Some Drum Notation Addition Requests

• Apr 4, 2011 - 03:59

A couple items I would like to be able to do for drum scoring

1. Rim Shot - is a solid note head with a thin diagonal slash through the head
2. Ghost Notes - note head is in parenthesis
3. Half Open Hi-Hat marker is a circle articulation with a vertical line through it
4. Cross Stick - Solid Note head has a circle around the note head
5a. Cymbal Bell - X note head with a circle around the note head
5b. There is an alternate articulation symbol for this in the PDF that follows
6. Adding an L and an R to the Fingerings for Sticking (I know you can alter the existing ones, but it's easer to have them already there)

Thanks for your consideration

This is a pretty good guide to Drum nototation

http://web.mit.edu/merolish/Public/drums.pdf

Comments

• Nov 25, 2016 - 15:28

I also miss number 4, half open hi-hat marked by a circle articulation with a vertical line through it.

I have found the "ouvert" but I haven't found a strikethrough one.

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• Nov 25, 2016 - 17:50

If I am understanding correctly, this is already implemented for the next major release. The noteheads palette has a number of additions you can see in the nightly builds for 3.0. Although the ones I see with strike through are diagonal and not vertical, so maybe that's not the same thing. Feel free to post an image. Also check the Symbols palette and search for "note" - if there exists a standard SMuFL notehead glyph, it can in principle be added to the palette.

EDIT: hmm, are you talking about note heads or articulations? If the latter, then chances are you can already add this from the Symbols palette directly, It's a pretty big palette, though, and might take a while to find a suitable symbol. If it's a standard musical symbol and not something you invented yourself, though, it's probably in there - this is an international standard set of musical symbols called SMuFL that contains practically everything used in published music.

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• Nov 25, 2016 - 15:38

I never looked at the possibility of altering the notehead palette. I figured all of the palettes could be altered. Perhaps putting a feature request that allows you to chose different symbols out of a font would allow you to put the note heads you desire on them.

There is one consideration, when you use a drum set, the note heads affect the play back and it will not allow you to manually change at least some of the heads. I'm not sure how to go about fixing that part of this feature. I'm not a programmer, just a user. I write for orchestra and rarely write for drum set. I write an individual line for each instrument.

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• Nov 26, 2016 - 07:58

I plan to address most of these requests in the coming weeks. In current master, I added new noteheads but they can't be used for drumset for now.

Capture d'écran 2016-11-25 19.05.36.png
1. 4. 5a. As you can see the noteheads are now available. They need to be selectable in a drumset.

2. That's already possible with the parenthesis in the notehead palette. You mean playback?

3. 5b. We have the Half open hihat in the Z palette and the bell/edge of cymbals too.
Capture d'écran 2016-11-26 08.33.15.png
Capture d'écran 2016-11-26 08.44.21.png

For these "articulations" and also for Open/Closed, I wonder if it would be better to add them in the drumset (and so being able to define an articulation on top of the MIDI number, staffline, notehead, voice, shortcut), or to add them in a dedicated palette.

Regarding the playback, General MIDI is very limited for drums, there is no MIDI number for half-open hit hat or for ride edge, while there is a MIDI number for ride bell or open/closed hi-hat. RimShot and Cross Stick are on the same MIDI number and so can't be differentiated... if anyone has an idea how to deal with that, please chime in.

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