Separating drums and percussion in MIDI import

• Aug 7, 2013 - 12:41

I noticed that Andrey is now focusing on drum import of MIDI files.

I wondered if certain drums could be designated a percussion stave, because having all of them in the one stave could make it too crowded.

I propose that standard drumkit sounds have their own 'Drums' stave, whilst anything else would be on a 'Percussion' stave.

Certain books try to do this. I attach the 'Key To Percussion Notation' that appears at the start of one. Since there is no standard for drums, you can ignore the details about the mapping of notes (especially since the other images are from a different book) - this is about the drums and percussion being generally separated.

Sometimes, there are multiple percussion staves.

When drum notes don't happen at the same time in a score, they share the same line. The reader is told when the note changes via stave text.

I don't know if it could become complex and the whole idea may need to be refined, but what do others think?


Comments

Shouldn't the separation be based on track? Or does the whole silliness of percussion being assumed to be channel 10 mean MIDI files would normally not use separate tracks for drumset & percussion?

Interesting.
So - we have:
>> basic notation
- in percussion notation different drums are shown as notes with different pitches and, maybe, noteheads; also multiple voicing can be used
>> advanced notation
- multiple staves for percussion - for more convenient work with the score with multiple percussion lines

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