Drum/percussion sticking

Here’s how to notate sticking using the Soundslice editor.

About sticking

Sticking instructions tell a percussionist which hand to use when performing a given note. Soundslice supports the following:

• L — left
• R — right
• B — both

Per convention, stickings use an all-caps serif font and are positioned in a horizontal row below the notation.

Entering sticking

1. Select the note whose sticking you want to set.
2. In the editor’s top panel, open the “Text” section and click the “Set drum sticking” button . Or search the editor for “Set drum sticking” or use a keyboard shortcut.
3. At the left of your screen, replacing the left panel, you’ll see a place for you to enter the sticking. Enter the value here, then click “Done.” Note you don’t have to capitalize it; we’ll do that automatically.

Quick sticking entry

While the sticking entry interface is open in the left sidebar, you can hit the spacebar to select the subsequent note. This makes it fast and easy to enter stickings: enter a sticking, then hit spacebar, then enter a sticking for the next note, etc. Here’s what that looks like:

Changing sticking

1. Click the sticking directly in your notation.
2. At the left of your screen, replacing the editor’s left panel, you’ll see a place for you to edit that sticking. Edit the text here, then click “Done.”

Deleting sticking

To delete a given sticking, click on it in your notation to make the sticking interface appear at left. Then just delete the text and click “Done.”

Sticking in imported notation files

If you import a MusicXML file, we’ll try to import sticking automatically. This can be imperfect, because MusicXML doesn’t natively support sticking — so sheet music software generally treats this data as lyrics or generic text. We look for text or lyrics matching “L”, “R” or “B” in percussion staves.

At any rate, if the sticking wasn’t imported perfectly, you can use our editor to clean it up.

Sticking features

If you take the time to enter sticking information, Soundslice does some nice things with it. In addition to (obviously) showing sticking in the notation, our player will:

• Automatically format it consistently, using capital letters and a bold, serif font. We’ll also use a smaller font size for flams (grace notes).
• Automatically vertically stack the sticking in case of multiple simultaneous stickings (as with multiple voices).
• Allow people to toggle sticking display on and off via the Instrument appearance options.
• Likely do some more exciting things in the future.