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Drum Music Notation, and Writing for Drums and Percussion  - Related Products > Drums and Percussion

Pizzicato Professional and Pizzicato Drums and Percussion are made specifically for you to write scores for percussion instruments.   Pizzicato uses the sound card already in your computer or a MIDI interface attached to your computer, so you can hear your work as you write.

 

 

Writing Music Specifically for Percussion

Percussion instruments have very specific needs in music notation and the link between the score and a sound card or a MIDI synth.   As you probably know, there are two types of percussion instruments: chromatic percussion instruments such as the xylophone, vibes, timpani, etc... and percussion instruments with an undefined pitch like the bass drum, cymbals, maracas, etc.

Chromatic Percussion music is written on a standard 5 line staff just like a violin or trumpet would be. It is easier to notate, and write for MIDI because they have a set note value or pitch as any other chromatic instrument (you write a C, you hear a C).

For the percussion instruments with an undefined pitch, the situation is different. These instruments do not necessarily have a simple pitch, thus, a "note of music" looses its melodic meaning.   A note is heard as a specific sound like a cymbal crash and is generally not associated to a real note pitch like C, D or E.

 

Because a percussion instrument is not normally associated with a specific note of the scale, the mapping of instruments on the lines of a staff are free from particular note constraints. Instead, for percussion music, we do not use a standard music staff with a G or F clef, but we use a percussion clef which looks like this:

 

 

The Music Staff Notation Convention For Percussion Instruments

On a percussion staff, each line generally represents a particular instrument instead of a note.   Additionally, there are many different conventions used, based on the percussion ensemble which the music is written for.  Thus, if there are four percussion instruments in an ensemble, a 5 lines staff may be used. You would specify at the beginning of the score which instruments are associated with which line.   You could have a staff which looks like this for instance:

 

Additionally various symbols may be assigned to represent specific instruments (notice in the figure above an "x"represents the cymbal). In Pizzicato, you can select the note head in the Note Head Selection box:

 

Now in contrast to an ensemble score, in a symphonic orchestra scores,one line staves are often used for each percussion instrument and all rhythms are drawn on that line like this:

With Pizzicato, you can also create one or more percussion staves, each having 1 to 16 lines. You can determine how the lines are displayed with the following dialog box:

 

 

 

Using MIDI and the General MIDI Standard For Percussion Instruments

Most of the time, a sound card (or an external synth or soft synth) can play a set of percussion instruments. Therefore, all the Midi manufactures developed a standard to help manage the way percussion instruments are mapped or triggered on the musical keyboard.  One example of this standard is MIDI channel 10 which is reserved for percussion instruments. Thus, when we send a note command to channel 10, the corresponding percussion instrument is heard.  Here is the table of percussion instruments available in the sound cards and synthesizers that comply with the General MIDI (GM) standard:

 

Percussion Maps

If we were to place all the instruments on one single staff, the resulting score wouldn't be legible. So, because only a small number of percussion instruments are generally needed for a song, they are frequently placed on a single staff. To get the correct instrument sounds out of your computer or synth there has to be a way to specify which staff note corresponds to each needed percussion instrument. Pizzicato, addresses this with percussion maps.   A percussion map or drum map allows you to assign one instrument to each line or between each line of a staff.

Now, you don't need to change the default drum map, but if you want to you can.  For example, through this dialog box you can easily assign the bass drum to the first line, the snare drum to the second line, the triangle to the third, etc. You control how you want it to be notated.

 

Using The Prepared Templates For Writing Percussion

You may, of course, create your own percussion map or templates. To make things easier for you though, Pizzicato has prepared templates which follow the General MIDI standard, based on 5 staves. You may use any or all of them.  By simply placing a note on a specific line or space on the staff, you will hear the corresponding instrument, played with the rhythm you created.  To speed up the writing of percussion lines in a orchestral score, Pizzicato lets you "drag/drop" one line staves for individual percussion instruments into your orchestral score.

 

Summary

With the percussion writing tools from Pizzicato Professional and Pizzicato Drums and Percussion, you will easily be able to create scores for drums and percussion.  You can customize the notation or leave it standard.    And, with the percussion maps and the prepared templates, Pizzicato will know your instrument layout and thus, play your percussion scores exactly the way you want.