Add marching ensemble to the list of default templates

• May 17, 2016 - 04:50
Reported version
2.2
Type
Functional
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
closed
Project
MuseScore

I've attached 4 templates for consideration for adding some marching ensembles to the default selection of templates.

I'm not sure if all 5 of the attached templates would be good candidates for inclusion with the default set of templates, but the plain drumline and the marching band templates definitely should be in the default selection, since both of those are common uses of MuseScore among people I know.

  • 2 templates for pure drum line (depending on whether or not your particular drumline has bells or not)
  • A template for a full marching band (pit parts purposely abbreviated, since those are typically written separately)
  • 2 templates for WGI (indoor marching percussion) ensembles

The "WGI" templates could also be used to write a fuller arrangement of percussion parts for an existing marching band score (see my note that drumline and front ensemble parts are often written separately from the rest of the band's score)

Attachment Size
Drumline.mscx 48.25 KB
Drumline with Bells.mscx 57.33 KB
Marching Band.mscz 16.64 KB
WGI Small.mscx 131.96 KB
WGI Large.mscx 237.26 KB

Comments

• May 17, 2016 - 15:54

Thanks for taking this on! The first one (Drumline) is already taken care of—see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/2530.

I've never seen a marching band score, but I'd be interested to learn more about how the pit percussion parts are usually handled. In the third template, I see that nearly half the score is percussion, but you say that's "abbreviated"? Are there normally more parts? And if they're normally "written separately," is this the best way to handle it with all the parts in one score?

General comments:

* Make sure to set the "Part name" in Staff Properties for each instrument, for the benefit of generating parts.

* Marching snares and cymbals going forward are on five-line staves, along with some other changes and keyboard shortcut associations. Check the latest instruments.xml, or use https://musescore.com/isaacweiss/marching-percussion-template.

* To group the clarinets together, etc., use the square bracket (third in the palette), and save the brace to combine staves that are actually meant to be played on a single instrument.

* At least for the present, all templates are formatted to fit on either A4 or Letter sized paper, and saved in MSCZ format when running MuseScore with the --template-mode option so that they will automatically use Letter or A4 according to the user's localization.

Reply

• May 18, 2016 - 05:47

(For some reason, the markdown option doesn't want to work, so I've typed out the awful HTML tags to make my lists look nice)

  • Drumlines with marching bells are uncommon enough that I don't see a compelling reason to add a separate template for that, especially if there's already a default drumline template.
  • In the marching bands I was involved with, the music writing process usually was usually something like the following process:
    1. Band directors pick "theme" and music selections
    2. Band directors hire arranger
    3. Arranger makes all the wind parts and a serviceable percussion section
    4. Percussion directors use the arranger's percussion parts as the guide for writing out percussion parts for their ensemble

    The reason(s) for this, as far as I can tell are:

    • Arrangers are often contacted well before the marching band season starts, so they don't know the numbers and distribution of instruments. Wind parts are easy enough to write for inexact section sizes, but pit parts are best arranged once you know the exact composition of the front ensemble
    • Marching band arrangers are usually from a wind instrument background, so often write percussion parts that are far easier than what the drumline is capable of.
  • The two (2) "WGI" templates could also be used for arranging pit and drumline parts for a marching band, as well. Not sure if I have a better name for it, though.

Anyway, I'll make the suggested changes to my Marching Band and WGI templates sometime in the next week. I'll also link this post to a couple of the percussion-related groups on musescore.com to see what their opinions are on this.

Reply

• May 19, 2016 - 19:57

Before I go into the staves to make the changes for their part names, I'd like to get some advice on whether I should use a different default range for marimbas than in Instruments.xml: namely, how uncommon are 5-octave marimbas in marching ensembles? I know I've seen low-F (and maybe low-E: haven't gotten a close enough look to tell one way or the other) marimbas in DCI/WGI before, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen a full 5-octave instrument in one: largest I remember are 4.5 or 4.6 octaves.

Reply

• May 20, 2016 - 06:26
Status (old) needs info ⇒ active

Update: I'll fix up my templates tomorrow after receiving feedback that there definitely *are* some WGI groups that use 5-octave marimbas in their front ensembles.

Reply

• May 22, 2016 - 03:48
Reported version 3.0 ⇒ 2.2

Don't forget the third point I mentioned before:

* To group the clarinets together, etc., use the square bracket (third in the palette), and save the brace to combine staves that are actually meant to be played on a single instrument.

I'm still seeing the curly braces used in the wrong places in 03-Marching_Band.mscz. The only place where it might be correct is with the marimba, but that confuses me, too: are those two staves meant to be two separate parts, played on two different marimbas? If they are, then that should be another square bracket, too. But if they're not, why are they "Marimba 1" and "Marimba 2"?

Also, the barlines should connect corresponding to the main, thick brackets that group instrument families.

You might want to renumber them so that Marching Band is second, followed by the percussion templates, and rename the original 02-Marching_Percussion.mscz to 03-Marching_Percussion_(battery).mscz.

Issue settings changed because there's no reason this couldn't go into 2.0.4.

Reply

• May 22, 2016 - 06:58

I've added a commit with my changes that I'll squash down once everything looks good for a PR. I also made a note in the file names that the difference between the large and a small marching percussion ensemble is the size of its pit. I believe "(small_pit)" is better terminology for a file name than "(small_front_ensemble)".

Two remaining questions:

  1. How should I deal with sections (specifically in the large Marching Percussion template) where there is at least one two-staff instrument in a thick bracket grouping?
  2. For the marching band template, should I group with by division [Woodwind, Brass, Pit, Battery] or by section [Flutes, Clarinets, Saxes, Trumpets, Low Brass, Pit, Battery]?

Reply

• May 22, 2016 - 15:22

1. The curly brace goes outside the bracket, while barlines keep going right through along with the bracket.
2. There's wiggle room; I might suggest group by division, except add one extra separation below Bass Clarinets, just because it would be a little easier to read.

Could you clarify about the marimba, though? I know you know more about it than me, but do you indeed mean for "Marimba 1" and "Marimba 2" to be played on two separate marimbas?

And:

* There's a lot of inconsistency in the use of plurals in the instrument names: Piccolos/Piccs., Tenor Saxes/T. Sax., Snare Drum/S.D. (not to mention that all the part names are singular!). I'd be inclined to do away with all the plurals, and just let it be Piccolo/Picc., etc. (except for the tenor drums and bass drums, where the plural is a part of the name).

* Speaking of tenor drums and bass drums, I think the former should be called as such, rather than "Quads"—and they both still seem to have been created from the outdated instruments.xml. Easiest way to fix that is point MuseScore 2.0.3 to the up-to-date version of that file (in Preferences > Score), quit and restart MuseScore (still using the "--template-mode" option), then open the template, go into the relevant Staff Properties, and use the "Change Instrument..." button to change back to the same instrument.

Reply

• May 23, 2016 - 03:29

RE: marimba—I've seen groups do it both ways, though it's usually intended to be two separate instruments. However, it is not at all uncommon for two players to share one marimba, especially if it's a school that invested in a single 5 octave instrument instead of two 4⅓ octave marimbas or one with way more pit members than instruments (5 octaves is the current standard for solo marimba music, while 4⅓ octaves are much more common in ensembles).

I'll change the instrument names to their singular forms. I went singular for the part names since each part would be given to a players (each with a single instrument) and plural for the score (to emphasise that each part is intended to be played by a whole section of players). If it's a marching band template, I hope anyone using it will be smart enough to know that a part for "Flute" will actually be played by a whole section of flutes and therefore have no qualms about writing divisi parts.

That said, for saxes, clarinets, and trumpets: should the part names be "Clarinet 1 & 2" or "Trumpets 1 & 2"? Not sure if I should keep plural (since there are two parts on the staff) or go singular (for consistency). They're singular in this latest commit, FYI.

I'll admit that "Quads" is probably a bit slang for the tenors. I don't, however, think "T.D." is the best abbreviation for them for all the scores, since I've *never* heard them called "Tenor Drums" in a marching context—it's always "Quads" (no matter how many drums the set of them actually has) or "Tenors". I'll leave it as "T.D." in the marching band score, since that is a good way to make sure that it's clear that they're not talking about "T. Sax.", and I've changed them to "T.D." in the percussion ensemble scores as well for consistency.

Basses should be updated to the new version of instruments.xml with this commit, too.

Finally (just to double-check), it's best to squash all my commits into one before submitting a PR, right?

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• May 23, 2016 - 04:09

The marimba question becomes important when extracting parts—like this, it won't come out with both staves in one part. As long as this is what's intended.

I think "Trumpet 1 & 2" is pretty reasonable. Yet another small detail of consistency is raised here, though: in the Concert Band template, where the horns are written two to a part, it's "F Horns 1 & 2." They don't have to be consistent, but it's worth noting.

Similarly, in the Concert Band template the horns' short name is in the style "F Hn. 1 2," not "F Hn. 1&2." It's a question of a space or an &—same number of characters either way.

In all three templates (fifth from the bottom in Marching Band and small pit), there seems to be a mismatch between "Miscellaneous" and "Auxiliary" percussion in the long and short names.

And yes.

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• May 23, 2016 - 05:33

RE: marimba—they would be two separate parts, since there are two separate players. More likely, the pit parts would get re-orchestrated separately to fit the specific needs of the front ensemble in question, but using the parts as-written should be two separate parts for the two players (and not one part with two staves for both to share).
With that in mind, I added divisional parts in commit 1e0c0c1 to help with viewing the score one section at a time. I also changed "Miscellaneous" to "Auxiliary" when referring to percussion parts. Breaking the score into individual parts can wait until the music is actually written.

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• May 23, 2016 - 19:11

I don't think starting with linked parts is a good idea—it makes the response time when editing slower. Other than that, I think you're good to go.

Reply

• May 24, 2016 - 06:37
Status (old) patch (code needs review) ⇒ patch (ready to commit)

I've removed the linked parts, saved the templates from MuseScore in --template-mode, and sent in PR #2625. Is "patch (ready to commit)" the correct status for having sent in the PR?

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• May 24, 2016 - 14:20
Status (old) patch (ready to commit) ⇒ patch (code needs review)

Most commonly, "patch (code needs review)" is used when a PR is first submitted, details are worked out, the PR is updated, and the status may be then be changed to "patch (ready to commit)." Things went in a slightly different order this time, as you delayed actually opening the PR until all questions had been worked out—but as a result, you missed the chance to catch an error (CMakeLists.txt). For the moment, then, this is clearly not ready to commit as it leads to a compilation error.

It's also best practices to post a link in the issue: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/2625

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• May 31, 2016 - 10:54
Status (old) patch (code needs review) ⇒ fixed

Fixed in branch master, commit 5e35de9638

Fix #111531: Add marching band and percussion templates

Added templates for a marching band and two sizes of marching
percussion ensemble.

The marching percussion templates were originally called “WGI”, but
they also work nicely for marching bands that follow the workflow of
having their fully-realised percussion parts written separately.

NOTE: divisional linked parts are *not* part of these templates,
as they may slow things down too much. If you want these templates
with the divisional parts, e-mail chris@euchre.us

Reply

• Jun 1, 2016 - 07:23

Fixed in branch 2.0.4, commit d1c649d0df

Fix #111531: Add marching band and percussion templates

Added templates for a marching band and two sizes of marching
percussion ensemble.

The marching percussion templates were originally called “WGI”, but
they also work nicely for marching bands that follow the workflow of
having their fully-realised percussion parts written separately.

NOTE: divisional linked parts are *not* part of these templates,
as they may slow things down too much. If you want these templates
with the divisional parts, e-mail chris@euchre.us

Reply