Drum Scoring

[Jennifer Clark]

Dear all,

I am now getting confident enough with Lilypond to use it for writing 
scores for larger bands, currently a nine piece jazz band for example, 
and find the software excellent. One area I am not entirely confident in 
is the writing of drum music; the latest score I did had the transcribed 
drums set out note for note (as it were), but I was sure this was not 
the best way to present music to a drummer. So I asked one of the good 
drummers about here for his advice, which he gave, and he also showed me 
many examples of good big band drum scores, and some bad ones.

All of this was a great help, and all appears easily doable in Lilypond 
except for one thing: The general rhythm of the dominant melodic line in 
the piece was always written in the space above the top line on the drum 
score, allowing the drummer to see where accents might be placed without 
explicitly writing out the entire drum part for him. The notes on this 
line can be of any duration. Based on this information he can do his own 
thing without needing a cluttered drum part, which makes perfect sense.

I tried to achieve this in Lilypond 2.2.5 by adding an extra (standard) 
voice to the DrumStaff, but this ended up with two separate staves. Is 
there any way to achieve this? I also thought about redefining a 
drumkit, but I am not sure if e.g. moving a tom to the space above the 
top line would work since the toms appear unable to take on a value 
greater than a quarter note. Ideally the notes should behave like those 
in a standard voice.

Thanks again for any advice, and advice given in the past, it is much 
appreciated.

Jennifer