Notation A to Z

This page explains how to write music for African percussion, using notation that is half way between letter notation and tabulature on the one hand, and real western music notation on the other. The simple principles have been outlined in the Notation primer.This page goes into things a bit more and explains the advanced options you have with the Yankadi font. Many people come to djembe music without any other musical background, so I'm assuming you know nothing about music notation yet.

Yankadi font

• Introduction * Write beautiful music
• Notation primer * Simple tutorial
• Notation A to Z * The advanced bits
• Keyboard map * All the symbols

Music structure

Music takes place in time. It is not two-dimensional like painting, not three-dimensional like sculpture, not four dimensional like dance that takes place in space and time, no, music takes place in time only. Once a note is played, it has moved into the past. And the notes still to come are still in the future. So what you must note down, is which note to play, and when. When you play a note, can be defined in many ways. In tabulature, and in this Yankadi font, it is defined by creating beats that consist of pulses. For example, there can be 2 beats of 4 pulses each to a second, which is the same as 120 beats per minute, or 120 BPM. See, we are dividing time!

To divide time in a meaningful way so we can talk about it and play it, we use the following concepts, which are loosely based on traditional western music notation: I use comparisons from books and writing to give you an idea of what we are talking about.

• A score , which is the complete written notation of a piece of music. This can be compared to a full book.
• A part. which is the music for just one of the instruments. You can think of this as the story line in a book, in which multiple story lines interweave.
• Parts are written on a staff, or music line, which in traditional western notation is made up out of 5 horizontal lines. In the Yankadi font this is a single line with different symbols for the different notes. This is similar to writing a single percussive instrument in traditional western notation, on a single line. In a book, story lines are written on lines and pages.
• A phrase, which is like a sentence. It is one complete sentence of the music for one instrument. A phrase can be of any length. There are special double vertical lines to mark the beginning and ending of a phrase. These lines may or may not have dots to indicate that the phrase must be repeated a number of times. And there may be an alternative ending to the phrase when the last repetition is played.
• A phrase consists of one or more measures or bars. Measures are divided by thin vertical lines. If the phrase is like a sentence, then the measures are like words, divided by spaces.
• A measure consists of one or more beats. In Yankadi we indicate beats by using note beams to create groups of notes. So if a measure has 4 groups of notes, it has four beats to it. You can think of beats as the combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables in a word. The word "Yankadi" for example would have two beats, "Yanka" and "di", and the first beat combines a stressed ("Yan") and unstressed ("ka") syllable.
• And a beat consists of one or more pulses. Pulses are the regular division of time within the beat so we can position the notes. Pulses are possible note positions. The pulses are like the individual letters and spaces use to write words. And we use actual letters, like the s for the slap or the dot for a rest, to write these pulses.
• Finally, there is one more subdivision, smaller than the pulse, and that is to descend into chaos... Regular music notation allows for ever finer divisions, going from whole notes to half notes to 1/4 notes, 1/8, 1/16, and so on. As a matter of fact, the default writing method in the Yankadi font is 1/8 notes, with one note beam.
  The flam, the roulement and the triplet, are notes that are played in between normal pulses, and have special symbols to write them.

To summarise the main concepts

• Written music consists of a score, with parts that are written on staff lines.
• Musically speaking, a part consists of phrases, which are divided into measures, which are divided into beats, which are divided into pulses or possible note positions.

Here is an example without any notes at all, of a phrase, with 2 bars, with 2 beats with 4 pulses each.
Note: The newly introduced elements in the typing are shown in red.

With the last example, if the note groups were numbered 1 to 6, then you would play the groups 1 to 4 during all repeats, except the very last repeat, then you play the groups 1 and 2 and 5 and 6.
So you replace the first ending, from the coda sign (1/2) to the repeat sign (:||), by the alternative coda or ending, which starts at the second coda sign.

Music notes

Apart from a structure in time that tells us how the music progresses through time, we also need to know which notes to play when. You need to know the instrument, and which notes it must play. The instrument, djembe, doundoun, bell, can be written in front of the staff (music line). As for the notes to play, these must be inserted into our music itself, into our structure in time that we have created with phrases, measures, bars, beats and pulses. For typing these notes, we use letters, such as the b for the bass, the t for the tone and the s for the slap.

Here are examples of the Balakulandja1 (S) and Balakulandja 2 (B). The brackets and note beams are not given in the typing for clarity, I'm sure you know where to type them to create the score as shown.
Note: in all the examples of what to type in, spaces are inserted for clarity.Don't copy the spaces!

Music instructions

For any musical part, the composer may want to give lots of instructions to the player about how the part, the notes, are supposed to be played. Fast, slow, loud, soft, restrained or brash. A lot of the complexity of proper music notation comes from these instructions, instructions that have to do with music dynamics and interpretation.

For percussion we don't need many instructions. What is handy though, are instructions for the right or left hand; instructions for soft ghost notes or accented loud notes; and a symbol to tell you where the phrase starts (the asterix), and microtiming shift indicators. These instructions will modify any particular note. You type the instructions before you type the note they apply to. Try it!

Music layout

To help you structure the music on paper, there are some more layout options, such as some symbols; the note beams; the space; the normal bar line; phrase signs and phrase repeat signs. These are all half the width of a normal note. There is also a half space under the + key (that means you get four half spaces into one normal note width!), that may help you to align phrases underneath each other or to space out certain notes. Because underneath the note beam, you can pretty much space out your notes as you like. You can even use Word's character spacing options to put notes closer together or further apart. And finally there is a bar line of zero width, so you can insert bar lines in the music without widening the line.

Advanced notation

To write flams, rolls and triplets, extra symbols are available. The keyboardmap shows them all and explains briefly how to use the symbols.

Flams consist of a smaller note that is written just before the main note. The QWE keys are used for those.

Rolls consist of a normal note that is written just after the main note. the UIO keys are used for those. Those notes can be completed with = for note beams and - for muffled notes.

Fast triplets use the roll notes UIO too, but the middle note gets the # fast triplet sign over it.

Slow triplets use normal notes, spaces and the $ slow triplet sign.

Example of a three doundoun setup: muffled and normal sangban, wood, kenkeni and doundounba with bell.

Tabulature symbols

For those who are very much used to the b, t and s letters of the tabulature or letter-notation, there is good news: you can switch to that notation simply by making the whole score upper case!