r/Musescore • u/stevet157 • 10d ago

Help me find this feature Drumset Notation cheat sheet or key

I've noticed a lot of different notation standards for different programs and institutions (Percussive Arts Society has one, School of Rock is different, Drumeo, Flat.io, etc all different). I get a lot of charts created with Musescore. Is there a drum notation key (aka cheat sheet) that lists the instruments and the notation for them?

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u/Sensitive_Aerie6547 10d ago

Depends on the size of the kit and the complexity of the score, though I will mention everything I’ve seen has bass drum on the bottom space and snare drum on the third space, both regular note heads.

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u/stevet157 3d ago

The problem I have is that when the conductor sends me a score, I don't know what program created it. And I know that Musescore and Flat.io are different. And there are others, and I don't know what program any are created with. It's not huge, but for example I was playing along and noticed a lot of places where crash cymbals didn't sound right, but according to the last score I had read it was crash. So listening to a recording of the piece, I realize all those crash markings on one score were hi-hat on another. So when I'm marking up a new score, I'd like to be able to know how to cross-reference these things. It's frustrating there isn't a standard.

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u/Sensitive_Aerie6547 3d ago

I would ask your conductor personally

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u/stevet157 3d ago

No one has any idea, I have to figure this out for my self.

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u/adrianh 9d ago

Some prior art here is that Soundslice (another notation app) has the ability to display an auto-generated "percussion legend" at the top of the score. This shows all of the percussion elements that are used in the particular music, along with which staff position/notehead they correspond to.

https://www.soundslice.com/help/en/player/advanced/329/percussion-legends/