Re: First impressions (Was: Rolls and Ruffs)

[Bruce McIntyre]

Hi.

Peter Mogensen wrote:
>>  - representing snare drum notes. (Ruffs, rolls and flams). The
>>  current layout is acceptable, but the it's a hack. It would be
>>  better if Lilypond knew the correct musical concept.  Tremolos in
>>  ruffs and rolls should not be aligned with beams.  It's annoying
>>  that grace notes needs to be phantom duplicated in other voiced in
>>  repeats, but I can see that's a know bug. Anyway, the period
>>  between the to beats of a flam is so short that grace notes
>>  doesn't give the correct timing.

Mats Bengtsson replied:
> Judging from the mails on the mailing list, there hasn't been that
> many people using LilyPond for percussion earlier. At least not
> people with sufficient competence to realize these problems. Even if
> you have described the problems in some earlier emails, I think it
> would be nice if you could collect your request in a separate email
> sent as a feature request to the bug-lilypond or lilypond-devel
> mailing lists.  Of course, it's even better if you can assist
> yourself in implementing such features.

My 50c:

I've been using Lilypond for percussion notation (mostly snare drum
and drum-set) and have found it produces good results. Tremolos in
ruffs and rolls _can_ be aligned with beams.  This is how it is done
in Wilcoxon's All American Drummer (one of the seminal snare drum
books). This is not to say that the alternate form mentioned above
would not be useful.

In drum notation it is important to distinguish between the double
stroke or `open roll', where each stick strikes the drum twice, and
the buzz roll, where each stick produces an indefinite number of
strokes.  Usually this is done today by indicating double stroke rolls
with tremolo repeat symbols and buzz rolls with a z through the stem
of the note in the same fashion as the / of the tremelo repeat.

The z symbol is often similar to that found in rfz (with a smaller lower
florish), otherwise it is more like a sans serif `z'. The `cursive' z
is found more on old scores, so seems to be the way to go for lilypond
if a 19C aethsetic is desired.  In the same way these scores use a
double-sharp sign to indicate cymbals, not a simple `x'.

Sometimes the trill symbol is used to indicate a roll (especially of the
buzz type) . This is, I think, more common in French typography. When
there is only one species of roll in the work, such as in much orchestral
music, the tremolo style roll is used throughout.

In rudimental drumming (with measured double-stroke rolls) the tie
connecting the beginning of the roll to it's end-stroke has a number
at it's apex, indicating the number of pulsations. It would be nice
(scary phrase huh?) if one could connect a markup to the mid-point of
ties (both phrasing and otherwise) so this could be implemented. This
would be useful for Schenkerian analysis as well. A similar feature
for analysis brackets would be ace!

Cheers,
Bruce.