In Play mode, how can I select individual instruments in a percussion kit? Months ago I was able to do this, but now when I expand the view of the percussion kit and click on an instrument, nothing happens. I was watching a Facebook video about customizing percussion and the guy clicked on an instrument in his kit and it highlighted. I’ve tried right clicking, etc., but no luck. Is there some setting I am missing? I’ve searched Dorico and the web and have found nothing. I even created a new project and created a kit with just two instruments, about as simple as it gets. Same problem. Upgrading to Dorico 6.2.20.6183 didn’t help.
By the way, I am on a Mac.
Yes. I know that. Then, when I click on an individual instrument, it doesn’t highlight, so I can’t change its endpoint or expression map or anything. All of the instruments use the percussion map and expression map from the parent kit. I feel like I am missing something simple, but I have spent days searching approaching it from all different directions and can find nothing. I simply cannot select an individual instrument in a percussion kit, even on an absurdly simple test project.
Ah, Sorry, wasn’t clear to me.
I’ve no knowledge about Percussion Kits and Endpoints, but maybe this post might help?
Okay. That is interesting. Before I saw your reply I had created a test project where I added a conga and a tom to a player. Then, in Play mode in the VST and MIDI window, I added an ARIA multi VST instance and a Halion Sonic instance. I then went back to setup mode and routed the Conga to the ARIA multi and the Tom to Halion Sonic. Then, back in setup mode, I combined the two instruments into a kit. Back in playback mode they were both in that kit, called Percussion, but the top level, Percussion, isn’t routed to anything and I can select the Conga and Tom and see that they are routed as they were before I combined them into a kit. I still need to try some more experiments on a simple project before I try to fix the big project I am working on, so as not to ruin it.
And, guess what? When I route the kit Percussion to Halion Sonic, I can no longer select the Conga or Tom. When I route it back to nothing, I can select the Conga and Tom again.
So, a big thank you! Dorico is extremely powerful but I find that with power comes complexity and the documentation is very often not complete, or searchable, enough to unravel it to do what you need to do.
No. It doesn’t work. In my big project, once I set the top level kit (Percussion 1) to be routed to nothing, then select and route the first first instrument in the kit to the appropriate ARIA multi, it immediately routes Percussion 1 to a new instance of the ARIA multi and I can no longer select individual instruments, then if I set Percussion 1 routing back to … it has lost the routing I set up for the first instrument in the kit. So I am back to where I started but there is now an extra instance of the ARIA multi that I don’t want and don’t need.
Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you further. If I understand you correctly, you can’t do this.
As you see, the top level kit is routed to Halion Sonic, as is Bongo 1. Bongo 2 is using Groove Agent SE.
More knowledgeable people are needed to help you. You can help them to help you by providing a small sample project, I think it doesn;t even has to have notes in it if you can’t share the complete project.
Barring someone telling me how to route different instruments in a percussion kit to different channels on an ARIA multi (what is really frustrating is that I did this last year, and it was finicky, but it worked), at this point, the only thing I can think of to do is use the menu to select “Library>Expression Maps…” to bring up the Expression Maps dialog box and create new base switches for the instruments in the kit that I need to route to a different channel on the ARIA multi. I have at least five instruments that I need to route from a basic MIDI percussion map/library to the Garritan Ethnic Percussion library. I will have to add some Playback techniques first. Each instrument will require different techniques as I will have to switch the channel to the one where the Ethnic Percussion is loaded but also do a transposition to get the MIDI note for each technique right (techniques in this case being normal, bass tone, dead stroke, and slap). I’ve done the channel change for a snare drum brush stir but I’ve never done a combination of channel changes and transpositions.---------
Thanks. Part of my problem may be that I’m using an ARIA player. I’m moving a through-sung musical from Finale to Dorico. I could give in and use the built in Dorico libraries, assuming each instrument has sounds for the playback techniques that I need, but, given the number of Finale users switching to Dorico, I would like to think that I should be able to keep using all of my Garritan libraries. (I have several of them.)—I created a test project to see what playbacks are supported in the various percussion maps that come with Dorico, and I can’t find any congas that include the playback techniques that I need. I verified that by entering them into the score and, using option+shift on the notes, I can see that there are no techniques built in other than the natural hand strikes. I could be wrong. I don’t have any real experience with the capability of the built in libraries in Dorico.
I’ve got the conga playing with all four techniques on the Ethnic Percussion library. The base library for the Percussion Kit is on ARIA multi channel 1. It is the VDL GM Percussion Garritan Instruments for Finale library (where the Conga is located at MIDI 63). On channel 3 I have the Ethnic Percussion map. I created the following Playback Techniques in the Edit Playback Techniques dialog box (Library>Playback Techniques): Bass tone (Conga Ethnic), Dead stroke (Conga Ethnic), Natural (Conga Ethnic), and Slap (Conga Ethnic).
Then in the Expression Maps dialog box (Library>Expression Maps) I created a new expression map that I called Garritan Percussion and added the following Base Switches:
Bass tone (Conga Ethnic), on events channel switch relative 2, off events channel switch 0, transpose -9
Dead stroke (Conga Ethnic), on events channel switch relative 2, off events channel switch 0, transpose -7
Natural (Conga Ethnic), on events channel switch relative 2, off events channel switch 0, transpose -8
Slap (Conga Ethnic), on events channel switch relative 2, off events channel switch 0, transpose -6
In the Edit Percussion Kit dialog, I selected the Conga then clicked on the Edit Percussion Playing Techniques… button and in the Percussion Playing Techniques dialog box I added the four techniques and assigned note heads to them.
I added four conga notes to a flow for testing percussion and used option+shift to set them to the techniques above. When I play I can see in the ARIA multi that the correct notes for the conga techniques are playing.
So, a good amount of work, with several more ethnic drums to go, but it seems to be a workable solution so far that will give me access to all of the playback techniques for these drums throughout my project.
I am replying to this thread to hopefully get more visibility to this post and have the developers revert to how mappings worked in Version 5. I’m having the same drumkit instrument assignment issues after updating. I appreciate and thank you for finding a solution. However, this is a very tedious fix we shouldn’t have to do or worry about, especially when this has been solved and easier to arrange in version 5. In my case, the marching percussion parts I am working on for a commission call for a group of 4 players using the same 10 instruments in a rack with at least 3 techniques to define for each instrument (I use the Virtual Drumline Kontakt Library). I have created plenty of presets and individual percussion maps years ago to speed up project setup time, and I feel those hours I spent crafting them have been wasted. Additionally, defining one big percussion map for multiple instruments as a solution is impossible in my case because various VDL instruments share MIDI notes to access their techniques. To the developers: is there any way to allow us to individually select our instruments within a percussion kit in the play tab??? I have loved Dorico since I purchased it in 2019, but this recent change has been extremely detrimental to my efficiency and writing. I’m willing to bet other percussion arrangers/composers are having similar issues.
I wouldn’t call anything in this thread a solution. What I have is a workaround, that can’t be implemented until my entire project (two and a quarter hours of music) is finished.
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Because of a bug known to Dorico engineering that results in a proliferation of channels as mxl files are imported I have to reapply a playback template after every import to wash away these excess channels. If I don’t, their number becomes so astronomical as to cause endless spinning beachballs, rendering Dorico unusable. Deleting the unmatched instruments doesn’t eliminate all of these channels. I believe that is because every unmatched instrument results in another instance of the ARIA player and 16 channels are created for every ARIA instance, with many (15?) not connected to any instrument.
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I can’t use Playback Templates when I have individual unpitched percussion instruments in a kit mapped to different endpoints because Endpoint Configurations/Playback Templates don’t seem to be designed for it. It looks to me like only the first instrument in a kit mapped to a particular channel gets mapped in the endpoint configuration. The others on that channel are not included in the endpoint configuration so, when a playback template is reapplied, those instruments are assigned to newly created instances of the ARIA player and their mappings are lost.
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With some effort, I can map instruments in a percussion kit to different endpoints. That mapping is only possible when the instruments are directly in the hands of the player and not placed in a kit. If I close then open Dorico at this point, the mapping is lost. However, if I create a kit out of those instruments, the mappings stay in place when I close then open Dorico. But applying a playback template destroys the mappings.
So, in my case, I can place my unpitched percussion instruments in a kit, with each kit mapped to a single channel/library (and percussion map) that includes the basic instrument sound but not the techniques, and go about importing mxl files. But I won’t be able to set it up correctly, with instruments mapped to libraries with all of the techniques, until I am finished importing xml files. At that point I can do whatever work I need to do to modify and improve the musical, as the percussion mappings will survive Dorico closing and opening, but I won’t be able to apply a playback tempate.