First off, if you aren’t already familiar with using Finale’s percussion maps to manage playback for unpitched percussion (drums, cymbals, triangle, etc.), please consult the entries on the Percussion Map Selection and Percussion Map Designer dialog boxes in the Finale User Manual. You may also want to take a look at this tutorial from the Berklee College of Music on Drum Set Notation in Finale.
Keep in mind that the information in this section applies to unpitched percussion instruments only. Pitched percussion instruments like xylophone, crotales, timpani, etc, use a standard (pitched) clef and do not need a percussion map — you can simply treat them like any other pitched instrument.
GPO Finale Edition and Full GPO both include a virtual instrument — called “Basic Orch Percussion” — that collects many of the unpitched percussion instruments commonly used in the standard orchestral repertoire. Here is a list of what these instruments are and which pitches are used to trigger them:
Additional Unpitched Percussion - Full GPO
In addition to Basic Orch Percussion, the full version of GPO also contains several additional percussion instruments. The most useful of these are Bass Drum KS (which allows you to use a keyswitch between hand-dampened and l.v. notes), Percussion Toys (a collection of cowbells, shakers, tambourines, etc.) and Wind Machine.
The full Garritan documentation refers to Middle C — MIDI note #60 — as C3 (instead of the usual C4). This conflicts with Finale’s system, which displays pitch names using the Middle C = C4 standard. In this tutorial, I will stick with Finale’s Middle C = C4 system to avoid confusion (seeMIDI Note to Pitch Table), but this means the pitch names I use here won’t correspond to the pitch names given in the Garritan documentation.
Here are the note assignments for the additional unpitched percussion instruments in Full GPO:
However, the bass drum included in Basic Orch Percussion does a pretty good job of handling long and short notes without using keyswitches. You may find it’s more practical than Bass Drum KS.
There is also an instrument called Snares and another called Cymbals, but these merely duplicate the snares and cymbals found in Basic Orch Percussion.
For a list of note assignments for the drum kits and other unpitched percussion instruments in JABB, consult "Appendix B: Drum Maps" in your JABB documentation.
Percussion Maps and Garritan Instruments - New Scores
In order to get the percussion instruments included in GPO's Basic Orch Percussion - or any other Garritan unpitched percussion instrument - to show up on the correct staff lines in the score, you will need to use a percussion map designed for use with that instrument. If you used the Setup Wizard to create your score, any unpitched percussion staves should already be configured to use the appropriate percussion map. For instance, if you selected Basic Orch Percussion in the Setup Wizard, that staff should automatically be set up to use the percussion map called Basic Orch Percussion - GPO Finale Edition. (This percussion map actually works with both the GPO Finale Edition and full GPO versions of Basic Orch Percussion.)
If you did not select Garritan instruments in the Setup Wizard, or you did not use the Setup Wizard to create your score, or the percussion map was not assigned correctly by the Setup Wizard, you will need to manually select the correct percussion map.
The information in this section applies to newly created scores only. If your score already contains an unpitched percussion part defined for General MIDI playback (for instance, using Finale’s SmartMusic SoftSynth), or if you would like to be able to switch back and forth between SoftSynth playback and GPO playback, then jump ahead to the section on Percussion Maps and GPO - Existing Scores.
This brings up the Percussion Map Selection dialog box. There are predefined percussion maps for every percussion instrument in GPO Finale Edition, Full GPO, and JABB.
If you do not see these GPO and Garritan Jazz and Big Band percussion maps listed in this dialog box, it's likely you are not using the default files supplied with Finale 2009. If this is the case, you should load the "Percussion Maps" library found in the Finale 2009 Libraries folder. See the entry on “Finale Libraries” for more information.
Percussion Maps and Garritan Instruments - Existing Scores
If you have an existing score containing unpitched percussion staves that you would like to convert for Garritan instrument playback — or if you have a new score but you would like to preserve the ability to easily switch back and forth between Garritan instrument Playback and playback using Finale’s SmartMusic SoftSynth (or an external playback device), then please read this section carefully.
When you are working with a General MIDI-compatible instrument or soundfont — like Finale’s SmartMusic SoftSynth — the unpitched percussion must always be assigned to MIDI Channel 10, and each MIDI note number triggers a different percussion sound (like a bass drum, snare, cymbal, etc.). Consult the “General MIDI Percussion Map Table” in the Finale User Manual for more details. Unlike the SmartMusic SoftSynth, most Garritan percussion instruments are not General MIDI-compatible. (The exceptions are the General MIDI drum kits included with JABB). This means that the MIDI note that triggers (for example) a snare drum in the SmartMusic SoftSynth is not necessarily the same note that triggers a snare drum using GPO’s Basic Orchestral Percussion.
This means that if you have an existing score containing a percussion staff configured for “General MIDI playback” using the SmartMusic Soft Synth, and you want it to instead playback using GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion, you will need to create a custom percussion map that will make your existing General MIDI percussion part compatible with GPO.
Let’s assume that your score has an existing percussion staff assigned to Channel 10, Program 1, and configured to use the percussion map General MIDI Entry and Playback. Let’s say the part includes the following instruments: bass drum, snare drum, suspended cymbal, and triangle (both dampened and open). You will first have to make a copy of the current percussion map, then edit it to assign new playback notes to those percussion instruments in order to get correct playback using GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion.
This brings up the Percussion Map Selection dailog box. The staff in our example is currently configured for General MIDI Entry and Playback.
Now, we only need to edit the playback notes for the instruments we actually use in the score — which, if you’ll recall, for this example, are: bass drum, snare drum, suspended cymbal, and triangle. Also, we only need to make edits when the playback note used in GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion is different from the one used in General MIDI. So, the first thing to do is find our first instrument — bass drum — in the list on the left side of the Percussion Map Designer.
Take a look at which pitch is defined as the Playback Note for the bass drum — in this case, it’s MIDI note #36. Now consult the table (under Basic Orchestral Percussion) listing the keymapping for GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion — you’ll notice that in GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion, MIDI note #36 is, in fact, a bass drum hit. Perfect — that means we don’t have to change anything! By a lucky coincidence, the note used to trigger a bass drum hit in General MIDI also triggers a bass drum hit in GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion (you’ll be referring to this table a lot, so you might want to print it out). Now let’s move on to the next instrument in our list — snare drum.
Notice that the Playback Note for “Snare (Acoustic)” is MIDI note #38. Again, consulting the keymap table for GPO’s Basic Orchestral Percussion, you can see that GPO has two snare drum hits (LH and RH) — but they are assigned to MIDI notes #59 and #60. That means this time, we weren’t so lucky — we will have to change the playback note in our percussion map to get correct playback when using GPO. We could replace the General MIDI snare with either the left hand or right hand snare hit, but for now, let’s go with the right hand snare — MIDI note #60.
IMPORTANT: If you ever want to add additional notes to this percussion part, you will need to enter the pitches that correspond to General MIDI percussion, and not GPO’s Basic Orch Percussion. In other words, if you need to add some snare drum notes, you would add them using the pitch D2 (MIDI note #38, the General MIDI snare drum), and not C4 (MIDI note #60, the GPO snare drum). If you have MIDI Thru turned on, this will trigger the wrong instrument during Speedy Entry, but don’t worry — GPO playback will be correct. This is why we called our new percussion map “General MIDI Entry, GPO Playback.”
If you wish to temporarily disable GPO playback and return to SmartMusic SoftSynth playback, you will have to change the percussion map for this staff back to General MIDI Entry and Playback (and, if necessary, change the channel assignment for the percussion staff back to MIDI Channel 10).
You may wish to save the percussion map you just created for future use — from the File Menu, choose Save Library and click Percussion Maps:
You may even wish to create a complete “General MIDI Entry, GPO Playback” percussion map by going through the entire General MIDI percussion map and re-assigning all of the playback notes for compatibility with with GPO's Basic Orch Percussion. Then you could load this percussion map into any of your scores that were configured for General MIDI percussion and easily prepare them for GPO playback.
Rolls, Garritan Instruments, and Human Playback
Many instruments in GPO's Basic Orch Percussion come with sampled (recorded) rolls - bass drum, side drum, snare drum, and suspended cymbal. Users familiar with Finale 2006 may recall that Human Playback did not use these sampled rolls by default, and instead constructed its own rolls using individual triggered notes (though there was a workaround, which was described in the previous edition of this tutorial).
In Finale 2009, when using Basic Orch Percussion with Kontakt Player 2 (as of this writing, only GPO Finale Edition uses Kontakt Player 2), the sampled percussion rolls are now supported by default and used instead of the Human Playback rolls. If you would like to take advantage of this feature in a score that uses Full GPO, you should load the GPO Finale Edition version of Basic Orch Percussion into an empty bank and use that instead of the Full GPO version. (You can, of course, continue to use Full GPO for every other instrument in your score.) See the entry on Channels for more information.
If you prefer the Human Playback-created percussion rolls to the sampled rolls, you must disable the relevant techniques in the Instrument Techniques & Effects pane of the Human Playback Preferences dialog box.
To disable sampled rolls, select "Bass Drum Rolls" and uncheck "Use this Technique." Then repeat the process for "Snare Drum Rolls," "Side Drum Rolls," "Cymbals Rolls 1," and "Cymbals Rolls 2."
As previously mentioned, Garritan Jazz and Big Band contains two General MIDI-compatible drum kits - GM Classic Drum Kit Lite and GM Fusion Drum Kit. This makes it easy to update existing files that contain General MIDI drum kit parts - simply assign the drum kit staff to one of those two GM instruments, and they will play back correctly, without requiring any adjustments to the percussion map. These GM Drum Kits are also compatible with Finale's Drum Groove and Rhythm Section Generator plugins. On the other hand, if you are creating a new score and do not intended to use these plugins, and do not need to maintain compatibility with Finale's SoftSynth (or other General MIDI device), you will probably prefer to use the (non-GM) Classic Jazz Drum Kit or Fusion Drum Kit, which include many samples that are not available in the General MIDI kits.
In most jazz scores, the drum kit part is not written out in full. Instead, the part usually contains slash marks (indicating that the drummer should play time), with important ensemble figures cued above the staff. One frequently asked question is how to combine this slashes-with-cues drum notation with invisible notes used only for playback purposes, so that the drum part appears correctly in the score and also plays back correctly. While one popular method is to include a separate playback-only drum staff in your score, and optimize it out of Page View so that it is only visible in Scroll View, it is also possible to combine slash notation and cues above the staff with playback notes in the same part.
If you use the Drum Groove plugin, be sure to check the instrument list afterwards to ensure that it has not modified the Channel assignment for your Drum Kit staff. The Drum Groove plugin also creates a hidden expression - "HP off" - that disables Human Playback. You will normally want to delete this expression. Instead of turning Human Playback off completely, it's better to tell Human Playback to incorporate all User MIDI Data by choosing the appropriate settings in the MIDI Data pane of the Human Playback Preferences dialog box.
Another possible option when using the Drum Groove plugin is to invoke the Apply Human Playback plug-in on every staff in the score except the drum staff.
In the Alternate Notation dialog box, choose the following options:
These layer settings apply to the entire score. If your score contains any non-cue notes in Layer 4, once you choose this setting, they will no longer play back.
If you have selected a GM drum kit, a good note to use for entering these cue notes is the D below middle C. If you have selected a non-GM drum kit, a good note to use is the C below middle C. Remember that it doesn't matter what the playback note is for the cue notes, since they will not sound when you play back your file. If you would prefer that the cue notes appear on the first space above the staff instead of the top staff line, you can adjust the Staff Position of the pitch you are using for your cue notes in the Percussion Map Designer dialog box.
The JABB Brush Drum Kits include support for realistic brush stirs (a technique where two wire brushes are rubbed in a circular motion over the snare drum head). The basic brush stir sound is triggered by MIDI note #37 (i.e., the C# an octave and a major 7th below middle C). Changes in stir direction are triggered by aftertouch - this requires an aftertouch-sensitive keyboard. Light aftertouch pressure creates a subtle change in stir direction, while heavy aftertouch pressure creates a loud and emphatic change in stir direction.
Human Playback in Finale 2009 does not support automatic direction changes when using JABB's Brush Drum Kits. If you want to take advantage of this feature, you will have to record the stirs in real-time using Hyperscribe and an aftertouch-sensitive keyboard, or on a keyboard with a slider or knob that can be assigned to send aftertouch data. If you go this route, make sure that Human Playback is set to Incorporate Continuous Data in the MIDI Data pane of the Human Playback Preferences dialog box:
We recommend that you record the brush stirs in their own separate layer. For more information on this feature, consult the JABB Brush Stirs Tutorial available on the Northern Sounds Forum.
