Voices in percussion kits

Dorico Pro automatically combines music into a smaller number of voices when multiple percussion instruments are presented in a five-line staff or as a grid, even if they contain different rhythms. By default, music is combined into one up-stem voice and one down-stem voice.

Alternatively, you can choose to notate all notes in a percussion kit in a single voice when the kit is defined as a drum set on the Percussion page in Write > Notation Options. This convention is used less frequently for orchestral percussion.

You can also override this option for individual percussion kits, and for individual notes in percussion kits.

Notes in the same voice cannot be notated using different durations and are notated using ties by default instead. You can eliminate the use of ties by choosing to truncate longer notes so that only their onsets appear on the Percussion page in Notation Options.

If one of the instruments in a percussion kit has a tuplet rhythm, other instruments can share the voice if their notation is compatible, such as if the tuplet structure is the same, or if they have a single note that coincides with the start of the tuplet. In this case, the single non-tuplet note is notated as the same duration of the first note of the tuplet.

If the music of the different instruments in the same voice is incompatible, Dorico Pro dynamically creates another voice and notates the remaining music in that voice until the music is compatible again.