There must be something I’m misunderstanding about stem directions single-line percussion instruments: The voice is a “stem-up voice”, I’ve set default stems up in Engraving Options > Percussion, and the notes still show stem-down in both the Full Score and the instrument part. In the “Edit percussion kit” dialogue I can only select stem direction in the 5-line staff, but even there it’s set to stem up. What am I missing?
I’m able to force stem up, but it annoys me that I don’t understand how to fix the stem direction as a setting, and that feels like a workaround.
System info:
OSX 15.7.2
Dorico 6 Pro
Version 6.1.10.6078 (Oct 8 2025)
I discovered that the issue was that my “Percussion 1 line” instrument was in Layout Options set to display as “Grid” (strange default for a percussion 1 line instrument, but anyhow…). When I switched it to Single line, it fixed the stem issue.
The next question I have is: Why? Why do the notes show stem down in the grid view, when the voice is set to stem up? Is there another setting override for stem direction in grid percussion instruments?
EDIT:
When in the GRID view, if I only have a single instrument, or if I only have notes in one of the instruments, the stems are always down. If I add a note to another instrument, they switch to stem up.
I guess this is not a real problem, since I don’t want to write in GRID mode with just a single instrument, but it is confusing that: (1) the percussion 1 line instrument defaults to grid view and (2) there’s no apparent way of having a single instrument in grid view show stems up, unless you force stems up.