Are multiple voices possible on a single line percussion staff? Shift-V doesn’t seem to work for me, though the little plus sign does appear.
I have a simple rhythm played on the head and rim of a bass drum, and was planning to do head as down stem and rim as up-stem.
To my knowledge multiple voices don’t work the same way with percussion kits due to how they’re setup. You can do it, it just works a little differently, and seems more limited compared to chordal instruments. (It also acts a little weird for me sometimes)
After selecting a note you can either go the edit options on the top of the screen or right click - there’s a dialogue for percussion and you can run your mouse over it to get to percussion voices to change each note. (I can’t figure out how to reliably input percussion into specific voices so I always do it this way after inputting the notes)
It seems to work best for me to only change one instrument (like just the snare drum), and then force the stem of the other instrument(s) in the other direction using the stem dialogue in the same menus.
I see the menu items under Edit → Percussion → Change Voice, but only on something like a Drum Set stave, not on a Bass Drum single line staff.
Ah ok, you could try putting the Bass Drum into a percussion kit by itself and leave it as a single line staff. Doing that enabled the percussion voice and stem options for me.
John Barron replied on Facebook:
If you edit the drum kit, tick the ‘drum set’ box in the top right corner and then you can set the stem directions for each instrument in the kit.
For a single-line percussion you can’t use multiple voices, but you can use ‘f’ to flip the stems of some notes. This won’t help if both notes happen at the same time though.
<<<
A two-line kit seems to be my best bet.
Hey Everyone!
Is there any update to this? I’m looking to do something similar where I want an up-stem and down-stem percussion voice on the same percussion kit.
I’ve been able to use Voices successfully in other staves for playback and independent rhythmic display/playback, but I’m not able to on unpitched percussion kits. I assume it’s because these are collections of single line percussion instruments yes?
I’d love to be able to do this kind of thing… let me know if I’m missing something!
Check out the Edit Percussion Kit dialog. You can set stem direction and voice for any instrument there.
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Hey Janus!
I know I can set any voice to be stems up or down from there, and I can use the jump bar or other menus to flip stem direction temporarily.
What I’m trying to explain (rather poorly…) is that I’m looking to be able to have essentially “Layers” like in Finale. That way I can temporarily on the same staff have some notes in a downstem voice playing a different rhythmic part than notes in an upstem voice playing a different rhythmic part that would normally both be upstemmed notes.
The context:
I have a marching Bass Drum Stave and Percussion kit set up with a collection of 7 single line perc instruments in it. They all are set as stems up. This is what I want.
In the musical example, I want the lowest drum (below the staff) to be stems down for 4 beats in just this one measure playing a buzz roll in 8th note triplets while the other 4 drums (Spaces on the staff) play 8th note duple rhythms stems up independently of that triplet based buzz roll that is stems down.
If I wanted these other drums to enter on the & of Beat 3, I would also want the ability to add an 8th rest in the staff or above the staff on beat 3 to show clearly where the other drums enter during the duration of that buzz roll.
Hopefully this makes more sense…
Could you use more than one of the drums like the bass and snare here?
I set one to have stems up and one to have stems down.
Or use an extra up/down-stem voice like in the last image.
Jesper
Didn’t Know this was an option!! I’ll look into it!!
Yes, in the percussion editor, make sure the two toms use different voices or
stem direction.
Jesper
Thanks jesele for your fast reply! This solves the issue but creates another: the wood block part is awkward when copied to the toms staff.
Maybe you can select all the notes in the copied part in the toms and right-click->Percussion->Change voice->Upstem voice 1.
I haven’t tried though.
Jesper
Tried:
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fantastic, thanks!