Hello, I want to make a reggae drum set score and found the Dreadlocks kit and pattern on Groove Agent 5. I inserted a pattern into Dorico’s key editor and it worked when I set the percussion map to Groove Agent SE. However when I play back the score, some of the instruments aren’t heard or have changed from the pattern on Groove Agen
Drum test 2.dorico (1.2 MB)
t. For example, I will insert the pattern and I see the notes displayed but they are not all play the same sounds. Please advise, it is a cool feature to have drum notes notated for you, but I would like it to smoothly insert in the score and play the notes back properly. Here is an example score I made with the issue. On this I tried to reassign the midi keys on the patterns so they are different from the instruments on Groove Agent. I thought that was the issue and it still doesn’t work.
I don’t have full Groove Agent installed here on my Mac, so I can’t easily check your project against the real Dreadlocks kit, but my assumption is that the instruments in the Dreadlock kit are not exactly the same as the ones defined in the Groove Agent SE percussion map, and indeed the instruments in the default drum kit instrument in Dorico might also be different. You might need to adjust both the percussion map and the instruments in the kit. In general you need to make sure that every instrument in the kit is present in the percussion map, responding on the same MIDI note as shown in the Groove Agent interface, and that each of those instruments is also present in the drum kit instrument you have in the score.
I have been working on this for hours and I did as you instructed. Now the notes in the drum part are colliding. Would someone at your department who has Groove Agent 5 be able to assist me?
When you say the notes in the drum part are colliding, do you mean that the notes for multiple instruments are appearing on the same staff position in the five-line staff? If so, in the Edit Percussion Kit dialog, you can drag the instruments you’ve added to the kit to different staff positions on the 5-line Staff tab of the dialog.
Hi! I’ve been building up the percussion maps for different Superior Drummer instruments, so I suppose I might give you some insight in here…
I opened your file, and what I found did not surprise me. I happen to have Groove Agent 5 as well.
Here’s the thing: Dorico is set to a percussion map called Groove Agent SE Studio Kit. What does that mean? Only the instruments and their different techniques described in that document will be triggered by Dorico, because it’s the bridge between Dorico and the percussion library. So even if you hear GA trigger nice sounds when you make a pattern play from within GA, it’s no surprise it does not play the same when the pattern is triggered by Dorico. UNLESS you make sure that every technique used by that pattern is precisely and thoroughly described in the Percussion Map you’re using.
So here’s my advice, if that Dreadlocks instrument is one of your favourite and that you know you will use it often.
- Create that nice Percussion Map. It surely takes some time (but the more you do it, the easier it gets).
- Then make sure that you’ve added all necessary techniques in your kit’s “Edit Percussion instrument techniques”. Now, you’ll have a unique notation object linked to a unique trigger that’s linked to specific samples. And you’ll be able to grab patterns into Dorico and make them play, modify them at will, and they should sound more or less like inside the plug-in instrument.
PS: I’ve spent some time on your file… Good news is that Groove Agent’s percussion map is nicely done, so apart from three lines that are useless and some discrepancies in the toms, the perc map you’re using should be quite fine. So all you really need to do is configure the kit so that it can trigger all the available sounds in that Dreadlock instrument. Hopefully I’ll post an updated file later.
Lucky guy, here you are :
Drum test 2.dorico (1,8 Mo)
Thank you Marc and Daniel! Marc, thanks for taking the time in making a percussion map for me. A couple of questions. You see how there are instruments in the Dreadlocks kit on groove agent that are assigned to the same midi note, did you have to make changes to that in your percussion map? I saw you selected “Show Midi Notes in use”, did you have to show all and make sure every instrument note in the Dreadlocks is tied to the percussion map? Lastly when you created a new percussion map, did you copy the setting from Groove agent SE? or did you have to manual place the ID. I am sure you had to edit the note heads, because the example you sent had note heads I haven’t seen in Dorico, I am sure that is an easy fix.
Again thank you for your assistance
-Andew
As I (briefly) explained in my addendum, the perc map was already quite good. I duplicated the existing one and corrected some lines, as I explained. The real work was to create the techniques in the percussion kit (the different noteheads — you can change them to suit your taste).
Dorico needs those techniques to exist within the file to exploit them. If they don’t exist, some MIDI notes from the pattern simply do not match anything and that’s why your import is flawed. Each starting point needs one ending point. I simply made sure that every unique technique described by the percussion map had a unique percussion technique that would trigger the appropriate playback technique. So the work was way more on making sure that the drum kit (which I renamed Dreadlock drum kit) was compatible with the VST instrument used than anything else. I hope you understand.
Now if you don’t want Dorico to show so many different noteheads (especially on hihat) you can attribute the same notehead to different techniques. I did not want to do that to make sure you understand what I’ve been doing.
Hope it helps!
Understood thanks for clarifying