Drum Roll, Please

[rrayner]

I want to do a Snare drum roll. In the attached sample, in measures 11 & 12, I've used the tremolo feature on the Eb3 (snare on my General Midi). The effect is okay, but I'd rather see it displayed as a tremolo -- not as 32nd notes. Is there a way to show it as a tremolo, or is there a better way to implement a drum roll, please?

Ralph

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

The easiest method:

1. Enter a single note (eg. whole note) for the note duration that you want the roll to extend for.
2. Select the note, then click on the "Ornaments" button in the Notes and Rests Palette. In that toolbar, click the "Single Chord Tremelo" button. It will give you the tremelo, albeit it will be a mechanical sounding one (reminiscent of machine gun fire, depending on the quality of the playback device. The notation will be much cleaner, though

Second method, for better performance:
1. Enter the notes for the tremelo and massage the performance as desired. I'd suggest doing this before entering other notes in the measure, just to keep things easier.
2. Now click-drag to select all the notes, and click on the same button as in step 2 above. The notation should "coalesce" into a single tremelo notation, while keeping the performance that you worked on in step 1 here.

Enjoy
Sherry

[rrayner]

Thanks, Sherry. I've managed to clean it up some. I used the second scenario you gave. In the original, both the cymbal and the bass drum were quarter note tied to a quarter note across the bar line. I could not get the second quarter note on the bass drum to tie, but it really doesn't matter, as the bass drum sound disappears quickly anyway, so I left it out. And certainly, with all else that will be going on in the horns, this is not important. What is important to me, is that I now have a much cleaner notation in those two measures.

BTW, before I converted to tremolo, I used your trick of alternating the note velocity between 96 and 79. It does sound better when listening to only the drum track.

Ralph

[dj]

Hi, Ralph, Sherry:

Another drum-roll trick I use, performance-wise, is to create two hidden tracks and split the drum-roll notes between them -- if possible each playing to a different midi channel or device.

Then pan them >slightly< apart and add some reverb.

You can use zero-velocity notes in your visible notation to make the score look good.

[rrayner]

Thanks, DJ. That's a neat idea. I'm jammed for channels, but at any given point in time, that has to be someone who isn't playing, so I guess I could borrow a channel for the drum roll point in time. Hmm, but wait, my understanding is that I only have one channel for drums, i.e., Channel 10.

Ralph

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

For General MIDI (GM) it's true that the default drum channel is 10, and so if you're only using one device you're sort of stuck with just one drum staff/channel.

However, if you have a MIDI playback device that can assign different channels (eg. Garritan Personal Orchestra, or other library or device) then you can set a different channel for the drums. Alternatively, if you have multiple devices (eg. VST Host, and use multiple instances of SynthFont), then you can have multiple Drum staves (some hidden, as David suggests) and assign each one to a separate device.

There are lots of ways to be flexible, but it does add a bit to the complexity factor If you're using your Clavinova to do this, then you may well have the inherent capability to set different banks of drums via different channels. You can check the user manual for the Clavinova to see.

ttfn,
Sherry