Tenor drum sounds

Dorico
1

I have searched and searched using various terms and I’m ready to chuck my laptop. I know that I can’t get true marching tenor sounds, and that’s fine. But I am having SO much trouble setting up custom mapping. I see there are pitched tom sounds and that would be PERFECT… if they’d actually play. I checked the midi channel for each pitch (F4- 65, A4- 69, C5-72, E5-76) and I go to the play tab, select the VDL tenor line percussion map, and then try to change the individual channels to the tom sounds. Except that what comes out doesn’t match. It’s using whistles, claps, and pretty much any other possible sound.

It seems so weirdly un-intuitive and I can’t help but feel like an idiot right now. :melting_face:

2

Are the Marching Tenor drums not “true” enough…?

Screenshot
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Other than that, you’re going to have to supply a sample document with your custom mapping, for people to look at and see what’s going on.

3

If only this were an option on my end.

Screenshot 2026-04-24 at 10.52.51 AM
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4

Marching Drums were added with Dorico 6. What version do you have?

5

Dorico 5

6

OK, well, upgrading to the latest version will give you hundreds of new features, as well as the drums that you need.

For now, you’ll need to upload a document that shows what you’ve done, for people to have a look at.

7

When you say document do you just mean screenshots of what settings? Or do you mean to export the diagnostic check?

8

No, I mean actually upload a Dorico document that contains your custom percussion setup.

9

How do I create a document with the percussion setup?

10

Sorry for so much confusion on my end, I’m coming from 10 years of Sibelius so this is a huge mental shift for me in thinking.

11

The document that you did this in.

You can make a copy and delete all the notes, if you don’t want to have your music shared.

But obviously it needs to have the percussion map, expression map and the VST setup.