Symphonic version of MDL

Me too.

This particular request sets off a very interesting philosophical discussion, but I will simply just try to provide a bit of insight into how I have been thinking about this challenge and how it has been approached so far with MDL.

Percussion notation has historically lacked definitive standards. The same thing has been notated in so many different ways, making things quite confusing for performers. Marching percussion has been even more varied than other forms, simply because it is newer and has evolved at a much faster pace.

With MDL initially focused on marching percussion, it was important for there to be a very clear notation standard. Not only to improve clarity for the performer and to simplify playback, but consistency and compatibility when source files of scores are shared.

Adding an additional layer to this and creating a greater need for clarity is the playback aspect of MuseScore.

Keeping all of these points in mind, the MDL Notation Guide was created - https://musescore.com/user/29165763/sets

It was intended that a similar approach would be taken when expanding MDL to the wider range of percussion instruments. But this also raises the question of transcriptions of historical works.\

The philosophical question here concerns the goal of recreating the notation style of the original (or closer to original) publications vs. adapting to notate according to more common current practices.

This particular case of notation of a trill for a roll is a clear example. While trill and tremolo have been used interchangeably in scores historically, they actually have a different meaning.

In the purest sense, these can be interpreted very distinctly.

A tremolo would be used for rolls with a double bounce stroke and distinct separation between the notes, while a trill would be used to indicate multiple bounce rolls that are more sustained and connected.

BUT... historically speaking, this distinction was not entirely universal or entirely understood, so the result is notation where what is on the page may actually be different than composer intent. In addition to this, some publishers would treat these as entirely synonymous and would adopt a single house style for one or the other, often actually changing the composer intent.

Again, this is a much larger discussion, but in this context I would certainly suggest to add this, but with a distinct separation of meaning between the two forms, as well as different sound in playback.

Back to the the broader and more philosophical discussion of how to approach the notation when transcribing old works.

While there is certainly no clear answer here, I personally believe that many publishers have historically published some percussion parts inaccurately or out of sync with composer intent when either forcing a house style or when work was done by someone with less knowledge of the specifics of percussion. Adding to this is variance in practices across different periods or geographies to where what composer actually wrote may not be interpreted as what they actually meant.

So, this ambiguity does set up the clear need for a definitive standard and I personally feel that it is less important to recreate the notation style of historical publishers than it is to try to discover the original intent and present in a modern way that would be more universally understood and consistently performed.