Re-mapping Marching Percussion

• Aug 9, 2021 - 03:20

Hello, I've been a long time user of Finale and decided to try and use MuseScore for some percussion notation to try out. I've installed the MDL drumline soundfonts through the resource manager and have been trying to use a MIDI keyboard to write. Unfortunately, the MIDI mappings are a bit odd and I wanted to try and change them, but this is turning out to be a bit harder than I expected.

Specifically, the Bass Drum Line (5) has an odd mapping from high pitched, down to low: a#4, g#4, g4, e4, and d4. These notes sit on the staff lines -1, 1, 3, 5, 7. So after fudging around with the drumset editor, I believe the only way to remap these notes is to find the "note" that I want to change(ex. g4) and change the staff line that it sits on. My end goal, really, was to make the high to low pitched bass drums correspond to MIDI notes g4, f4, e4, d4, and c4. Unfortunately, this remapping method seems not to adjust the actual sound that is being used, so the same notation with the adjusted MIDI mapping actually sounds different.

Long story short... Do I need to manually edit the soundfont code to make this happen? I was hoping for an easier solution, but didn't find enough info through the support forum and elsewhere online to achieve what I'm after. Looking at the drumset editor, it looks like the MIDI note and the "No." is the only thing that dictates the sound used from the soundmap. I'm thinking that the only other solution might be adjusting the shortcuts in the drumset editor and not using the MIDI keyboard for this staff only.

Either way, thank you for any advice you can afford!


Comments

MDL does not follow the General MIDI mapping of sounds and MuseScore has no way to remap MIDI pitches during note input.
Perhaps you could use another software package that does the remapping for you, which you could then enable when entering drums and disable for other staves?

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks for the suggestion. I believe each percussion instrument has its own odd mappings. That bass drum line would be remapped as I outlined above, but I'd like the Tenor drums to be mapped differently again! A separate software midi remapper would be clunky to create and switch between a different remap for each instrument. I find it hard to believe this isn't something that can be changed. I'm thinking I need to look at how soundfonts are created and mess with the source code to be able to change this. :(

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