shouldn’t the 1 and 3 align the kick and first note of the 9-triple?
Nine Over Four.dorico (454.6 KB)
Nine Over Four.dorico (454.6 KB)
Select the four (stem-up) notes in the kick drum, press F to flip them to become stem-down.
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It’s a matter of conventional engraving practice/rules. The stem of the crotchet would collide and overlay with the stem of the first tuplet note, so the layout engine avoids that. You can see that at work by simply flipping the lower voice:
That may not be what you want, but that’s how it is. So the notes do align temporally, but not visually. That’s not a bug, but normal engraving. Your decision what approach to take. With stems up, the crotchet would look like it is beamed into the 9 and you would not be able to see the duration. So nudging them in Engrave Mode I do not think advisable.
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i see what you mean… but for percussion the duration is really irrelevant. eg if this was 32nd notes on the snare and quarters on kick, it would be just fine with these options.
Ah. I missed that it is percussion.
Check your kit settings. What voices are these parts in? It seems they’re in different voices, which would be why they aren’t combining.
they’re the same voice… and i’ve got the use single voice option selected.
The quarter note and the nontuplet eighth note can’t share a stem because they have incompatible durations. Because the second and fourth quarter notes can’t share stems with the nontuplets because they’re at incompatible positions, I’d suggest that it’s clearer to show all four of those quarter notes on a separate stem anyway. I’d also be inclined to have them stem-down.
Ah, yes, i see. in this specific case, i was thinking the 2nd quarter could be stemmed up to right between the 5th and 6th partial, with a double beam. but in the general case, it becomes more complex.
i did find this alternate way to write it out… and discovered relative tempos. i’m not sure what the Italian terms and options mean yet, but found that one can set relative tempo in %. in this case 112.5% keeps the kick drum pulse constant, and the spacing/feel of the offsets between the 9 against 4 is evident:
I guess the question is whether your drummer, reading this solution, will immediately grasp that the kick pulse remains constant.
fair point…
fwiw, this was the original, which i then evolved from 9:2 to 9:4. note that the original is impossible to read where the kick falls… looks like it is perhaps just before the 5th partial, instead of between the 5th and 6th.
Yeah, this really is confusing. Should the second kick drum be on the “2” or together with the 5th triplet? 
I expect the main focus of the drummer is to keep the beat steady and then fit the fills around them even if it means finessing the notes played with the hands. I tend to doubt anyone would actually write this rhythm in and suspect it is a transcription of a figure the original drummer just did, and the resulting notation is how it sounded to the transcriber.
It’s from a text on polyrhythms… in which case, in concept, the 2nd kick should be between the 5th and 6th partial. In a prog or math rock scenario, I’d think of this as the drummer playing in two different time signatures perhaps… and/or the bass and keyboard/guitar melody playing different time signatures , and the drummer maintaining bits of both.