Notating Drum Music

• Dec 28, 2010 - 04:12

I'm writing a concert band piece for my school's band, however percussion is not my area of expertise and I'm having a little trouble writing it in MuseScore.

1. How are suspended cymbal rolls notated in MuseScore? I noticed that suspended cymbals are not included in the instrument list.

2. Is there an easier way to notate snare and bass drum parts than dragging the notes one by one from the drums palate?

3. This is more a general notation question. Our conductor usually refers to percussion parts as Percussion 1, Percussion 2, Mallet Percussion, etc. instead of individual instruments. What instruments go into Percussions 1 and 2 and how is this documented in MuseScore?

Also if any of you can share any crash courses in percussion notation, it would be greatly appreciated as this is a school project and my lack of percussion experience is turning out to be a major roadblock. I am the only student interested in composition at my small high school's band, and am having trouble finding informational materials.

Thanks!


Comments

1. For rolls, see Tremolo in the handbook. MuseScore uses the General MIDI standard for playback of scores. You can pick the "crash cymbal" and change the name of the staff once it is added to your score.

2. Dragging from the palette, is not the best way. For the recommend method see drum notation in the handbook.

3. You can change the staff name by right clicking on a staff and choosing "Staff Properties".

1. A reminder that suspended cymbal rolls can be notated using the tremelo, but they will not sound as rolls when doing playback.

2. Drum notation can be tricky in MuseScore, but as David suggested, read the section of the handbook that deals with it. After that, just play with it a little and see if you can get the hang of it. Just a side note, in non-percussion instruments, I used the keyboard to enter notes, but percussion entry requires the use of the mouse a good bit of the time.

3. That's going to be dependent on the percussion instruments that the composer intends. On some music, Percussion 1 will be snare drum and bass drum, sometimes it will be snare drum and crash cymbal, sometimes it will be all 3. Percussion 2 is frequently auxiliary type percussion equipment, such as suspended cymbal, tambourine, triangle, etc. Again, it's all dependent on what the composer intends for the parts. If you want to create a Percussion 1 part that has multiple percussion instruments (such as crash cymbal/snare drum/bass drum), I would suggest you use the 5 line drum set part from the unpitched percussion menu, then change the name of the line from "Drumset" to whatever you want it to be. The 5 line drum set part has lots of percussion instruments that you can combine on one staff.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.