55 - 50 - 8" tom 53 - 48 - 10" tom 50 - 47 - 12" tom 48 - 45 - 14" tom 47 - 43 - 16" floor tom 46 - 41 - 18" floor tom (flat symbol)
60 - 57 - Crash 1 62 - 49 - Crash 2 57 - 59 - Ride 58 - 46 - Open hihat (so you can use a non-visible flat symbol to have it play correctly) 59 - 42 - Closed hihat
Unmapped effects:
52 - China Cymbal 55 - Splash 52 - Bell of Ride Cymbal
Generally when I write notation however, I use different symbols to represent different cymbals but duplicate positions on the staff. So, for example I would use a plain 'x' for the ride cymbal, but a circled 'x' for its bell sound. A diamond for a China cymbal in the normal place for crash 1, and a triangle or whatever else is available for a splash cymbal.
Once you start going beyond crash/hats/ride notation there doesn't really seem to be any particular standard.
Usually when you are writing correction notation for open and closed hihat patterns, you write an 'o' above the note to say 'open' and an 'x' to indicate 'close'. I have seen a half open symbol notated before but I can't remember exactly what it was. The 'o' or 'x' above the note represents how you play the hihat until the next such indication.
Generally you won't see hihat pedal notations while the hihat is being lead with - that's what the 'o' and 'x' symbols are for. You generally use the hihat pedal note for indication when you specifically want the sound of the foot closing the hihat, eg. if you were alternating hits between your right hand on the ride cymbal and left foot on the hihat pedal.
I had a feeling that I wouldn't even need to make mention of it
I also had another question - has anyone created a 'fixed width' font for NWC? Ie. If I want to write a piece which has all the different note values evenly and relatively spaced, is there a means of doing this apart from using text to increase the spacing between notes?
It's not biggie, I just figured if there was a simpler, less messy means for achieving this then it would be a bit better visually, most likely. For an educational resource, in any case.
I'm planning on using NWC2 (which I already have a copy of) to create short phrases (often a single bar, or a couple of bars) between sections of text.
I had a couple of questions about a few things:
I know NWC2 doesn't yet have native support for odd subdivisions. I'm aware that you can work around this with a tempo change and creating text, invisible time signatures, etc. for visual and playback purposes, which I'm not worried about. My main concern is getting note spacing consistent as I intend to mix subdivisions, and I would prefer to have spacing for 16th quintuplets at least a slight bit smaller than 16th notes. I'm not concerned about playback as I 'know' how what I'm writing sounds, so I'm only concerned with visual appearance.
I was planning on using CutePDF to 'print' to PDF format from which I can copy and paste bars from, a little bit fiddly but obviously I can't use NWC as a word processor!
I was also wondering if anyone else had used NWC in this purpose before and could offer any tips from experience?
