Resolving Stem Buzz in Percussion Notation
MuseScore composers must currently create awkward workarounds for correctly notating buzzes with the appropriate buzzRoll glyph on note stem.
Lacking an ability to easily notate buzzes for percussion notation places an unnecessary burden on the composer, reducing the desirability of MuseScore for creating percussion scores.
This issue has been addressed many times, for example:
Buzz Roll Tremolo Stem
Improvements @ Marching Percussion section
Battery Percussion notation: Custom note heads?
Reduce ambiguity in marching snare drum notation
Snare drum buzz strokes (closed rolls)
While resolving this issue (and also true rolls for percussion vs. tremolo) could require significant effort, there may be a more simple interim solution.
Proposed interim solution is not to add the buzzRoll glyph to the tremolos palette, but to instead only display in drumset palette as normal notehead with buzzRoll glyph on stem. This could potentially be done by creating a new faux notehead type "buzz" which would only be used for drumsets, which would be defined as normal notehead with buzzRoll glyph on stem.
Even though technically a tremolo, there would be no tremolo behavior assigned for playback.
| SMuFL Name | SMuFL Unicode | Link |
|---|---|---|
| buzzRoll | U+E22A | http://www.smufl.org/version/latest/glyph/buzzRoll/ |
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| buzz.png | 7.48 KB |
| buzz_drumset.png | 18.51 KB |
Comments
This feels a bit hacky to me, but let me understand better. Is it the case that the marching percussion sounds include a separate buzzroll sample, with a separate MIDI pitch, so that one way or another this really does make sense to implement as a separate drum note? If so, then yeah, I could see your proposal being no less hacky than inventing a special form of tremolo or articulation that actually has the effect of changing the MIDI pitch of the note. And I guess those are the most obvious solutions?
In reply to This feels a bit hacky to me… by Marc Sabatella
I do agree that it is not an ideal solution and hope it can be an interim solution and that a more appropriate solution can be found for 3.0.
Yes, marching percussion sounds include a separate buzz sample with a separate MIDI pitch. I propose same for concert snare and other instruments (ex: suspended cymbal roll).
Why I propose to do this in this way is that I believe that the behavior for tremolos for percussion, in general, should be reworked completely. In order to create more accurate playback, adding a tremolo for percussion should not repeat the sample but should instead trigger a distinct sample for that tremolo type. To do this correctly will require a bit of work, so this is an interim solution that could be done in a matter of a hours/days compared to weeks.
In reply to I do agree that it is not an… by Daniel
OK, thanks for the additional info.
My general concern with "interim" solutions is that we then have to worry about what happens when we eventually replace it with a more permanent one. So I guess I'd want to understand the actual scope of what we mean by "interim" here, and then what the long-term ramifications would be. It seems to me doing this for 2.2 is out of the question unless we are proposing delaying that, and I wasn't aware of any plans for other releases between then and 3.0 although of course further bug fix releases are not unlikely. Is it some intermediate release you are targeting for this? If so, there are also compatibility concerns to consider, as we generally like scores created with any 2.x release to be compatible with other 2.x releases as much as possible. I'm personally OK with this being on the short list of exceptions, but it feels like that would have to be the case regardless of which implementation we went with. Frankly, I'm also OK with doing another RC and delaying 2.2 because it feels like some of the changes since the original RC could stand to get more exposure. Or at least accepting the likelihood of having a 2.2.1 in the not-too-distance future, which I'm also perfectly OK with. Anyhow, these are things I am still trying to understand.
FWIW, there are lots of other cases besides percussion rolls where changing samples based on articulation could make sense - staccato samples versus normal, also legato samples that could be triggered during slurs, a muted guitar or ghost note sample for winds triggered by the appropriate notehead, etc. I think it's worth looking at all of these together. Maybe it will ultimately make sense to use the same mechansim for them all, maybe it won't, but it does make me a little nervous to act before we have a long term plan. So all the more reason I am curious about how you see this fitting in.