Cubase supports unpitched percussion notation, with flexible options for combining music for multiple instruments to percussion kits, such as drum sets, that can then be displayed in a number of ways in different layouts.
Drums vs Percussion
The term “unpitched percussion” covers all percussion instruments that are not tuned to specific pitches. This includes instruments such as bass drum, snare drum, guiro, maracas, cymbals, and shakers.
A percussion kit is a collection of unpitched percussion instruments. Drum sets are a particular type of percussion kit that is often used in pop and rock music.
In this documentation, we use drums to refer to both drums and percussion.
Instrument Type
The Score Editor relies on semantic information in many places, in particular for knowing what kinds of instruments are used, and for adjusting the playing techniques. For drum maps, this information is provided by the Instrument Type and Technique fields of the Drum Map Setup dialog.
The default GM Map contains this information. If you select custom drum maps, however, the Score Editor only shows notation for pitches for which you set an Instrument Type in the Drum Map Setup dialog. For drum maps that you create with the Create Drum Map from Instrument function, the Instrument Type is mapped automatically.
The GM Map follows the PAS (Percussive Arts Society) convention, which uses a smaller, more strictly defined set of symbols for regular drum kit components, compared to earlier versions of Cubase. It also defines standard noteheads and symbols for open hi-hats and snare techniques.
Noteheads
In the Noteheads column of the Drum Map Setup dialog, you can find a list of preset notehead sets for a range of note durations. Each percussion instrument in the kit is assigned to a notehead set. Pitches in the kit that correspond to a technique change, such as open hi-hat, snare side-stick, may have a different notehead set.
Voice and Stem Direction
In the Drum Map Setup dialog, you can set up 4 voices: Stem Up 1, Stem Down 1, Stem Up 2, Stem Down 2. Setting up voices allows you to assign all notes with this pitch to a particular voice, so that they get a common rest handling and stem direction.