the lingo down yet). In a folder, you’ll see each track of your percussion kit. Go to each part of the kit and add it’s own instance of groove agent (don’t add the same instance of groove agent to each part of kit. Go to vst and midi tab and add groove agents there). Now you have to make your own percussion map. You want E3 to be snare brush swirl? In the percussion map you are making, go to E3 and simply put the same of the instrument there (or E3 2, bacause the octave might be off). So now it should work. But it rarely does. That’s be because when you assigned the instrument to E3 or E3 plus octave, you might have assigned a variant of the instrument to that note. For example, say the instrument in dorico you are assigning is a floor tom. Well, there are different instances of a floor tom, and you have to remember which one you used in your instrument setup. You must know the exact individual instruments that made up your kit.

I think Dorico folks could streamline this process. It’s not intuitive – it’s clumsy. I get maybe why they made some of the choices, but it needs to be reworked. For example, for me to make a working instance of a Djembe, I never added any instrument that said “djembe” when I was making my kit. I added different instruments that would only have one variant. So for “slap tone”, I added jawbone instrument. That was simply because it was easier to keep track of in percussion maps. There’s only one jawbone, so when I add that in percussion maps, I know I’m getting the right one. And then I mapped jawbone to the the sound I wanted in groove agent. Then I edited the name from jawbone to slap.

I hope this helps. I’m not great at explaining it yet as this is my 3rd day with the program. In any case, even though I completely understand how to do percussion maps (and expression maps) in Dorico, I still think the developers need to refine it. But other than that, Dorico is so much fun to work with! WAY WAY easier than I had expected.

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Thanks very much for these pointers, @MatthewJohn . I’ve made some progress and I think I’m ready to write up the set of tested steps in the bonehead style that I was asking for. I’ll post these here.

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