Have only used Dorico for a short while but learning quickly.
I am writing a piece for solo percussion and entering it in a five-line staff as you see. I would like to have a polyrhythm in bar 47 in a different voice but I am not sure how to do this. Anyone?
I’m nowhere near my computer for a week, and this might have changed during the 4 and 5 cycles, bit I’d still recommend to use the 1-line representation for the input phase (especially if you need to deal with tuplets) and then change the representation to 5-line-staff. My 2c.
And welcome to the forum, of course! I hope you’ll find someone to help you through this!
Hi t.grahl,
I don’t have good news for you. I too would like to know how to create a 2 voice polyrhtythm on a 5 line unpitched percussion stave but presently it seems, in the current version of Dorico (5.1.40), this is not possible.
This is the answer D.Spreadbury gave in 2021 to a related 2 voice in a percussion stave question. 2 voices on a single-line percussion instrument - #2 by dspreadbury and in 2023 here Polyrhythmic line - #5 by dspreadbury
This doesn’t bode well for us.
Dorico seems to treat unpitched percussion as a single voice only. And that single voice allows for only 1 rhythmic grid. Which I suspect is why 2 voice polyrhythms are not possible.
In attempting to achieve this:
With what I know to be the available techniques, [Edit/Notations/Percussion/Change Voice/Extra down stem voice] then add a tuplet to the lower voice, the closest I can manage is:
Hopefully someone wiser and more familiar with Dorico will volunteer a workaround or even an official solution.
So edit the percussion kit in setup to have different voices for each instrument.
(I’m no expert on percussion, but it seemed straightforward. I created this in a couple of minutes)
And it might be clearer to see what you are doing if you enter the parts in the single-line kit format and then revert to the five-line staff afterwards.
And happy 'cake day" (forum anniversary), @Filbert .
Hey Janus,
Agreed that’s a great solution, and applicable in very particular circumstances but it does create a new problem.
It’s not possible to write a continuous stream of notation, toggling between single voice and multi-voice material, on the same unpitched-perc instrument stave.
Split Voices
Single Voice
The very niffty approach you’ve suggested solves one problem but creates another.
It would seem I’m after both, in the same instrument setup.
Thanks for the suggestion Derrek,
I gave it a shot but still end up with unexpected results.
Viewed as Single Line Instruments
Same material viewed as 5 Line Instrument
(with some extra errant rests magically added during the single line 5 line toggleing process.)
It should be possible to remove those rests, one way or another: you could try selecting them and using Edit > Remove Rest, or failing that, activate the Force position and duration property and then edit their colour such that they are completely transparent.