Redesigning Edit Drumset interface

You could keep the existing editor, but have all the GM percussion note assignments filled in in the Name column.

I see you have made a start on this in 1.2.

It would be handy though to be able to import a non-standard list of names for those using custom Soundfonts where the percussion names don't necessarily match the GM standard, or extend it as in the XG and GS drumsets.

You could make the staff position definition graphical by dragging the note around - you already have a graphic display but would need to make it interactive rather than controlled by spin buttons.

Finally use a graphical selection of notehead rather than the current dropdown menu - radio buttons with the note head displayed on them would be one way of achieving that.

Hope that has given you some ideas. :)

Well, I haven't thought the whole thing through, but in the type of scheme I was describing, I would expect to the editor to show a palette of the existing defined drums - graphically, just as they are shown in the main palette, with scroll bars as necessary. There would be an "Add" button that would add a new drum to the set, and I guess it is the behavior of this button I was actually describing. But you could also select an existing drum in the palette and hit "Edit", and that would take you to basically the same type of facility.

It needn't really be a "wizard" type of interface. It could be a single window in which the left side contained the palette of existing drums along with Add / Edit buttons (Delete too, I guess), and the right side contained the controls to edit a given drum. Those controls would start at the top with a graphic display of the note as defined (with a means to change where it appears on the staff - I said by clicking, but maybe there just need to be up/down buttons). Below that would be the controls to set head, stem direction, and voice.

All this is predicated on an assumption that might not really hold, though. I am thinking of a "drumset" not as an exhaustive list of how to display each and every possible MIDI pitch, but rather, as a list of the specific drums you've chosen to define. My own defined drumset might contain only a dozen or so drums. An open question would be if/how it would be possible to get sounds that you didn't define in your set. I would expect to enter a note and go to Note Properties to override the MIDI pitch of the note (again, via a drop list, not by requiring me to remember pitch numbers). That's also where I'd expect to override the notehead.

This is admittedly a bigger change than just providing a new drumset editor interface. And I don't actually do enough with drums to have a good feel for how this might really play out in practice. But I *think* something like this could work well.

Why woukd you think it would be harder to define a drum set from scratch? You'd still see a list of all available drum sonds when clicking the drop down for the "sounds" (or make it a popup window if that's easier). The point is, except when while you are activiely adding a new drum, you screen isn't cluttered with information about MIDI pitches you will never use.

It would be far better for MuseScore to read the drumset information in from the SoundFont.

This would then cater for the use of non-GM drumkits, such as the Marching Percussion extension to TimGM6Mb.

The only problem with this is the possibility of it being broken by the user selecting a different drumkit set in the Mixer Window.

Possibly, therefore, we should remove the selection of drumkits from the Mixer Window, and automatically set them from the Create Instruments dialogue.

Your thoughts??