Using the same percussion instrument as single instrument and in a percussion kit

Dorico
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on a large orchestral film score and have run into a problem. I have a percussion player who is supposed to play Bass Drum in one Cue (=Flow), and in another Cue has to play Wood Block and Bass Drum simultaneously.
I’ve created a percussion kit with Wood Block and Bass Drum, but if I do it this way, the Wood Block line shows up in cues where the percussionist is supposed to play only Bass Drum. But when I create another Bass Drum as individual instrument for the player., Dorico thinks it must be another Bass Drum and labels it as “Bass Drum 2”. How can I solve this problem and have the same Bass Drum show up as individual instrument and in a percussion kit with another instrument? Or is there another way to solve this problem?

2

Welcome to the forum @TimTeyso - unless you want to present the Wood block and Bass drum kit as a grid or 5-line staff in the cues where they’re played simultaneously (i.e. if you always plan to show them as single-line instruments regardless), you might find it easier not to create a kit, but instead just have a solo percussion player who holds two instruments: a Wood block and a Bass drum.

Dorico will show staves for them as set for the layout (e.g. always if you never hide empty staves, or automatically hide empty staves if you’ve allowed that) and handle instrument changes automatically. Or, if you wouldn’t want them to have instrument changes - where if their notes don’t overlap, the 2 instruments can appear on the same staff - you could have 2 players, each holding one of the instruments, and just assign both players to the same percussion part layout.

If you do need to have essentially duplicate instruments to allow for different configurations, these are the circumstances in which Dorico automatically numbers instruments. Changing one (e.g. putting one of the players in its own group) prevents automatic numbering.

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Thanks for helping with all these different options, I went with creating two players each having one percussion instrument assigned and both sharing one part layout, and it seems to work great.

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