Snare Drum Rim Shots
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Jesse Rolland
Adjustment from Derek: Adjusting this request to be explicitly for rim shots. Created a separate request for buzzes.
Original request from Jesse: I’ve expressed before that Beat Note has the potential to be amazing for strictly just writing Rudimental snare drum music. In fact that should be considered a major draw for younger kids in public school band and marching band. With that said we still need a couple more notations such as the rim shot and the buzz. Rim shot is an upward accent and the buzz is a “z” over the stem. Both of these are incredibly valuable on the drum kit for snare as well. Like they are almost as necessary as the flam (not quite though. Adding both definitely would make scrolling through the notations a bit more annoying but I think it’s necessary big time. In fact at this point it’s best practice to just hold the snare note for deletion vs cycling through the notations to delete so I don’t really see any negatives here. It would be great if we could get the flam, buzz, and rim shot trifecta package in the next update :). I may explode with pure bliss if do… Derek you are spoiling us with all of these amazing new features haha…
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Ross Farley
Another vote for Rim Shots. A friend messaged about this earlier!
Derek Lee
Thanks for creating this, @Jesse Rolland!
Yes, rim shots and buzzes were already on my list, so I appreciate you adding them here so we can open this to the community. 👍🏻
I find it helpful to track each feature request separately so I can prioritize it appropriately, so I'm going to update this one to be explicitly for rim shots and I'll duplicate this request for buzzes.
Attached is an image of the glyph I plan to use for rimshots. They don't have a glyph exactly like an upward accent, so it's the closest I could find.
I marched in HS, college, and DCI so I have a good amount of experience here. Also, when I exhibited at the TMEA conference a of couple weeks ago, there was a lot of interest in adding support for marching percussion. I think there's still a lot to do for drumset that is a higher priority, but yes, expanding to marching percussion, Latin percussion, and percussion ensembles are all on my radar. Still, as you mentioned, these articulations can still be added for drumset.
Regarding the # of articulations: the snare drum has the most articulations of any instrument right now, and the more there are, the more cycling through them starts to become cumbersome. This topic already came up with another user recently who's been composing a lot with the app. I have two alternative input mechanism designs I'm considering for articulations. As this entire app is an iterative process, as features are added (like these articulations), the design may have to be adjusted to accommodate. It's all a part of the evolution of the app. My goal is to ensure an intuitive and simple design, and finding the appropriate design will take some time. Your feedback is helpful for this, so please keep it coming!
Here's the buzz feature request and I've already added you to it: https://beat-note.canny.io/feature-requests/p/snare-drum-buzzes
> Derek you are spoiling us with all of these amazing new features haha…
Buddy! This is just the beginning! There's a bunch of stuff you haven't even seen yet!! 🤩
Derek Lee
In case you want to see the other glyphs that could be used, or browse through the music glyph options:
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Jesse Rolland
Derek Lee running errands….will give a more in depth response later. However just a quick feedback… what if in the settings window we had some switches for parameters in the editor? So for example categories of global settings that can be turned on and off? Now ideally this would need to be per beat file so like you could turn off some of these articulations potentially if you don’t need them for that project. In otherwise some customization ability with each file?
Derek Lee
Jesse Rolland This is an interesting idea! I appreciate you dedicating some of your brain cycles to helping me brainstorm ideas on this.
When I hear this, I can think of two places for settings. The first one being a "global" setting like you mentioned - something that you would define as a part of your profile or in the overall app settings and it would apply to all beats in the app.
The other one would be having the ability to set these settings for each beat.
Which one would you want to be able to do? Which one is more important?
What kind of settings are you thinking? You mentioned "turn of some of these articulations," so is this like an on/off toggle for each articulation? So, I don't need the "buzz" articulation, so I can just toggle it off and it won't show up any longer. Is that the idea? 🤔 Just want to confirm I understand your proposal. 👍🏻 Thanks!
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Jesse Rolland
Derek Lee yeah that works. Literally what I was proposing actually. Wait did you March in Drumline or what’s your main instrument?
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Jesse Rolland
Derek Lee yeah basically what you are saying is exactly what I am talking about. I’ve analyzed the idea of having more global settings and also specifically Beat file settings and honestly the “per beat file” settings is way more needed. Like you are saying just having toggle switches to show or hide each articulation especially. And I literally mean every single one. This would be powerful. It would allow for more efficient composing dude as you could literally adjust these switch he’s at any time. So for example, if conceptually speaking you already know you will not be using many of the articulations you can just turn each one off even just temporarily and turn them back on later on. That would be pretty damn sweet! Maybe even a “turn all articulations on/off switch “ as well? Along with each instrument category and all their articulations. This way you could actually go nuts with adding articulations to beat note but us users are not forced to use them on every beat file. The customization flexibility would be a game changer! I currently have been blue printing files I am writing and certain files will not require any notations at all but then certain files will potentially require most of them lol. So the flexibility would be pretty significant. I’m trying to think of what other Beat file settings would be awesome. I mean really this would open the door to a lot of things already mentioned such as per instrument sample selection. That would be amazing. I’ll have to think about this more in terms of other features that would be ideal to add as per beat file settings but above is a great start. This app is literally going to have the functionality way beyond high end computer composition softwares. Like I can’t even imagine writing all the stuff I am working on right now with Finale or Sibelius. Those are powerful tools but but really finicky as well. And they are revolves around printing out your music where BeatNote is built for best for digital viewing. It’s fun watching your app grow as it allows users professional opportunities for teaching with it and writing/selling beat files.
Derek Lee
Jesse Rolland I marched three years in HS but it was too small for me to get any meaningful experience. My main instrument was quads, and I marched three years in college (section leader of the drumline my last year marching, wrote most of the book that year, etc), and also marched Boston and Blue Stars.
Derek Lee
Jesse Rolland Thanks for sharing your ideas on how to implement this! It's good to know you'd like to have control over these settings not only at the global level, but also at the beat level. 👍🏻 I appreciate you taking the time to think through some of these different scenarios! 🙇🏻♂️
Derek Lee
Jesse Rolland I meant to ask - what is your primary instrument? Who did you march with?
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Jesse Rolland
Derek Lee Ha. My performing experience is quite fascinating to be honest. I am actually currently a professional street musician. I am a bucket drummer. I live in Milwaukee WI and I do flare drumming performances before and after events/concerts. Milwaukee Bucks games is a big one (they featured me at a game a couple of years ago). I’m classically trained from high school. I did competitive high school marching band (snare drum). I play drum kit obviously as well but I actually don’t currently own one. I actually live off of my street performing tips. It’s pretty crazy. I’ve been street busking professionally for 6 years now.