I have been using the Maestro Percussion font for a while, and I find some of its note-heads useful. Before using this as the default, I had to specify x noteheads for cymbals in the percussion staff attributes dialog and never bothered with half note or whole notes for cymbals. Maestro Percussion provides x s in circles for half and whole note cymbal notes. Also, another symbol I find useful in my writing is one for a cross-stick rim shot (a common sound in jazz charts). There is a special symbol for that and, once learned, it is more efficient than a text expression. It took me years to wrap my head around percussion maps and the related MIDI key switches, but my MIDI keyboard now has tags on the correct keys for the instruments on the drum set staff, and entering the drum music has become far easier. (And the playback is correct though that is less of an issue for me, it's still a benefit.)
Of course, my percussion writing is most often limited to drum set parts. It may be a different story for a more colorful and varied set of things to hit. Chuck On Dec 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, John Howell wrote: > At 3:45 PM +0000 12/18/11, Lawrence Yates wrote: >> Hi Ryan, >> >> No. This is straight out of the box. All the percussion lines are the >> same. It's a characteristic of all the percussion staves. It looks like a >> font issue or a notehead issue but I can't find a way of changing it to >> just normal noteheads (the "normal noteheads" box doesn't make any >> difference either.) > > > I suspect (although I have no way of knowing) > that this may be based on a set of notation > styles (mostly alternative noteheads) advocated > by an International Percussive Society or some > such organization. I've read something, > somewhere about it. The problem being, of > course, that it's a system that is neither known > nor used by a huge majority of working musicians. > *I* would certainly never choose to use it, for > that very reason. I'm quite happy writing > percussion parts with standard notation, and so > is most of the world!!! And since I just sat on > end-of-semester percussion juries I can tell you > that I've never seen it in any music written by > some very fine percussionists, either. > > It makes sense for Finale to offer it as an > alternative, but as an unchangeable default, no, > that makes no sense at all. > > 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 Chuck Israels 1310 NW Naito Parkway #807 Portland, OR 97209-316 land line: (971) 255-1167 cell phone: (360) 201-3434 <www.chuckisraels.com> <www.chuckisraelsjazz.com> _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
