Program/Software for Marching drums

[bryantharden]

Not to refer to the movie "Drumline" or anything, but the little thing when nick cannon and the captain kinda go at each other in the band room, they had the little things on there that if you hit like a quarter note, it wrote a quarter note on the computer, so in other words you play and it writes it for you...what is that thing called???
-Bryant

[Bart Elliott]

This question has been asked several times here on the forum. You might want to do a little search to find other responses.

To answer your question ... it's called HOLLYWOOD; the device doesn't exist.

There are ways to notate what you play, but you'll need several things, not this make-believe device that you saw in the movie.

First, you'll need a music notation program such as Finale or Sibelius installed on your computer. Next you'll need a MIDI Mapper, Percussion Controller, or something that will take MIDI information and send it to the computer software. Lastly you'll need a trigger to attach to the drum. This could be an actual drum trigger, trigger pad, or even a microphone which acts as a transducer.

When you play the drum (pad, trigger, etc.) a signal is sent to the mapper and converts it to MIDI which then sends it to the notation software. There's more to it than this, like having to play to a click in order for the notation to know what you are playing for starters.

You'll have to work with the notation that is generated by the software to make it look correct. There isn't anything out on the market that will look EXACTLY the way you want it right from the start. You certain could set the program to quantize everything you play so that it's always quarters, eighths or sixteenths ... but if you do more than that you're going to have to do some editing.

If you are serious about doing this I would first look at the program that you want to purchase (ie. Finale, Sibelius). The program tutorials will tell you what to do in order to capture the MIDI information and how to edit it.