Hey all! You may remember me from the other day… I was attempting to bring in MuseScore’s MDL drumline sounds, to no avail. I sort of got them working, but it was not conducive to writing and playback was a mess. I think at that point I hadn’t known what to really do about expression maps/percussion maps in order to make it work, but now working with Spitfire’s Drumline I think I know a little more what I’m getting into, but I don’t think I’m executing properly.
I’ve gone through and set up both a percussion map and an expression map (correctly, I think) for the Spitfire Originals Drumline, but for some reason when I try to input notes into my project via my midi keyboard it is not registering as the correct notes. It almost seems in a way like Dorico is aware that I’ve got the correct maps selected but is defaulting back to a different one?
I’m not exactly sure how to get Dorico to recognize these correctly. I love the program but I write for Marching Bands quite a bit, and not being able to have functional battery sounds is unfortunate.
I am totally interested in making this work on my own - but I’ve run into some roadblocks and I can’t seem to figure it out. If anybody has created maps for these and gotten them to function correctly as they should, would you mind sharing them? I would love to be able to take a look at YOUR maps to see if/what I’ve done incorrectly in mine that have caused yours to work and mine to not…
Make sure that you have the settings on the Note Input and Editing page of Preferences set appropriately. If you want to input notes according to their MIDI pitches as defined in the percussion map, make sure that’s what you choose in Preferences.
Excellent - I’m not able to get input onto the staff directly from the midi keyboard, fantastic! This leads me to believe now though that my expression map may not be set up correctly. With the SF Originals Drumline each “playing technique” is assigned to a specific note, i.e. the “natural” hit is on either D3 or D5, a rimshot is on either F3 or F5, etc.
I thought that my expression map is what would define what each note did when played by default, so I have it set like this:
Base | Natural is set to have key switches D3 and D5 attached to it
Base | Rim shot is set to have key switches F3 and F5 attached to it
In my mind this was the proper method to achieve what I’m looking for, but I think I may have missed the mark on what either expression maps or key switches in general actually do.
You don’t build expression maps for this kind of library but percussion maps. The percussion map simply states that MIDI Note D5 plays the snare drum instrument with a “natural” playback technique. So whenever there a snare nat shot notated, Dorico will trigger that VSTi on D5.
Rinse and repeat for all mapped sounds.
Is drumline music written on a five-line staff akin to Drum Set (albeit with different instruments assigned to various lines and spaces)? I tried to look for drumline notation on the internet with no satisfactory results.
Cameron, as I explained to you in your previous thread, you don’t need (and indeed must not) use the Key switches field in the percussion map. I’ll refer you to my original reply to save myself the bother of typing out the reasoning again: