Marching Percussion Notation!

• Nov 15, 2015 - 04:12

I have been using MuseScore for several years and it is a great program. However, I have always wanted to be able to write and listen to music for marching percussion using it. A plugin has been made for it, but it is rather low quality with many important things such as unisons for bass drums, rimshots for anything other than snares, support for 6-drum multi-tenors missing and sound effects that leave much to be desired. Many people in the marching percussion community have long searched for a free software to notate marching percussion music, and since as of yet there really isn't a good and reliable software available for free, we have always had to make do with the plugin version for lack of anything better. We would love to see the growing art of marching percussion added to MuseScore software, with all of the necessary features such as buzzes, rimshots, bass unisons, crossovers, and more available, and MuseScore would become the go-to software for any aspiring marching drummer. Please add this to MuseScore, and help out marching percussionists all over the country!

Comments

• Nov 15, 2015 - 04:46

Can you explain what these notations look like? Maybe include some images? MuseScore has hundreds of symbols available in the Symbols palette (press "Z" to display); I'd be kind of surprised if the ones you need aren't there.

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• Nov 15, 2015 - 09:15

Marching Percussion is already supported, and even has a specialist soundfont available although there are currently only 5 Tenor drums - I did ask the community whether a 6th should be added but got no reply.

I'm not sure, however, whether the symbols are correct - currently they are limited to the noteheads available in the Edit Drumset dialogue, although it is possible to use the Master Palette to insert additional symbols.

It would be extremely helpful to have input from a Marching Percussion specialist on this, so if you are able to advise, please do so.

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• Nov 15, 2015 - 22:30

I just managed to find the Marching Percussion notation section, and it is quite a bit better than the addon I used to use. Also, I found the soundfont you made, and it does sound significantly better. However, it is still rather difficult to write detailed marching percussion music, and not really possible to listen to it as written. Many of the symbols are correct, but many - such as the slash note head commonly used for bass unisons and the Z symbol in the stem used for buzz rolls - have to be accessed via the master palette. In hindsight, it is a quite a daunting task to tackle due to the variety of symbols, note heads, and other such things used by marching percussion writers based on preference. I would be happy to do some research provide feedback on many of the common conventions used to notate music for marching percussion and sounds that would be greatly helpful to writers.

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• Nov 25, 2015 - 01:35

Sorry for the week of absence. I found that the master palette has pretty much everything we need, and figured out how to add the sixth drum to the tenors. This marching percussion thing actually works fine. However, is it possible to create a grace note on a different drum than the drum the actual note is written on?

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• Apr 22, 2016 - 01:10

Does that sixth tenor note have a correct play back drum sound, or is it just visual on the page? Also, did you figure out how to input rim shots on tenors? With the sound, not just the note on the page. I mainly write marching percussion stuff for playback purposes. and have found Musescore to be lacking in that capacity.

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