Using Drumsets in MuseScore 3.0
Hi All,
I'm a bit confused over the way in which the different instruments of a drumset are inserted into the staff. I thought I understood it from the video the covering this topic for MuseScore 2. I tried this out with MuseScore 3 by first entering the Hi Hat 16ths. This worked well, but when I came to entering the snare at a quarter note duration, this wiped out the 16th hats at the point where I had entered. I chose a duration of 16th for the snare and this did seem to work OK and I suppose it doesn't make any difference what the duration is when it comes to percussion, it's just that it doesn't look right.
In any case, I was worried about how two notes of different length could be used with one voice because this can't be done with a pitched staff (where a second voice is a must))
I would be grateful if somebody could put me straight please.
Jonel
Comments
Basically, the practically universal standard for drum music is to take advantage of this very fact - that duration doesn't matter - to allow almost all music to be notated using only two voices. The usual convention is stems up for hands, stems down for feet (although I understand in some regions it may be more common to use stem direction to indicate left/right). So I'm not sure why you say it "doesn't look right"; it's absolutely how the vast majority of drum music is written. In fact, some take it a step further and put everything into a single voice!
If you really want to emulate the way it would need to be written for piano - with more than two voices to show the independent durations - you can force notes into other voices by pressing a voice button after clicking the drum note icon and before clicking into the score. Then it will also be up to you to manually adjust things to avoid collisions of stems, beams, notes in other voices, etc.
In reply to Basically, the practically… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you Marc for your detailed reply. What I meant by 'not looking right' was simply the fact that the snare note was really the same length as the smallest duration note used (in my case it was the sixteenth for the hi hat). I am used to creating drumsets in Ableton live where the midi is placed directly on to the 'piano roll' and usually of a different width to that of the hi-hat. I do understand that the duration for the parts of the drumset is irrelevant.
Thanks again for the helpful reply.
Jonel