On Apr 25, 2006, at 2:59 AM, Peter Younghusband wrote:
Hi All,
WinFin2003
I have been having some problems getting the drum kit staff to do what
I
want when using it from the wizard set up. I'm wanting to use bass drum
- first space, side drum - third space, and cymbal top space - standard
notation requirements for jazz band.
However, I don't get correct notation or appropriate MIDI sounds when
setting up through the wizard. I usually end up opening an existing
file
(that has my drum requirements working), copying a bar and pasting into
new document. Copy and manipulate further from there. What am I doing
wrong?
You are doing nothing wrong. The Setup Wizard does NOT use anything I
can determine from your saved default file when deciding drum maps and
the like. It uses a preset drum default map. This is a huge problem
(for me, anyway) and I suggest you write tech support with a loud and
detailed complaint.
What I have done to get around it is to save a file that only has a
drum staff in it, with all the map settings I like. Then I use Staff
Tool>Staff Menu>New Staves (With Setup Wizard) to get the rest of my
instruments. Unfortunately, I don't get all those cute little shortcuts
the Setup Wizard provides, like asking me the title, composer, tempo,
time sig, and resizing systems to fit automatically on the page, so I
have to do that manually. Fortunately, the text block items are all
easily accessible in File Info, and I often re-jig the tempo marking
anyway, so this is often easier than redoing my drum map.
Now, that being said, you CAN get the three items you mentioned to
enter, display and play back correctly with the default. I haven't
tried with Maestro Default, but it certainly works with Jazz Font.
Choose Drums>Drum Set when using the Setup Wizard. (I don't know if any
other choice works, but this one does, since it uses General MIDI entry
and playback).
When it comes time to enter music, use the MIDI keyboard and Speedy
Entry to enter the drum notes. Bass drum is C two 8ves below middle C,
snare is the D above it, and since cymbals are not mapped to display on
the space above the staff (I assume that's what you meant by top space,
rather than 4th space) I use either the closed hihat mapped to F# a 3rd
above the snare's D or the open hihat sound mapped to Bb a 9th below
middle C, both of which display on the space above the staff. Other
notes of the drums set can be found easily around that octave (floor
tom G, mounted tom B, for example)
For cues I use the treble clef G above the staff, which display as
normal noteheads, but unfortunately sound like a low cuica, which has
the rather comical effect of sounding like a seal's bark! Since I use
Layer 3 exclusively for drum cues, I can turn off playback for that
layer in Instrument List more easily than remapping it, though I AM
getting really fast at remapping!
Just in case you care about such things, I hate the old, small-notehead
version of the JazzFont that is still used in JazzPerc, so I use Jazz
anyway. I don't get the special noteheads JazzPerc has, but I mostly
only need X, diamond, and sometimes a circled X, so I am fine.
Unfortunately, you only get ONE choice of open notehead in the Drum
Map, so half notes and whole notes are the same size! You have to
choose half note heads as the open notehead, or else you will have to
start messing around with stem connections. For publication I would
swap out individual whole noteheads with the Special Tool, but I can't
afford the time for most copying gigs (or I would define notation as
Standard instead of Percussion for this staff, but that opens another
can of worms). This is another problem that deserves a loud complaint.
Christopher
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