Re: weinberg-drums-style doesn't comply with the Guide to Standardized Notation

[Jonas Hahnfeld]

(CC'ing Alen Šiljak, the author of the weinberg-drums-style)

On Wed, 2023-02-01 at 10:09 -0800, Stu McKenzie wrote:
> I'm referring to the web page 
> https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.24/Documentation/changes/ where it is stated 
> that
> "The drum notation style weinberg-drums-style was added. It is based on 
> Norman Weinberg’s standardization work".
> 
> This is indeed a sterling effort on the part of the development team, 
> which I appreciate greatly.  As Weinberg states, there is a definite 
> need for standardization of drum scores.
> 
> There are however a few implementation and documentation issues.
> 
> The weinberg-drums-style is documented in "LilyPond — Notation Reference 
> v2.24.0" at
> https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.24/Documentation/notation/common-notation-for-percussion
> 
> Section "2.5.1 Common notation for percussion",  sub-section "Percussion 
> staves" includes the predefined layout for "weinberg-drums-style. Based 
> on the work of Norman Weinberg, published in his Guidelines for Drumset 
> Notation."
> 
> 1)
> On the first staff, Bass drum 1 (bd) and bass drum 2 (bda) are the same.

This has been addressed in 2.25.0, see the documentation of the
unstable release:
https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/notation/common-notation-for-percussion.html#percussion-staves
It will also be available in the bugfix release 2.24.1.

> 2)
> On the second staff, sidestick (ss) should be referred to as 
> Cross-Stick, and should not have a cross notehead.
> 
> The Weinberg book has a section on Noteheads, where he states "The 
> indication of the cross-stick technique should be a circled notehead".
> 
> I've been using my own notehead to date, but it would be great if 
> someone could add a notehead to do this.
> 
> In the past, I've had to generate my own cross-stick with the following 
> code:
> 
> CircleNoteHead =
> \once \override NoteHead.stencil = #(lambda (grob)
>       (let* ((note (ly:note-head::print grob))
>              (combo-stencil (ly:stencil-add
>                  note
>                  (circle-stencil note 0.1 0.2))))
>             (ly:make-stencil (ly:stencil-expr combo-stencil)
>               (ly:stencil-extent note X)
>               (ly:stencil-extent note Y))))
> 
> CrossStickQtr = \drummode { \CircleNoteHead sn4 }
> 
> I'm sure that those who are familiar with noteheads can provide a better 
> solution with a new notehead for this.
> 
> 3)
> On the second and third staves, tom-toms are wrongly positioned.
> 
> The notation documentation example has 6 tom-toms (toms).
> 
> The Weinberg Guidelines book has a section on TOM-TOMS, where he states 
> "The staff position for tom-toms depends upon the total number of toms 
> required for performance".
> 
> The book has examples of from 1 to 10 toms.
> 
> The "6 Toms" example has:
> 
>   *   Tom 1 on the top line
>   *   Tom 2 on the top space
>   *   Tom 3 on the 2nd line
>   *   Tom 4 on the middle line
>   *   Tom 5 on the 3rd space
>   *   Tom 6 on the 4th line
> 
> 
> The Notation example doesn't match this configuration.
> 
> The LilyPond documentation for "weinberg-drums-style" has 6 toms, so the 
> staff positioning should be (using the documented voice names):
> 
>   *   tommh line 1       (I would prefer tomhh)
>   *   tomh  space 1      (I would prefer tomhl)
>   *   tomml line 2       (I would prefer tommh)
>   *   toml  line 3       (I would prefer tomml)
>   *   tomfh space 3      (I would prefer tomlh or continue with tomfh)
>   *   tomfl line 4       (I would prefer tomll or continue with tomfl)
> 
> 
> A standard drum kit usually has 3 toms, so dependant on the number of 
> toms, one could implement a different style for each, e.g. 
> weinberg-drums-style-three-toms, or name the current version 
> weinberg-drums-style-six-toms and authors could use a subset as required.

I think tommh and tomh being the same is equally addressed. Changing
the other note names would be tough and quite a breaking change...

> 4)
> On the fourth staff, cymc & cymr are correctly positioned, but the 
> others do not match the position & noteheads as detailed in the guide book.
> 
> 5)
> If a standardized notation is to be defined, any variation to the 
> standard would require a Custom percussion stave and a legend, and the 
> ability to do that is currently available.
> 
> _*Conclusion*_
> 
> It seems that the weinberg-drums-style implementation does not reflect 
> the Weinberg guide very well.  Perhaps the implementation should be 
> corrected or removed.
> 
> Any change would require a "convertly" tool to convert existing notation 
> to any standard defined.  One would have to supply the "from" and "to" 
> list for the conversion.  This could be developed for the next stable 
> release or it could be left to transcribers to work it out for themselves.
> 
> I'm willing to help in any way possible to provide a standardized 
> notation for drumset, which has been lacking for so long.

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