How to add a digital signature to my program?

Is there a simple program for drum notation?

• Is there a music notation program that allows drum notation to be input easily? I would like it to handle most of what is found in http://web.mit.edu/merolish/Public/drums.pdf, especially rolls, flams/drags, open/closed hi-hats, and sticking. My drum instructor usually gives me an exercise or two to work on during the week, which he writes on a blank sheet of paper. I have been taking lessons long enough that my notebook is filling up with these sheets of paper. I would like to use a music notation program to store them on my computer. I do not need the music to be able to be transformed into midi instructions, or for the program to double check that the durations of the notes add up to the key signature. Ease of entry and legibility are my two biggest desires. I have tried lilypond and musescore, and neither seem very well documented for writing drum notation. I have also found that writing anything in them is very time consuming, especially when you want to add sticking (e.g. RLRR LRLL over 16th notes) I don't mind paying for a good program, but I only intend on keeping the records for my own consumption, so I am not really interested in spending hundreds of dollars. Is there a program out there that will suit my needs?

• Answer:

  The truth is that drum notation just sucks. I unfortunately think you'll find that no program does it as easily as you want it to. Certainly on something like Finale you can get pretty quick at it - at you can input the rhythms very easily playing them with a midi keyboard or using the shortcut keys (which are good on Finale). But the the sticking you're still going to have to go back and do by hand. It's not hard to go back and add things like sticking on Finale, and you can set up common patterns like RLRR as default accents and then use shortcut keys to input them very quickly, so you won't necessarily have to type it in each time, but you will have to more or less do it "by hand." You can also scan in your handwritten scores and Finale will "translate" them. But...I've had pretty mixed success with this. I imagine drums will be on the lower end of "works." It's usually the very basic melodic scores that are really suited for this feature. That's probably the fastest way I can think of. Doesn't really seem worth dropping the 500-600 bucks Finale will fun you just for the drum notation though. Maybe someone has a better idea?