Editing Drum Notes

Most types of percussion instruments do not have discrete pitches. However, in Composer they have pseudo pitches.

If a track is specified as a 5-line drum track, then note drum notes might look something like this:

Each drum instrument has a distinct psuedo pitch, which might include an accidental. For example, the closed hat instrument has the pitch F# in the bass clef.

Usually, you will not want give a percussionist a drum part with such pseudo pitches. If you have imported a MIDI file with such a percussion track, then you can use the Split Drums command, to produce individual 1-line staves for each distinct drum instrument, as illustrated here:

In creating a new drum track, you have the choice the create either a 5-line staff drum track with psuedo pitches for multiple drum instruments, or a 1-line drum staff for just a single drum instrument. For details, see Changing the Instrument Sound of a Track.

If the track is a 5-line drum track, then you add drum notes with the mouse, and assign them the pseudo drum pitches, just like normal note pitches. For example, you can drag the pseudo pitch of a drum note with the mouse, or change it by typing P+ or P+. As you change the pseudo pitch of the drum note, Composer will audit the sound so that you can hear what type of drum instrument is associated with the pseudo pitch.

If the track is a 1-line drum track, then it has a specific pseudo pitch that you cannot change by moving the note up or down.

You can enter drum notes via a music keyboard via real-time recording or Step-Time Recording. You can associate various drum instruments with different keys on your music keyboard, indepedently of the psuedo pitches. This enables you to play the drum notes on your music keyboard using keys that are most convenient for you to play while recording a drum part. For more information, see Managing Drum Note Lists.

For a given 5-line or 1-line drum track, you can specify what notehead shape will be used for the notes in the staff. By default, the notehead shape is an . You can assign a different notehead shape among these choices: , , , , or . You can also change the notehead shape of individual notes, as described in Editing Notehead Shape.

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