Derek Lee: I’m going to be completely real here…based on my whole life of drumming, classical percussion, jazz band, bar bands, Drumline…etc…no one really ever differentiates upper/lowercases when it comes to accents for stockings. Traditionally Drumline/drum corpse/marching band does not account for this. I don’t even think it’s helpful personally speaking. It’s just finicky and more to adjust. I’m with the other guy where I would prefer just straight uppercase as it is more legible. Easier to read especially on paper. I don’t see any benefits of having upper case for accents to be completely honest. Just my opinion though…

Jesse Rolland: Thanks for your feedback, Jesse! I definitely want to target the most common use cases so your feedback is appreciated. The thing is the US is a large country and the world is even bigger, so there's a lot of variety and without a larger sample size it's difficult to make a decision that appropriately applies to everyone. I also have experiences across a similar range of experience as you, and probably depending on the geography and teachers we likely have some variety between us. Just a couple days ago I had a conversation with someone about how triplets should be counted because the way it's displayed in the app was different for this particular person. There's a lot of variety out there, so it's going to be challenging to find the "most common" case (though I'm still hopeful we can find this for most cases.)

One of the most challenging aspects of this is that not many people are forthcoming about sharing feedback generally.. unless they think something doesn't work they way they expect (e.g. like this case!).

Since there are several people suggesting capital letters for all sticking, let's just change it to that in the next release and see if other people give feedback asking for lowercase letters lol. How's that sound? 🤔

Derek Lee: yeah that would be great! I totally get what you are saying though. Because I had a favorite teacher hand right lowercase. But it was just easier to hand right lowercase. Since this is on an app it makes more sense to have it more ledgible. But yeah I totally get what you are saying in terms of selecting preferences because your app is available to the entire world. Like you so that the feedback is necessary to figure out what preferences receive the most demand so I get that. As far as counting triplets yeah I’ve always counted and labeled 16th notes and 8th triplets as | 1 E An Da | + | 1 An Da |. Again I know people who do | 1 trip let | and so on but it’s just harder to say fast when teaching. Just removing the “e” makes a lot of sense to me. That would be my preference but again like you say this stuff is different depending on who you ask for sure. I changed a lot of my preferences over time based on what just made more sense to be honest. I was taught differently at the beginning but scratched certain things like this later on. Or eventually had better teachers with better preferences lol.

Jesse Rolland: Thanks for sharing your experience, Jesse! I appreciate your understanding as yeah, there are a lot of opinions out there, particularly for counting.

A quick google search/AI search resulted in quite a few variations for triplets...

one trip let two trip let

trip ah let trip ah let

pine ap ple pine ap ple (lol! never heard that one before!)

one ah lee two ah lee

one ti ta two ti ta

one and ah two and ah

one la le two la le

one puh let two puh let

and on and on and on... 😅

See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/drumline/comments/zhf89u/how_to_count_triplets/

I'll update stickings to be all uppercase letters in the next release and see what kind of feedback I get. 👍🏻

Derek Lee: yeah there are a ton of variations for sure. I’ve been around a bunch of those.

Derek Lee: haha 😂 … that‘s cool. I have another one from germany:

ein-er-le

zwei-er-le

drei-er-le

It‘s simalar to: one ah lee two ah lee

Jörg Eckhardt: Thanks for sharing this! Since you've brought up the German way of counting, I'd like to ask you: do you think there is benefit in translating the text of the app to German for users in Germany? Or is it sufficient to have it in English? I expect there are specific ways to count beats in German (as you have suggested) that might be more appropriate for people in Germany. What do you think?

Derek Lee Hello Derek.

I think it‘s ok so in english. In germany we have also the letters L for „links“ and R for „rechts“ by sticking. The only thing would be the counting and the manual for the app. But I think it‘s ok so.

Hey I just wanted to give another round of feedback on this post because I’ve completely changed my mind. One thing I am realizing about using Beat Note so much is that some of my preferences have changed because of using this app so much. It’s just a different writing environment where back in the day many of us have had to resort to hand writing drum notation which is such a pain in the ass. As far as stickings go I actually completely LOVE the current status of the feature as far as differentiating accents and non-accents. Naturally I would normally prefer all caps like I was saying before because it is the most legible. However when I used to have to resort to hand writing drum notation, capitals were a pain to write out so actually I preferred to use lower case. But actually now I’m finding that having both to differentiate is really ideal to look at in the app because when your focus is on the stickings you process the accents simultaneously which is just phenomenal. So yeah I actually hope you just live it as I think it’s the perfect preference. I definitely needed to experience it for a little while to experience the benefit.

Jesse Rolland Thanks for sharing this feedback! I'm glad to hear that you find the differentiation between lowercase and uppercase sticking to be helpful.

That said, I've already made the change to notate all sticking in uppercase letters based on your feedback and the feedback of others (as voted on this request).

I was joking with a friend about this request because I have such a difficult time getting feedback from people about the app, but one aspect that is not difficult to get feedback on is when people are unhappy about how something has been done. 😂 I was joking how people asked for all uppercase sticking, and predicting that as soon as I change it to all uppercase, that the people who want lowercase sticking will start to share their feedback: "Hey! What happened to the lowercase sticking?!"

One of my goals with BN is to help drive our drumming community more towards a standardized notation for drumming. That means I really want to target the 80% (majority) use case, gather feedback, and adjust course as appropriate.

The next release will have all-uppercase sticking for all sticking. If you, or the other users who originally wanted lowercase sticking, decide you want to have that as an option - then I can look at having that as an option. The thing about options is: the more options there are, the more complex the software becomes, and I am trying to be highly aware and sensitive to the complexity and intuitiveness of the app.

As I continue to try and communicate: BN is a product that I'm building iteratively so everyone can voice their opinions. I'm happy to accommodate requests so long as they are in line with my vision and mission - and I just need to do a better job communicating what that is. (More on that later!)

Thanks for sharing your feedback! Maybe I'll create the enhancement request now for lowercase sticking... lol 😂

Derek LeeUppercase in the new version 3.1 is perfect for me!

Hinrich Nagel Sounds good! I appreciate you checking this as well!