Unpitched percussion questions
Hello. I'm just learning to use MuseScore to write some music for a samba percussion band. It's a great piece of software, but I have some questions about unpitched percussion which I hope someone can help me with.
Is it possible to pin all the note heads to one line? I'm using toms to stand in for surdos and it's annoying that the low tom notes appear well below the line on a one-line stave. Turning off leger lines doesn't change the note position.
When an instrument has multiple sounds (e.g. low / mid / hi tom) is it possible to sound all those at the same time? Basically an unpitched percussion "chord"? That would let me put all 3 surdos on one stave which would save some space.
When copying notes from one stave to another, why does it also copy the instrument sound? E.g. if I have a bar written for the toms which I also want the snare drum to play, I select the notes, copy them, then select the appropriate bar on the snare stave and paste the notes. When I play it it still plays the tom sound. How is that possible? I notice that if I select one of the notes and use up or down to change its "pitch" it now starts cycling through the snare sounds. That's a fix, but I'd like to be able to copy a part without having to do that on every note.
Do sounds retrigger? I've noticed that where there are a lot of fast beats playback seems to slow down. Does the program have to wait for the sound sample to finish playing before starting the next, or is this just a processing speed issue?
Comments
Ignore the last question, it must be my ears!
See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/drum-notation-0#drumset for how to set up a drumset for your needs
In reply to See by Jojo-Schmitz
Thanks, I'll try setting up a drum set when I'm in a more conducive environment!
The "staff line" selection box I see there answers my question about note positioning I think.
Copying notes copies them with their pitches. Toms are a different pitch than snare, so even though it's a snare staff, they will copy with their original pitches just as they would when copying from clarinet to flute. To change the pitches to be snare, just use the up/down arrow keys after copying.
In reply to Copying notes copies them by Marc Sabatella
OK, so the way I understand it, in the unpitched percussion instrument set each instrument sound maps to a different MIDI note number, what would equate to note pitch for a pitched instrument. In MuseScore, one instrument can have a range of allowable sounds (= note numbers) allocated to it. When you paste a note with a pitch outside that allowable range it keeps the original note number, so you get the wrong instrument sound playing, but when you hit up or down it snaps back into it's allowable range.
Do I have that right?
In reply to OK, so the way I understand by charcinders
More or less, yes. Each note has only a single pitch, so the arrow changes the pitch to a different pitch, there is no "range" involved for individual notes. All staves have the same range of different notes possible - the 128 pitches defined by MIDI. So pitch #37 is the same soind on any percussion staff, regardless of whether it was originally declared to to be for snare or tom or a full drum kit. The only difference between snare and tom staves is whoch of those pitches are made easily available to enter by computer keyboard or mouse, but they are both actually capable of playing any MIDI pitch if you force the issue as you have. You can also enter tom notes on a snare staff (or vice versa) via a MIDI keyboard or drum pad.