At 2:37 AM +1000 9/28/11, Nigel Hanley wrote: >Thanks Chuck and Darcy, you have together proven >my dilemma. I'm in Australia, and was always led >to believe in the hand drums, stems up, and foot >drums stems down system. Apparently this isn't >gospel truth. I can see both arguments, so I'm >pleased to hear both sides. > >cheers, > >Nigel Hanley
Nigel: I'm not aware of any firm convention. In fact there are a number of different practices, and drummers seem to be fairly intelligent in figuring them out. Since I come from a long history of hand copying my parts, I have my own layout that dates from when I studied drums in high school (rudimental, not drum set). And it is the same layout that is the basis for classical percussion parts, including a long history of marching and concert band parts: Snare on 3rd space, stems up. Kick or bass on 1st space, stems down. (This is the basis; everything else is fitted in around them.) Hat on 4th space, x-noteheads, stems up, since it very often doubles the snare. Crash and ride cymbals above the staff, x-noteheads, stems up, with different cymbals indicated by different heighths above the staff (sort of like medieval heightened neumes!). Toms distributed between the 2nd line and the 4th line, although I often run out of lines and spaces for a larger drum set. No drummer has ever had any problem reading this layout. And it never occurred to me to use layers, or to separate the cymbals from the drums. And while I understand and approve of the logic of separating hands and feet, I've never thought that stems-down for the hat made any sense. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
