# Sibelius - orchestral percussion changes



## Carlos Lopez-Real (Nov 8, 2019)

I want to consolidate several orchestral percussion parts into just two parts (i.e. for two players). e.g. one player will have to switch between bass drum, tam tam, snare etc. When I use 'change instrument' at different points in the score, Sibelius defaults to the staff type for that instrument. This often means an annoying back-and-forth between a 5-line staff and a 1-line staff, as in this screenshot:






I could simply not use 'change instrument' at all, and just write everything into a generic 5-line percussion staff, and then just use standard boxed text to indicate instrument changes. But is there a better overall way of managing this kind of thing? Thanks!


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## bryla (Nov 8, 2019)

Go to edit instruments and make Bass Drum (and all other instruments you are using) a 5-line staffed instrument.


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## Carlos Lopez-Real (Nov 8, 2019)

bryla said:


> Go to edit instruments and make Bass Drum (and all other instruments you are using) a 5-line staffed instrument.


Thanks @bryla that certainly works. I guess I could even create two versions of some of these instruments? One version which has the original Sibelius setting (e.g. 1-line in the case of Bass Drum) and one version which has 5-lines. And both would appear in the available instruments dialogue?


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## bryla (Nov 8, 2019)

Yes. But remember that these changes are only in effect for the given file.
I do this in my template file. Any time I need an instrument that doesn't behave the way I want or is not in the menus, I do it in the project I'm working on and then again in my template for the future.


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## BlackDorito (Nov 17, 2019)

Carlos Lopez-Real said:


> Thanks @bryla that certainly works. I guess I could even create two versions of some of these instruments? One version which has the original Sibelius setting (e.g. 1-line in the case of Bass Drum) and one version which has 5-lines. And both would appear in the available instruments dialogue?


I did this for awhile, and simply muted the one-line staves, and hid the 5-line staves. It made notating percussion - Spitfire Joby Burgess, in my case - much easier. [I started the process of creating soundsets for JB instruments, and got a few done, but it was taking too long] After awhile I decided to just use 5-line staves for all percussion ... never had to worry about it again.


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