Drumline Soundfont and Instrument List

Newsome,

Question... did you load the instrumentswithDL.xml file too? If you did not load the instrumentswithDL.xml file, then the drumline instruments would not have shown up on the instrument list. If you DID load that file, then on the instrument list there should be a separate category named "DRUMLINE" and it won't be under pitched or unpitched percussion.

Double check the instructions here: http://musescore.org/en/node/8223

I will be putting together a tutorial and posting it on the MHS Bulldog Drumline site. Unfortunately, I live in Michigan and about 12 hours after I posted the files we were dumped on by about a foot of snow. Needless to say, I have some distractions at the moment, but I will post as soon as I can. Expect to see within a week.

Sincerely,

Mike S.

Lot123,

Alto b c & e? I'm not sure what instrument you are looking at here? Perhaps you have found the drumline sounds on a different instrument? Have you installed the instrumentswithDL.xml file?

That whistling seems strange... there are a few parts that are above the staff, in the tenor drums (the spock drum is above the staff), the snare drum (stick clicks and cymbal effects are above the staff) and the bass drums (high "F" bass). Do all of them whistle? I have to admit that I haven't really touched the "High F" bass drum, as I've been writing for 4 basses. Also, the cymbal parts for the snare have not gotten much attention in my writing, but the tenor spock has been working okay for me. If you can indicate which ones are whistling, I will double check to make sure the MIDI root key and the instrument pitch match up. Otherwise, it may be an issue specific to your system that I won't be able to help with (I'm a programming idiot).

Sincerely,

Mike S.

lot123:

I apologize for the delayed response, but to be honest it didn't really click in my mind what was going on until I heard it in a different way.

I'm assuming the "alto" you described is the alto saxophone. Newsome tried to write a chromatic scale and got the same result.

What had happened is that those notes are a specific sound sample in the soundfont. As you may know, a soundfont is usually not just one sound for an instrument... it is usually a collection of sounds that covers the entire range of the instrument. The sound sample for that range (b c & e) of alto sax somehow became corrupted. Long story short, I made the fix, and you can download the repaired soundfont at http://sites.google.com/site/mhsbulldogdrumline/composition.

If you find any other issues or hiccups, please let me know!

Sincerely

Mike S.

jgbible_865:

This should really go under "Support & Bug Reports".... please open up a new forum topic there.

When you open up a new topic, try to answer some follow-up questions:

1. What version of Musescore are you using?
2. What Operating System?
3. When Musescore first opens, and the demo is displayed... can you hear playback on the demo (piano?)
4. When you open a new score, is the marching percussion shown on the instrument list?
4. When you select a note on the palette, do you hear playback?
6. Have you downloaded BOTH files from the MHS website and installed them according to the tutorial?

Screenshots are a big help too! Remember, we can't really help unless we know more about your system and what you are trying to do.

Sincerely,

Mike S.

rtdivito,

Diddles are a little bit of a pain.

In order to get the diddle sound, without messing up the printout, what I did was write the diddle sound on a separate voice, and then set those notes/rests on the other voice to "invisible". On the first voice, I could just insert a tremolo marking so that it printed out okay. In order to save the spacing, I did all sorts of other tricks like reducing the size of the 2nd voice note, and its leading/trailing space. It is a very crude hack, but it seems to work. EDIT: I have posted a snippet showing the process.

As a drummer, what I recommend you do it write various tricks and hacks out on a separate file, and then use that as a pallete for copy/paste things like diddles. I'm afraid that right now the only real solution is to write diddles in musescore just like you learned to play diddles in real life... take it slow, have patience, be prepared for frustration, and experiment with what works.

Good luck!

Mike S.

mtippetts

Sorry for the huge delay, but it has been a long time since I've been at musescore.org (life got in the way).

The bass drum sound is bad. Actually, I'm less than satisfied with almost all of the sounds in the soundfont... but they are very easy to modify. All one needs is a decent quality WAV sample of the instrument.

If you have any handy, please share! I would be happy to update the soundfont as needed!

Sincerely,

Mike S.

kjc94,

You will have to forgive me for being somewhat out of the loop, it has actually been a while since I've been to musescore.org, and I am trying to catch up myself.

The "trick", if there is any, is to write notes that are seen but not heard in one voice, and on a second voice, write the notes that are heard but not seen.

You can accomplish this using the note properties. For example, on voice 1, write out your notation as you wish for it to appear on the page. Then select each note, right click and select note properties, and manually override the velocity to "0". This will make the note appear on the sheet, but the playback will be silent (i.e., seen but not heard).

Next, activate voice 2, and write in the diddled notes that you wish to hear. Again, select those notes and right click, select properties, and "set invisible". Those notes will be heard, but not seen! Since the whole score will automatically re-size itself according to those notes (even though they are visible), you can partially correct the situation by changing the note head sizes and spacing.

This is VERY cumbersome, which is why I suggested making your own diddle template sheet. Once you have diddles worked out in a way that your are satisfied with, you can then copy and paste from your template file into your score, as needed. If I get some time, I'll drag mine out, update it for 1.0, and and post it online for your use.

Sincerely,

Mike S.

Jtizzpercussion680,

I actually made a concious decision to avoid doing unison bass drums, simply to keep it as general as possible. My line marches 4, but I've seen lines as few as 3 and as many as 7. So, I figured a unison hit would not be accurate on playback. Never mind that the current bass drum sounds are awful anyway in my opinion, but I digress.

I have found copy + paste is your best friend. If you do the unison part for a specific note value, you are done! Just select that unison hit and copy + paste to where ever you need it. I can put a score together very quickly using this technique.

If you want to tweak the program for yourself, you are certainly welcome to do so! Note heads, values, and sounds are defined in the xml file, and I can assure you it is NOT rocket science. I tooled around with html in college, and that was pretty much all the insight I needed to update the xml file.

Good Luck!

Mike S.

LMRULZ,

First, I need to point out that I have not yet downloaded 1.1 (read: I am lazy) so I don't know if the directory structure has changed. It probably hasn't.

First off... realize that it shouldn't make any difference where you store the xml file or sf2 file, just so long as you can setup musescore to access them. I recommend you place them in the musescore directory though, so it is easy to keep track of them and not inadvertantly delete or move them.

You will have to do some exploring on your own machine to find those directories. What may be more helpful is if you do a search for any files with a *.xml extension, and with a *.sf2 extension. There should already be xml and sf2 files with your MS1.1 installation, so if you just go to the start menu and do that search, it should point you to the corresponding musescore directory. Be sure to write this directory path down so you can get there in the future!

After that... simply copy and paste the drumline xml file and sf2 file into the corresponding directory, and follow the instructions for setting up musescore to select the correct file. That should do it!

If you have any problems, please feel free to contact me directly at michael.schorsch@gmail.com.

Sincerely,

Mike S.

Thanks!

Rolls are a pain. I take care of double stroke rolls by using diddle (tremolo) notation. I write out the 32nd notes (or whatever other note subdivision you are looking for) on voice 2, and then set those notes to "invisible" by right clicking on them and selecting "invisible" on the pop-up menu. Its a real pain, and it takes a lot of effort, but you can make life easy on yourself by writing a template score that contains the diddles, then you can copy and paste into the working score. Rolls in traditional notation (e.g., 5 stroke rolls shown as an 1/8th note tied to the release with a little "5" over the tie) are not supported. Ditto for multiple bounce (buzz) rolls.

Sticking: Select your first note and push CTRL+L. This lets you type in lyrics... I just use the lyrics section for sticking.

Accents: to respond to an earlier request about accents, I found that the velocity of accented notes did not change until you added a dynamic marking to the score. Even then, it was a little hit and miss especially when you wanted to change the dynamic, or start adjusting the accents. So, I would set up one note by manually changing the velocity, and then (you guessed it) copy and paste that note throughout the score. I don't know if that has been rectified in v1.1, but its an old habit and I keep doing it because its what I'm comfortable with.

Ingredients for getting the best percussion product out of musescore:
1. Patience
2. Coffee
3. A willingness to experiment (hack) with the program settings
4. CTRL+C, CTRL+V

T.J. 2449,

Thanks for you comments!

I'm not sure what you mean by "lift" the bass line sounds.

I am planning to update this soundfont when I get time (which I don't have). Many comments about the sample quality have not gone un-noticed, and your rim-shot question is definitely something that needs to be added.

If you have any background in recording, and have access to good quality samples, then please send them to me. It would save me a lot of time doing the recording, and that way the musescore community can share the burden of the work.

Sincerely,

Mike S.

Nagrom13197,

You don't necessarily have to "know" MIDI. But here's the quick and dirty:

The number of lines, and the types of noteheads are defined in the "instruments.xml" file. If you were so patient as to open this file in a text editor, you could scroll down to "cymbals" and see all sorts of xml code that defines how the cymbal staff should look, and what the various noteheads mean. By coordinating the MIDI soundfile with the instruments file, then you can make magic happen.

With the two parts, I understand exactly where you are coming from. My own drumline has cymbal parts split three ways (!); however, but I'm going to leave the cymbal setup as-is. When you add multiple parts, then the number of symbols in the drumset palette grows accordingly, and it gets kind of cumbersome. If you want an example of what I mean, check out the tenor palette.

In reality, the process is not rocket surgery, but it does require a lot of coffee. SO, in the meantime, what I recommend is creating a score, but adding 2 sets of cymbal staffs. That way you can assign individual parts. Will it take up more space on the page? Yes... but it will be much more intuitive to use for the new user. Depending on your cymbal players... it may make more sense to them as well. Another option is to arrange the stem position... "UP" is for player 1, "DOWN" is for player 2 (use the "X" key to reverse note stem directions). A third option is to use the lyrics space. Push CTRL+L, and you can enter "1" or "2" or whatever nomenclature fits your fancy.

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,

Mike S.