Adding a drum set

This song did not originally include any percussion, but in order to demonstrate how Dorico handles percussion kits including drum sets, in this task you will add a hypothetical drum set to the project.

Prerequisite

You are in Setup mode (press Ctrl/Cmd-1).

Procedure

  1. In the Players panel action bar, click and hold or right-click Sort Players Sort Players button at the bottom of the Players panel and select Band.

    • This setting automatically sorts new players according to wind/concert band convention.

  2. Press Shift-P to add a new single player and open the instrument picker.

    • You can also click Add Single Player Add Single Player button at the bottom of the Players panel at the bottom of the Players panel.

  3. Enter drum into the instrument picker search box.

    Instrument picker filtered by the search term "drum"

  4. Make sure Drum Set (Basic) is selected, then click Add or press Return.

    Drum set player in its new position above the piano player

    • The new drum set is automatically positioned above the piano due to the Band player sort order.

    • Because bracket grouping is set to Small ensemble for the full score, the drum set is now included in a bracket with the other instruments. However, it is preferable to make a distinction between pitched and unpitched instruments in the score.

      Tip

      You can change bracket grouping for each layout on the Brackets and Braces page in Library > Layout Options (key command Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-L).

  5. With the drum set player selected, click Add Group Add Group button at the bottom of the Players panel at the bottom of the Players panel.

Result

You have added a single player, assigned a drum set to them, and put them in their own group to separate them from the other players’ bracket.

Drum set player in their own group with their staff now outside the bracket in the score

Tip

The voice is in its own group for the same reason. You could also designate the voice as a soloist, as Dorico brackets and numbers soloists separately. You can read more about designating players as soloists in the Operation Manual.

In Dorico, a percussion kit is a set of multiple unpitched percussion instruments that can be presented in different ways: each instrument on its own line, in a grid, or on a five-line staff. The same percussion kit can appear on a five-line staff in the full score but with single-line instruments in the part layout.

You can identify percussion kits by their green instrument labels in Setup mode.

Percussion kit instrument label
Tip

  • If you click the instrument menu Arrow icon in instrument labels in the instrument label and choose Edit Percussion Kit, you open the Edit Percussion Kit dialog where you can edit various aspects for each presentation independently, such as the voice for each instrument when using the five-line staff presentation.

  • You can change the presentation type used in each layout in Layout Options > Players > Percussion (key command Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-L).