Drum Roll Notation Problem
Rope tension snare drum music has many tunes written by hand. My goal was to transcribe them with Muse for an easier to read format.
Traditional notation often depict a roll that bridges a measure line. So a song with a 7 stroke roll will have a 16th note before a bar line and a quarter note after and a curved tie between them. Muse so far will not let me do this. The attached image may explain what I am trying to say.
Is there a setting that allows it? Is there a way to not set a time measure so that I can us Muse more like a free hand tool and not be forced to have the exact time in each measure? Thank you.
| Attachment | Size |
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| 3 seven stroke rolls.png | 60.29 KB |
Comments
Maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't look like it would present any problems. As far as I can tell all the measures in this have exactly the correct number of beats. What specifically goes wrong when you try entering this? Are you perhaps missing the fact that some of those notes are grace notes? Those are entered from the Grace Notes palette.
If you continue to have trouble, please attach your score with your best attempt and then we can understand assist better.
In reply to Maybe I'm missing something,… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you very much for trying to help me out Marc. You should know that I am not skilled at scoring music by any stretch. I have attached my attempt to use Muse to duplicate the hand written music. The hand written piece has 3 initial measures. When I add them in, I get only 2 measures and I get rests showing. Does this help you to understand what I am missing?
In reply to Thank you very much for… by Swampgoat
You attached a picture of your score, but much better (and easier!) would be to attach the score itself.
As it is, it appears the mistake you are making is entering the tremolo notes as sixteenth instead of eighth notes as they are in the original - that's why the measures don't add up. Yes, there are two tremolo strokes through the stems, but they are still eighth notes - only one flag.
You're also missing the pickup measure, so you've entered the pickup note as if it were in the first full measure, which it isn't - it happens before the first measure. You should have chosen a pickup when first creating the score, but it's not to late, just insert a new measure then right-click and use measure properties to set its actual duration to 1/8.
The grace notes actually are notated as sixteenths, btw, looks like you entered them as eighths. But grace notes don't count towards the duration of the measure, so that dones't end up causing problems aside from looking wrong.
In reply to You attached a picture of… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks to your detailed answer Marc. After much starting and stopping, I am getting there. My latest score matches the one I was trying to duplicate. Originally I did have a pickup measure but I had it at the wrong duration. That is now fixed.
I have found that placing my notes first and then going back to place my grace notes (for drummer's flams and drags) works best for me.
A final question is to ask if there is a way to add space between notes for visual clarity? Say I have a quarter note followed by a graced quarter note... can the distance/spread between the two notes be increased by adding space so that my graced quarter note sits a bit further away from the plain quarter note? I teach drum students and this would be helpful to show the flam rudiment more clearly.
In reply to Thanks to your detailed… by Swampgoat
It can be, but I'd caution not to mess with that until you're done entering the music. MuseScore is constantly adjusting spacing based on context, and manual adjustments you make based on an incomplete score will usually turn out to have been counterproductive by the time you are done. And with respect to adding space in particular, instead of tweaking notes individually, it's almost always far better to simply add system breaks where you want - so there are fewer measures on the system 0 and you will find the spacing takes care of itself. So one you reach that point of having a few system's worth of music all entered, see if adding line breaks doesn't give you what you want already. And if not, then attach the score so we can understand and assist better - the specifics of how to make manual adjustments when needed depend much on the context as well.
In reply to It can be, but I'd caution… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you Marc. I will take your advice about spacing. From this point, I will spend some time entering several scores as I become more familiar with Muse.
Thanks to your help, I find myself enjoying Muse more than being stymied by it. With sincere appreciation, SG.