Suggested Drumline/Marching Percussion Sticking Workflow

Hello All!
I just wanted to share a proposed “solution” for working with percussion stickings in Dorico. This is not perfect, by any means, but it does work much faster than having to insert lyrics for each note individually for marching tenors and/or basses.

I’m using a Stream Deck to do this, but I’m sure you could use an auto-hotkey program to do the same thing without one. I got this idea from another post where the person suggesting solutions was proposing the OP do each of these commands between each note. That didn’t click for me, so I chose to automate it a bit more.

I have two buttons for each hand option: 2x L, 2x R, 2x l, and 2x r. This is because, as far as I can figure out, you have to have a different option for notes that begin a tuplet.

If you are using a stream deck, create a new multi-action. In that, you will add the following:

  1. System: Hotkey - command = Shift+L
  2. System: Text - Text = L (if you are doing an accented left hand. Use R for accented right hand, etc…)
  3. System: Hotkey - command = escape
  4. System: Hotkey - command = tab
  5. System: Hotkey - command = right arrow

It should look like this:
Multi-Action

To build the tuplet version, you have to add another tab command before or after step 4 since the first tab command will highlight the tuplet container.

Once created, you can hit the buttons to enter the sticking for the note you select, and the commands will auto advance to the next note in the bar rather than the next note on the same instrument.

Some downsides:

  1. This is still pretty slow. You MUST wait for the next note to be highlighted, or bad things happen, for example, sometimes the notes will double.
  2. It is somewhat unintuitive to have to hit the start of tuplet version of the button, and that tends to break my progress. I have to move back to the correct note before I can enter the sticking.
  3. Rests don’t get skipped like they do when using the Lyrics tools standalone, so you will have to arrow over or physically click the next note to continue.

I’m sure there is room for improvement in this workflow, but hopefully it helps someone out!

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