Percussion Notation - changing the stem direction of notes

Cakewalk lets you notate percussion on a five-line percussion staff, or on a single percussion line. You can choose the percussion staff or line by clicking the Layout button in the Staff view, then using the Clef drop-down list in the Staff View Layout dialog box.

When several percussion instruments share the same track, Cakewalk automatically places them on the same staff. You'll notice that if two or more notes are playing at the same time, their stems all go in the same direction. Though this is good for say, a piano (for which you're notating chords), percussion parts are sometimes played by separate musicians, and different drums in a drum kit are normally notated with different stem directions. Therefore, you may need to split the parts into separate voices on the staff, making them easier to read.

To do this, select the note or notes that belong in a separate part, then right-click to bring up the Note Properties dialog box. Change the channel parameter, so that the notes you selected are on their own separate MIDI channel. Click OK.

Now the notes you selected are treated as a separate voice, and their stems will go in different directions from notes in other voices.

You can also use this technique in other staves (treble, bass, tenor, alto, and octave-treble). Choosing a separate MIDI channel for any note will force that note into a separate voice.

If you don't want Cakewalk to automatically treat different channels as separate voices, add the following line to the [Wincake] section in CAKEWALK.INI:

[Wincake]
StaffViewChanSeparateVoices=0

The default value for this setting is: StaffViewChanSeparateVoices=1

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