On 3-Feb-07, at 10:43 AM, Carl Dershem wrote:
After Bob Florence's questions of a couple of weeks ago, I began to
do a bit of experimenting and goofing around with drum set
notation, and have made a major change to the way I work which may
(r may not) work as well for those of you who do drumset parts.
Rather than using the standard thing of putting slashes on layer 1,
cues on layer 2, and bass drum kicks on layer 3, I've found that it
works better to re-arrange this a bit.
Lemme 'splain. No - I'll sum up.
Slashes now go on layer 3.
Cues and snare/cymbal hits go on layer 1
Bass drum kicks go on layer 2
This is because:
1) the vast majority of the actual notation will stay on layer 1.
This lessens the number of layer changes you have to make - almost
all of your work can stay on the same layer.
2) if you enter snare/cymbal hits on layer 1 and bass drum kicks
on layer 2, and there are notes on both layers, Finale
*automatically* makes the stems on the notes oppose each other -
layer 1 is up, layer 2 is down - which does not happen if you put
these parts on layers 2 and 3.
3) There is no #3.
Commentary invited.
OK, you asked!
If you keep cues in Layer 1, then you HAVE to have something in
another layer for the stems to flip up, or else flip them all
manually. I have been keeping Layer 3 reserved for drum cues because
I can set Layer 3 to ALWAYS have stems up, no matter what. I can also
invoke Show Active Layer Only to resize all the Layer 3 cues to 75%
in one shot without changing things in other layers. This means that
my cymbal strokes (in layer 1) will stay full size.
I suppose it is no big deal to remember a different metatool
keystroke for Layer 3 slashes, but I have been using S for so long
now...
I also have no problem hitting Shift-Arrow to change layers. It is
second nature to me now. YKMV.
As you do, I use Layer 2 for feet on drum parts, and lower voices in
piano and choral parts. The settings mostly work exactly the same
(sometimes I wish I could set the vertical displacement for rests to
different amounts for different passages via a staff style, but hey,
it isn't THAT hard to manually shift rests!) I didn't know that Layer
2 was standard for drum cues - it seemed more normal to me to use an
unused layer for that, and leave Layer 2 for stems-down stuff.
I also use Layer 4 for cues (at 75%) that go UNDER the staff, like
for piano ensemble cues where cues over the staff would collide with
chord symbols, or for bass instrument cues for the drummer. It seems
more normal for them to catch a bass hit when it appears UNDER the
staff.
Thanks for the post anyway, as it is always good to re-examine my
workflow.
Along these lines, though, I have another question. How can I use my
percussion maps when I enter drum parts with my laptop, no MIDI?
There doesn't seem to be any way to do this unless one uses a MIDI
keyboard. And forget Simple Entry, the percussion maps don't seem to
work at all!
Christopher
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