Quads? Tuned bass drums?

• May 11, 2013 - 15:07

I've been doing some arranging for marching band settings, and I've noticed that there isn't any good way to make quad or bass drum parts. If we could get a percussion staff with a variable amount of lines, that would be nice. The voices would be ultra-nice, but not necessary. All I really need is a way to write the part.


Comments

Quads are just a set of tuned tom toms - four per set. So you can notate them using an ordinary drum staff - either 3 or 5 lines. I believe 2.0 will even allow custom numbers of staff lines. As for bass drums, I,m not sure wht about the current bass drum you find in adequate - you spcan create it as its own staff or as part of a drum set staff no problem.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Tuned bass drums are the same concept as quads; they're tuned to specific pitches, except it's one drum per person (due to size) instead of 4 drums per person. Image link

I agree with this, I have run into the exact same problem trying to arrange for marching band. For tuned bass drums, all the pitches and rhythms are usually notated on top of each other in one percussion staff (image link ). If you don't need the playback you could go ahead and just use a drum set staff, though the capability would be limited. This would be a great feature for a future release.

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

I am playing around with the MikeSchorsch.sfz but the tenor pitches seem incorrectly matched to the staff lines. Haven't tried with the tuned bass drums yet.

Does anyone know a way to remap the sounded pitches to the correct staff positions?

Thanks

In reply to by Jim___

I'm not sure what would define "correct" versus "incorrect" - seems that depends on the specific soundfont and your particular idea of how you like to see percussion notated (there are many different standards). But you can customize the association between MIDI pitches and staff lines by pressing the Edit Drumset button in the drum entry toolbar or the right click menu for a drum staff.

Sorry that my comment was not clear.
I meant to say that the lowest note on the staff is not sounding the lowest pitched drum sound, etc.

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