How do I write drum notation?

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studio32

How do I write drum notation?

Post by studio32 »

Hi,

I want learn to write drum notation.... Any suggetions?


And if I write such a score in for example NtED, is matching with the drumkit in hydrogen easy? Hi-hat = hi-hat etc. ?

EDIT: http://www.drums-and-drum-sets.com/drum-notation.php

http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.10/Documenta ... ion-staves
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schivmeister
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Post by schivmeister »

Yes it can be achieved with note editing software. For example I use Guitar Pro (refering to the exthread on writing beats). I don't know about the rest but GP is mostly guitar-oriented (and thus tab-oriented) so it's not entirely standard notation like NoteEdit or something like one of these transcriptions: http://www.yanicbercier.com/transcription.asp

If you want interoperability (woo reminds me of OOXML standardisation) then you should stick to really standard kits, following the traditional "GMKit" midi percussion standard (H1's default).
studio32

Post by studio32 »

It seems to be hard in linux to find a program which is able to edit drum notation (this is not the problem) and then export it to midi and play it with hydrogen.... and have a good match between the drumkit and the notation....
scorpmetallo
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Re: How do I write drum notation?

Post by scorpmetallo »

Hello,

The only Linux notation package that has a readily accessible drum clef and the ability to map the lines and spaces to a specific part of a drum kit is MuseScore. I didn't find the mapping is not necessarily intuitive, but it does work! :D
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Re: How do I write drum notation?

Post by nils »

The problem is, there is no standard drum notation other than midi, which is not used by real players :)

If you do printout-drumnotation and midi-drumnotation at once you mostly need a "convert my notation" script.

All this possible in http://www.denemo.org
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zwenny
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Re: How do I write drum notation?

Post by zwenny »

I've learned to write drum notation as tab by ear-transcripting songs in TuxGuitar.
A simple drum pattern (boom, chack, boom, chack) looks like the following:

Code: Select all

|----------------------------|
|----------------------------|
|-42-42-42-42-42-42-42-42-42-|
|-------40-------------40----|
|----------------------------|
|-36-------------36----------|
There are special codes for each drum element:
31 = Stick
32 = electr. Basedrum
33 = electr. Snare
34 = Triangle
35 = Basedrum (acoustic)
36 = Basedrum
37 = Snare Click
38 = Snare (acoustic)
39 = Hand Clap
40 = Snare
41 = Low Tom
42 = Closed Hi-hat
43 = Low Tom
44 = Foot Hi-hat
45 = Mid Tom
46 = Open Hi-hat
47 = Mid Tom
48 = High Tom
49 = Crash (left)
50 = High Tom
51 = Cymbal (left)
52 = China
53 = Ride (Bell)
54 = Tambourine
55 = Splash
56 = Cow Bell
57 = Crash (right)
58 = Whistle
59 = Ride (right)

There's a comprehensive table in Guitar Pro for all elements in Guitar Pro,
unfurtunately this is missing in TuxGuitar...


Just try it yourself by adding a track and set it to "Percussion track".
If "Showing Notation" is enabled, you can see the drum notation in Guitar Pro.
It's just learning by doing. Download some Guitar Pro tabs with incl. drum track
and see how it is done. (i.e. Pearl Jam - Black (live) or Goo Goo Dolls - Iris)
I know this is not a good method for learning / understanding drum notation,
but it may work for you, too.
Looking forward to look back what happens now

Listen to my music at:
https://www.jamendo.com/artist/373939/zwenny
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Re: How do I write drum notation?

Post by danboid »

I need to write up some drum parts so I've spent the last week trying the Linux scoring options to see if anything may do a better job for me than rosegarden.

denemo looks like the best contender so far but Ive enountered a couple of issues which prevent me from using it. Hopefully a forum member will be able to help as I've had no response from denemo-devel yet.

Writing drum music involves me very frequently changing the notehead type - I need to do this multiple times with every new bar. I've worked out how to change the notehead under denemo but only for one note at a time. How do I either change the notehead of multiple selected notes and/or how do I change the notehead for notes to be entered? Ideally I'd be able to switch between the 4 different noteheads with a single key press.

Once I've got over that hill, I'm hoping denemo will offer me a way to map my drum notation to the correct channel and notes required to correctly trigger a GM-aligned drum kit sf2 so that I need not edit or create a soundfont to match my chosen notation. Is this a feature?

Thanks for your help!
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Re: How do I write drum notation?

Post by paulmerchant »

danboid wrote:denemo looks like the best contender so far but Ive enountered a couple of issues which prevent me from using it. Hopefully a forum member will be able to help as I've had no response from denemo-devel yet.
Denemo is a front end to Lilypond. For doing specialized notation, it might be easiest to just interface with Lilypond directly using something like Fescobaldi. Since your scope is rather narrow (drums with specific midi requirements), once you set up a Lilypond template that works (assuming you can get the output you want after some experimentation), making your scores should be easy.
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Re: How do I write drum notation?

Post by danboid »

My current plan is to notate in RG, export to lilypond then either modify the output by hand or use Frescobaldi or Denemo to help with the formatting.

It'd be nice to be able to notate in denemo as its more specialised, has a wysiwyg UI (unlike Frescobaldi), I don't use RG for anything else other than its point n'click notation functions and denemo is cross platform, unlike RG.
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