MuseSounds for marching band and drumline
The free Muse Drumline plays a marching battery in MuseScore Studio from the notation alone, with snares, tenors, tuned bass drums and cymbals recorded by The Blue Devils. Add MuseSounds for the winds, brass and front ensemble, and you can write a whole show and hear it before the first rehearsal.
Below you’ll find what a marching arrangement needs from its sounds, one Sousa drum break on three drumlines, the score setup, the notation that plays back, and where MuseScore Studio stops.
Drumline and front ensemble sounds
The short answer
Yes. MuseScore Studio, the free notation software, can write every part of a marching band show, and MuseSounds can play it back. MuseSounds are sample libraries recorded from real players, made for MuseScore Studio, and they follow the dynamics and articulations in your score. The free Muse Drumline covers the battery, and the free Muse Brass, Muse Woodwinds and Muse Percussion cover the winds and part of the front ensemble.
It stops at the field. MuseScore Studio writes the music and doesn’t chart the drill, and MuseSounds play only inside MuseScore Studio, so they won’t load in a DAW.
Two terms come up throughout. The battery is the marching percussion section of snares, tenors, bass drums and cymbals. The front ensemble, or pit, is the percussion that stays at the front of the field, mostly marimbas, vibraphones and other mallet instruments.
What the job needs
Tenors are a set of drums tuned to different pitches, played by one person moving around them. Bass drums are tuned too, one drum per player, so a bass drum line is a melody split across the section. A library has to play that from notes on a staff.
| Need | Free library | Paid library | In MuseSounds Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snare line | Muse Drumline, with snare wires on or off | Virtual Drumline (Tapspace) | No |
| Tenors | Muse Drumline, including show-style tenors | Virtual Drumline, including showstyle single tenors | No |
| Tuned bass drums | Muse Drumline | Virtual Drumline | No |
| Marching cymbals | Muse Drumline | Virtual Drumline | No |
| Marimba | Not named on Muse Percussion’s card | Vienna Marimba (Vienna Symphonic Library) | Yes |
| Vibraphone | Not named on Muse Percussion’s card | Vienna Vibraphone (Vienna Symphonic Library) | Yes |
| Glockenspiel, xylophone, drum kit and other pit percussion | Muse Percussion | Virtual Percussion (Tapspace) | No |
| Woodwinds | Muse Woodwinds | Vienna Woodwinds (Vienna Symphonic Library) | Yes |
| Brass | Muse Brass | Vienna Brass (Vienna Symphonic Library) | Yes |
| Euphonium | Not in Muse Brass | Euphonium (ebbandflow) | Yes |
The whole battery is covered for free. The paid step for the battery is Tapspace, whose two libraries are sold on their own or as a bundle and are not part of MuseSounds Pro. Vienna Marimba, Vienna Vibraphone and Euphonium work the other way round, because all three are part of MuseSounds Pro.
Hear it on three drumlines
Here is one drum break from a march played three ways. We took bars 42–50 of John Philip Sousa’s Semper Fidelis (1888), the drum break at the start of the trio, where the drums play on their own, plus the bar before it. Sousa wrote the march for a military band, with a snare drum part and a bass drum part. In this score the snare line plays his snare part and the tenors double it, as the Marine Band edition suggests. You hear only the drums.
Then we played the score in MuseScore Studio three times, changing only the sounds:
- MS Basic, the soundfont that comes with MuseScore Studio.
- Muse Drumline, the free library recorded by The Blue Devils.
- Virtual Drumline from Tapspace, a paid library sold on its own and not included in MuseSounds Pro.
The tempo, the mixer, the reverb and the export settings stayed the same each time, all at their defaults. One marking differs from Sousa’s. Bar 42 is printed ff, and in this score it is mf/mp, because both drumline libraries clipped at ff. All three renders play the score with that lower dynamic.
Look at the score before you listen. Sousa gives the drums the rhythm of the tune, so the snares carry a melody without pitches, and the tenors move with them. Find the accents, the rolls and the stick clicks. Try to imagine how a drumline would play it, then press play.
1. MS Basic
First, the soundfont MuseScore Studio uses until you install anything else. It has no marching drums, so this render uses its standard drum kit: the kit snare for the snare line, a tom for the tenors and a side stick for the stick clicks. Listen to the repeated snare notes, to whether the accents stand out from the taps around them, and to the stick clicks.
It sounds good and clear, and so do the stick clicks.
MS Basic
2. Muse Drumline
Now the same bars with Muse Drumline, recorded by The Blue Devils, one of the most decorated drum corps in the world. It has snares, multi-tenors, tonal bass drums and marching cymbals, and its accents and marcatos are boosted so they stand apart from the taps. Listen to the distance between an accent and the notes around it, and compare the stick clicks with the first render.
This render is good too. It is a little quieter than MS Basic, and the stick clicks sound more hollow.
Muse Drumline
3. Virtual Drumline
Finally, Virtual Drumline from Tapspace, which features the drumline of the Santa Clara Vanguard. It alternates right and left hands automatically, which is how a real player moves through a run of notes. Listen to the snare rolls and the stick clicks and compare them with the Muse Drumline render. The two libraries were recorded with different corps. This library is not part of MuseSounds Pro, so hearing it in your own scores means buying it.
It is good as well, but the snare rolls and the stick clicks sound a bit unnatural.
Virtual Drumline
On these nine bars MS Basic holds up well against both drumline libraries. Only the library changed between the three renders, and a finished show demo isn’t made that way. Each library responds a little differently to the same notes, accents and rolls, and arrangers adapt their writing to the library they use. A drumline library earns its place with what a drum kit can’t play, such as tuned bass drums, marching cymbals, show-style tenors, buzz rolls and the implement changes described below.
Set it up in MuseScore Studio
- Create a free MuseHub account, then install MuseHub on Windows or macOS, and install MuseScore Studio from it.
- Open the MuseSounds section and install Muse Drumline, Muse Percussion, Muse Brass and Muse Woodwinds, all free, plus any paid libraries you own. On Linux, install MuseScore Studio and use MuseSounds Manager for the free libraries, Muse Drumline included. Paid libraries such as Virtual Drumline need MuseHub on Windows or macOS.
- Restart MuseScore Studio if it was open, so it finds the new libraries.
- Start a new score and add the instruments in score order, with the woodwinds first, then the brass, the front ensemble and the battery. For the battery, add the marching snare, tenors, bass drums and cymbals from the instrument list, and write one staff per line of the drumline rather than one per player.
- Save the empty score and start each new show from a copy of it, so the instrument list and sounds are already in place.
- Open the Mixer (View ▸ Mixer, or F10) and check the Sound row. Each battery staff should show Muse Drumline, or Virtual Drumline if you installed it. Muse Drumline can also play each line as a single player or as the full section.
- Export what each person needs from File ▸ Export. Players need their parts as PDF files. A practice track or a demo for the show designer needs audio, WAV or MP3. Another arranger on different notation software needs MusicXML.
Notation that plays back
The drumline libraries read the markings in the score, like every MuseSounds library, with no MIDI to edit.
- Rolls. In Muse Drumline, a note written with the buzz tremolo symbol (a small z through the stem) plays recorded buzz rolls and press strokes. Virtual Drumline also plays rolls. Check each library’s page for how other roll types are written.
- Accents and marcatos. Muse Drumline boosts both, so the difference between an accent and a tap is audible, as it would be on the field.
- Implements. Muse Drumline switches between sticks, brushes, dreadlocks, rubber beads, hard mallets, soft mallets and hot rods. Its snares have samples with the wires on and off.
- Playing zones. Both libraries have recordings from different spots on the drum. Check each library’s page for how to write them.
- Sticking. Virtual Drumline alternates hands on its own, so a run of repeated notes doesn’t sound like one recording played again and again.
- Flams, drags, rim shots and backsticking. Check each library’s page for the techniques it supports before you count on them in playback.
Muse Drumline also has small sounds that marching writing uses, including stick hits, harness hits, cowbells, agogos and ribbon crashers. Virtual Drumline adds drum major commands and vocal shouts.
A cadence, the street beat a drumline plays while the band marches between songs, is the simplest place to start. Write it on the battery staves alone and put repeat barlines around it. MuseScore Studio plays the repeats back as written.
The libraries that matter
Muse Drumline is the free starting point for any battery writing. It was made with The Blue Devils and has the staple instruments of a marching line, with snares, multi-tenors, tonal bass drums and marching cymbals. Each line can play as a single player or as a full section, which matters when one snare takes a solo. It also installs on Linux through MuseSounds Manager.
Tapspace calls Virtual Drumline the industry standard sample library for marching percussion. This MuseSounds Edition contains its core drumline instruments and features the drumline of the Santa Clara Vanguard. It has several velocity layers per note (recordings at different strengths), playing zones, a choice of implements, solos and full sections, and automatic hand alternation. It is not part of MuseSounds Pro. Choose it when you want a second corps sound or the extra detail.
Virtual Percussion holds the non-drumline instruments of the full Tapspace collection, around 89 orchestral, front ensemble, marching and miscellaneous instruments with their articulations and implements. It suits a pit that goes beyond mallets. Tapspace also sells it with Virtual Drumline as the Tapspace Drumline and Percussion Bundle. Compare the bundle’s card with the two libraries’ cards before you buy.
Muse Percussion is a free orchestral percussion library. It runs from glockenspiel and xylophone to taikos, tam-tams and drum kits, each recorded with a wide dynamic range. For a school pit on a budget, it puts pitched percussion under the band for free.
Vienna Marimba is an Adams marimba recorded with hard and soft mallets on Stage A of Vienna Synchron Stage. The marimba usually carries the front ensemble, so it is often the first library worth upgrading in the pit. Its partner, Vienna Vibraphone, is a Musser vibraphone recorded with soft and hard mallets, with the motor on and off. The motor spins discs in the resonators to make the vibraphone’s vibrato, and a part can ask for it or not. Both are in MuseSounds Pro.
Euphonium from ebbandflow is a solo euphonium with several velocity layers and round robins, alternate recordings of the same note that keep repeats from sounding identical. It has up to five microphone positions. Muse Brass has no euphonium, so a band with euphoniums in the low brass needs this library to hear that line on a recorded euphonium. It is in MuseSounds Pro.
The limits
MuseScore Studio doesn’t design drill. It writes and plays the music. The positions and movement of the band on the field are charted in dedicated drill software such as Pyware.
MuseSounds don’t run in a DAW. They play only in MuseScore Studio and aren’t VST, AU or AAX plugins. If the show’s electronics or backing tracks are built in a DAW, export audio from MuseScore Studio and import it there.
Some marching brass may not have its own sound. Muse Brass has solo horn, trumpet, trombone, bass trombone, cimbasso and tuba, plus ensembles of horns, trumpets and trombones. Mellophone, marching baritone, sousaphone and contrabass bugle are not listed in it. Check the Mixer to see which sound those staves get, and change it if another suits the part better.
Playback puts the whole band in one room. Every section sounds together and in time. How the band sounds spread across a field is something only a rehearsal tells you.
FAQ
Next steps
Install Muse Drumline and play one of your cadences with it. For how MuseSounds work and what Pro adds, read what are MuseSounds?. For every free library in one place, see the complete guide to free MuseSounds. To compare them with percussion libraries made for DAWs, see the best percussion VSTs, and for drum kits and beats, the best drum plugins. You can browse every library in MuseSounds on MuseHub, or download MuseHub free.
