User manual

Table Of Contents

RELATED LINKS

Players panel on page 81

Instrument picker on page 83

Renaming players on page 130

Project start area on page 28

Starting new projects from project templates on page 55

Players, layouts, and ows on page 93

File import and export on page 59

Instruments

In Dorico Elements, an instrument is an individual musical instrument, such as a piano, a ute, or

a violin. Human voices, such as soprano or tenor, are also considered instruments.

In Dorico Elements, instruments are held by players, just as real instruments are held by human

players. Section players can only hold a single instrument but solo players can hold multiple

instruments, which allows you to handle instrument changes easily, such as when an oboist

doubling the cor anglais switches from one instrument to the other.

This means that before you can add instruments to a project, you must rst add players or

ensembles, which may in turn also be assigned to groups if needed. If you add ensembles, the

appropriate instruments for the ensemble are automatically added to the players.

Each instrument automatically gets its own staff, but when instrument changes are allowed, the

music for multiple instruments held by the same solo player can appear on the same staff as

long as no notes overlap. By default,

Dorico Elements allows instrument changes in all layouts

and automatically shows instrument change labels. This means that only the top instrument held

by players is shown automatically in the music area. You can see staves for all instruments in

galley view, and you can allow/disallow instrument changes in each layout independently. You

can also hide/show empty staves in each layout independently.

Instruments in Dorico Elements do not have limited ranges; it is possible to notate any pitch in

any register on every instrument. However, in the piano roll editor in Play mode, only pitches

that fall in the MIDI note range 0-127 can be represented. Similarly, if you input a pitch beyond

the range of samples in the assigned VST instrument, the pitch does not sound in playback.

You can change instruments at any time, add/delete them from players, and move them

between players.