Dear users and developers,
When adding a snare drum and a bass drum, Dorico places the bass drum above the snare drum.
Placing the snare drum over the bass drum is better for me. (Am I the only one who feels inconvenienced by this?) So, I put the snare drum over the bass drum.
However, importing a musicXML resets the order. As a result, the complete order of the instruments is changed, also the bass drum stands again over the snare drum. Is it intended? This occurs repeatedly.
In the Players panel, you will see the Sort button, which has a little triangle in the corner to show that it will reveal a menu if you long-click or right-click on it. Choose None from the menu that appears to avoid Dorico from automatically re-sorting players when you add new ones.
It could be a useful feature to automatically switch to None as soon as there are any manual overrides. (Or maybe a Preferences setting to select whether this should be done or not.) If a user is manually rearranging things, it seems logical that they won’t want those manual edits undone by the addition of more instruments.
Thank you for your kind answer and instruction.
It is immensely helpful.
Is there a particular reason the bass drum comes above the snare drum? My memory might be wrong, but I expect the snare drum to be placed above the bass drum.
I hope it can be changed if there is no reason or tradition I forgot.
I just have looked at the last page of Ravel’s Bolero. The order is as I expected:
In the default Orchestra score order, the orchestral percussion instruments are just ordered alphabetically rather than high to low:
Something like Kurt Stone’s ordering in the Percussion chapter of his book Music Notation in the Twentieth Century would be more logical IMO. Here’s the page with the “Membranes” order:
