How to Write for Percussion Part II: Note Values, Tempo, Quantization

For this next post in my “Writing for Percussion” series, we’re going way back to music basics to get a foundation for how to read — and how to countĀ  — rhythms. We’ll do this by understanding beats, bars, note values and tempo. And, because we are generally focused onĀ modern digital production concepts, we’ll relate these musical foundations to things like controlling tempo and MIDI quantization within our Digital Audio

How to Write for Percussion Part I: Frequency Ranges

In this post, I’ll be discussing how to write for percussion by first understanding the instrument frequency ranges. This will be part one of a multi-part set of posts on using Rhythm and Percussion in Orchestral-based sample library compositions and productions. Today, I start with PART ONE: to understand the family of orchestral percussion instruments and their respective frequency ranges — from low to high — and how best to