At age 52, I started last year to learn to play the drums in a local school. It is my first experience to playing music myself, meaning I don’t have any knowledge on music theory.
In the school, I get copies of sheet music for guitar, containing lyrics, to which my teacher adds a separate page with some minimal drum tabs. Below, you can see an example of both pages. While the colours in the scans are not so vibrant, the coloring on both pages line up to indicate which drum tab belongs to which part of the song.
For simplicity, I would like to bring these together in a single sheet, hopefully in a similar fashion. From what I see in videos, Dorico seems to have all the features to make this a reality. However, for myself, I seem to stand in front of a chasm I seemingly can’t cross.
Let me know if this is possible and if so, where do I start? Any online pointers are welcome: videos, blog articles, example files, …
Hello Ringo, welcome to the forum.
Yes, it is possible, but I would start with little steps.
Set up a project with guitar only.
If you start with the hub, you can choose “Create new” and choose “Solo” and the “Guitar with tablature”. In this case the tablature will automatically display underneath your regular system. In case you started with a “Classical Guitar” system only, you can later display the tablature system:
Now try to notate the first line (Intro) of the song in 4/4 with an upbeat of a quarter note.
Once you have completed this task, go to Setup Mode and (in the bottom panel) select the flow and duplicate it (you will need 3 duplicates, I think).
Now it is time to add your new instrument, a drum kit (basic). It will display with a five line system and will probably show above the guitar, but you can drag it down in the left panel in Setup Mode.
Now try to copy the drum music into its system (notice, your example is missing the upbeat). Just start on the first beat of the first complete bar. You have completed your first flow. Do the same with the three other flows and your drum examples.
If you like and approve of your musical notation, you can make graphical slices of them and add those into a word processing document, where you have all the other text written down:
