I appreciate everybody's ideas on the subject of percussion notation, especially jazz drumset parts. It seems to me that there is not a "best practice". There are clearly some poor practices, and that multi-measure rest thing is an example of that, which is why I asked for help.
And there are some better practices. But there is certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution. I don't always know who will be playing my arrangements, so my goal is to have the very simplest drum part that will give the drummer the essential information he or she needs to play the arrangement. Again I refer to "Guide to Standardized Drumset Notation" by Norman Weinberg. I find this enormously helpful. And even though he is attempting to lay out best practices, it still goes for 40 pages. I think this is a subset of the larger problem of clearly notated music. Back when everything was literally engraved by a few master craftsmen, styles were more consistent. Today, you see everything, and most of it is really poorly done -- even published scores. I had a rehearsal this evening where we did our first reading of 22 charts we will play in a show in a couple of weeks. Of all of those charts, mine were very clear and well edited. There were probably 5 other charts at that same level. Everything else ranged from really poor to almost unreadable. Rhythms were spelled poorly. Symbols were stacked on top of one another. They were lacking structure (double bars and rehearsal marks.) The worst of the lot had big measure numbers on every measure ABOVE the measure and on at least 1/3 of the measures the number covered up a note or accidental. The really curious thing is that I'd say 18 of those arrangements were musically quite acceptable and some were outstanding artistically. It seems a shame that the state of engraving should be so poor. On 1/25/2015 4:10 PM, Chuck Israels wrote: different drummers respond to notation differently. Some hate to see figures written out (though sometimes I want something specific and need to notate it), most like to see the band rhythms notated above slashes, but I still have to explain that I want the drummer to set up the figures by playing something that makes the arrival of those figures sound inevitable, not just to hit the figures with the band (typical college big band drummer style). I work with a drummer here in Portland - lovely fellow and committed musician, and I have yet to figure out just how to communicate best with him, and I know he is doing his best to understand what I want. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: [email protected]
