I know this has been discussed a few times here. But I’d like to make a feature request that would make for a simple solution.
Trills really are the proper notation for unmeasured rolls on timpani (and drums). Using the three-stroke on a short roll (quaver) may be preferable - But using the three-stroke on a two measure timpani roll with a crescendo just looks wrong to me (and a few hundred years of composers.)
feature request: What if we simply gave the trill an extra option in the lower zone: “treat as roll” and have this call up the roll (or tremolo) performance technique.
The other way to solve this would be to deactivate the trill, add a three-stroke and hide the three-stroke and … oops …. you can’t hide articulations …
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If the sample supports a roll, then you can just configure the Expression Map to trigger the relevant keyswitch (or whatever) on a Trill.
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Not sure what you’re looking at, but outside of old manuscripts, I’ve never seen anything but three slashes for unmetered rolls in percussion. I’ve asked percussionists, and they universally tell me the trills are “old school” for rolls of any kind. And while there are markings for unmetered rolls, they tell me they usually let the music tell them which to use, not necessarily the notation.
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I’m not sure what you mean by “old”, or by “manuscript”. Lots of published scores for standard orchestral rep use the trill symbol for rolls. For example, here’s Brahms 3, from 1883:
And Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, 1943:
Samuel Solomon’s How to Write For Percussion (2002) says that the “three-slash notation is most common” but the “trill sign notation is also common”.
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Thank you Aaron. For some, old is everything from before last week.
For me, using a trill on a roll is the clearest way to say it’s an unmeasured roll, not 32nd notes (demisemiquavers).
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Well… I would consider 1883 old. Even anything before 1960,as that was almost 80 years ago. Music publishing standards have changed quite a bit in that time. Some would say not for the better, but here we are.
And to be clear, I happen to think the trill is more elegant, but it’s use is dying. It is, in fact, already dead in band literature.
@michaelstarobin, I didn’t consider this.
If you change your Tremolo switch to Trill (double-click it) does the trill still play multiple pitches or is it now an unmeasured roll?
Indeed, this is a disposition we see far too often.
Gould is a source often cited by the team and others. I’ve used her book as a reference, myself, but sometimes*, it seems as if Dorico seeks to impose her recommendations (which I’m not sure anyone follows completely!) to the point of making alternatives difficult to implement, even if they are commonly used today. Kind of like Donald Knuth and TeX, but at least TeX was developed by Knuth himself. After all, even medieval music continues to be (re)-engraved today, sometimes even using medieval practices far older than Brahms and Bartok.
*Not with timpani trills, specifically—at least the engraving aspect. Nor even with playback, based on @benwiggy’s suggestion. I still like OP’s request, though. As far as Gould’s book goes, I haven’t checked it with respect to this question, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it says that trills are “outdated” and therefore should not be used.
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Gould, p293:
Rolls are often written as trills. (In drum parts a trill always means a roll on a single drum.) This notation has the advantage of showing unambiguously that a roll is unmeasured. However, in general, percussionists prefer the trill sign to be reserved for the true two-note trills of tuned percussion.
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As a now retired orchestral percussionist, I’ve certainly seen both notations used and always understood them to mean a roll when used on a single- or un-pitched instrument. That being said, the three slashes is typically considered the modern way to notate a roll leaving the use of the trill line for an actual trill on pitched instruments like xylophone. In fact, you will see the 3-slashes used on a xylophone to indicate a roll on a single note and the tr~~~~~~~~~ used to indicate a trill between two notes.
Incidentally, this is the same when used on stringed instruments. Three slashes indicates a rapid, (usually) unmeasured tremolo on a single pitch (kinda like a roll on a drum) whereas the tr~~~~~~~ means a trill between to notes.
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Not my area, but isn’t Z on stem used for an unmeasured roll? Dorico sends “buzz roll” technique with that symbol.
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For a long time, percussionists didn’t really distinguish between the “buzz” roll and the “open” roll. The Z has been adopted to remedy that. I first noticed it in writing for Drum and Bugle Corps, where the primary style of drumming is open, or rudimental. The buzz roll added a new color to that style of drumming. In most symphonic types of settings, the standard roll will be a buzz roll, with the open, or rudimental, roll used for things like military marches or others styles that need to represent the rudimental type of drumming.
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