I’m so happy with the new 2.1 update, especially since I now can do all my work in Dorico. (I had to finnish a job in Sibelius the other day but ended up in importing an XML-version of it into Dorico…)
But there are a couple of things I’m wondering about.
Big Band drumset notation
I can now do almost everything I need, but I do it in a non transposing treble clef instrument since I’m not interested in any playback of the drums. That’s because you almost never print out drum set patterns in jazz arrangements/compositions. In those cases that’ll be necessary you only print out a short pattern to illustrate what’s going on. For those cases I need to print out a drum pattern I use the regular drumset, because the notation is so great and easy to notate, but I also add a non transposing instrument to that player if I need to work with cues (kicks in the band). This works really great!
Pic below shows galley view and page view of a drum set part.
Rhythmic cues works really great for this purpose but I’d like one setting to be added especially dedicated to the rhythmic cue, and that is an option to hide the cue label. I know it’s possible to hide it, selecting Start text in the Properties and leave it blank. But doing this 30 times in one part is a bit tiring and makes you want it a little bit more automated.
Combining Rhythmic Cue and Slash region
I can’t find any settings that handles the rests vertical alignment when combining Rhythmic Cue and Slash region. Using slash region positions the rests way to high. The left example below shows slash region and the right slash voice with hidden stems.
“Push”
I’ve tried to find a way to notate a "push-rhythm" as ex. 1 below, but it seems impossible to do. The only way to do it is as in ex. 2, but there is a slight difference in the interpretation of these two: No. 1 tells the drummer to start the comp pattern on a “push” and no.2 says that there is a rhythm that should be played in some way, and the comp starts on the 2nd beat.
Someone on this board came up with an interesting workaround for cues. I’d be careful about it since it seems to exploit something that, in the face o fit, could be considered a bug, but it does work:
“I’m new to Dorico and to this forum, so I’m not sure if this has come up or could be helpful. The workaround I came up with for adding instrument cues to drum drum and percussion parts was to create a cue in a different instrumental part, cut it and then paste it into the drum part. I then selected rhythmic cue from the properties window and the cue appeared above the drum slashes. So, If I wanted a trumpet rhythm cue above my drum slash notation, I would create a temporary cue in the bass part, cut it (Cmd+X) and then paste it into the drums and change it to a rhythmic cue. It seems to work for getting instrumental cues into drum/percussion parts. Any changes to the source material also automatically updates in the cue as you’d expect. Seems like it’s a good solution for the OPs first problem.”
You can achieve the “push-rhythm” by using the “hide stem” property, which you can find in the properties panel in Engrave mode.
That’s exactly what I’ve tried, but it seems not to be possible to tie a slash note to a slash note with a hidden stem. Then the stem comes back again.
[EDIT] Aah, at the same time I posted this reply I realized that I, of course, did things in the wrong order. First tie the notes and then hide the stem in Engrave mode.
Someone on this board came up with an interesting workaround for cues. I’d be careful about it since it seems to exploit something that, in the face o fit, could be considered a bug, but it does work:
Claude, this post was actually meant to say that I really like the workflow I’ve worked out for drum set notation and at the moment I don’t have any further wishes for adding “big band notation” in the percussion staff. I think that’ll only mess up the notation. Combining a percussion stave with a non transposing instrument as on the first pic gives me exactly what I want. For playback I’ll add a separate playback track, which I hide in the final score layout.
What I still can’t figure out is the vertical alignment of rests as mentioned in the OP, when combining slash regions and rhythmic cues.
Rests in rhythmic cues do follow the staff position of the notes in the rhythmic cue, but for some reason the presence of a slash region seems to trigger a different condition in the rest positioner that causes them to move further away from the staff than needed. We’ll look into that.
You can improve the positions of the rests relative to the staff by setting the stem direction of the slash region to point downwards: Dorico shouldn’t be taking the nominal stem direction of the slashes into account when no slashes are shown, which we’ll change in future, but for now pointing the nominal stems in the opposite direction to where the rhythmic cue is located will help.
Ah, wow, thanks Daniel, that did the trick!
This is so amazing. I thought I’d looked everywhere, but still everything is there under the hood and you guys have thought about all kinds of situations.
Is it possible to set the default stem direction for slash regionsto be down?
For the future development of this feature, maybe the rests with this setting should be one step up. But for now this works fine.
