Another drumset editing question

• Jul 28, 2016 - 01:22

It seems that in the Drum Editing map where you get to change what note does what and at one line that there should be the option to make the note stemless for whatever particular drum kit piece, but it isn't an option (although default stem-direction is...). This is just an opinion, but it'd be nice to have this option so that you don't have to later select and make stemless in the inspector. I admit I don't know what the "industry standard" is with no stems on the drumming notes, but for me there are instances when no stems seem to be a viable choice for a certain way of showing a drum pattern. Am I missing something? Any thoughts? Much appreciated. God speed.


Comments

Can you show an example in published music of this being used? I've never seen, and can't imagine a valid use for it. Stems are normally important for indicating rhythm.

In reply to by worldwideweary

There are plenty of transcription books (rock as well as other genres of music) that include drum parts, and stemless notes don't appear there any more than any other music in my experience. Can you describe a case - perhaps by posting one of your own scores and explaining what you are trying to convey - where there is some sort of advantage to eliminating the stem (and where this doesn't immediately cause problems determining the rhythm - surely the most important thing for a drummer to deal with)?

Basically, I can't imagine any use case where this would need to be something MuseScore should go out of its way to automate.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

This is a little longer than expected:

An option as in the Inspector's stemless box already implemented to make stemless a particular drum kit piece seems to not be a "going out of its way" for Musescore, at least it seems to me. I may be a little biased though because I'm used to programming drums as per the DAW method: using impulsed note-ons in a piano roll. I admit that this is alien to the standard ethos of staff-based pitched musical notation, but as with notation's regular note-head differentiations these differentiations are ample to understand clearly -- not always but in certain instances -- drum patterns . It wouldn't always be conducive to be stemless.

What comes to mind is when there is a constant hi-hat of minimum durations or the like that sets the stage for the pattern: e.g. 16 hi-hat hits in a 4/4 bar. This looks fine with up-stems. Even the kick 4 times on every beat looks fine with down stems requiring two voices, but as soon as you put in another kit-hit, it has to have up or down stems, and then it conforms to one or the other and it tends to make it messy, especially with the rests. For instance, snares would look decent being stemless to my eyes.

Here are my observations so far: it seems logical to want to have a voice per striking. I.e., Four voices for left and right hands, a foot for kick drum, and a foot for hi-hat (or two feet for double kicking). Another point is raised: to have a means to remove all rests from a measure easily. If one uses four voices, there will so many rests shown automatically for each note, let alone the ups and downs of the stems being in each other's way. So, then, instead of using this you can start constructing "chords" with less voices, but then you have the problem of not being able to independently add a note so freely as you can with individual voices and have to add them as chords not allowing one to just press a note to enter it without overwriting the previous note on the staff. This isn't something you have to deal with in a DAW's piano-roll editor.

I whipped up some examples of the same pattern shown in different ways of programming for no particular reason except that I wanted to demonstrate the options available as I understand them:

1.) Separate voices without removing rests:
1.png
2.) Separate voices with removed rests:
2.png
3.) Hi-hats and a tambourine of same voice + separate voiced kick&snare (removed rests):
3.png
4.) All the same voice with removed rests:
4.png
5.) Sep. voices + No Stems except for the hi-hat
(This is the choice I was thinking about when first posting about easing the process of removing stems)
(To me this doesn't make the timing unclear at all: the unstemmed notes are in alignment with stemmed notes so as to be understood when they are sounded.)
5.png

6.) Finally no stems at all. (I admit the timing is less clear here without some sort of stem direction)
6.png

I was looking for something that would aid in my doing drums like in 5.) I admit 6 looks a little unattractive, and having a bit of stems is nice to aid in reading, but I also like some of the hits to be stemless in certain situations. 3.) is with all stems and it looks fine to me without the rests, even though that might not be standard either. The thing with having all stems in multiple voices is having to manually delete all the rests: they're overboard with four voices, and I didn't originally think of this but maybe it'd be nice to have an option some how to remove a particular voice's rests with one-click.

I'm not trying to break a standard, but I am going about it without having something else to emulate and going by what seams pleasing to me personally, and I'm still learning. Talk to ya later.

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