My First Opera needs Didgeridoo

OK, this is my problem..

I'm wrighting my first opera, and it is based on a traditional Australian-Aborigional dreamtime story, and as it is based around traditonal aboriginal themse and characters, i found it fitting to have native aborigional instruments aswell. So, 'Didgeridoo' crept its way into my score, BUT, my one porblem with this fantastic idea is..... I don't know how to notate it :angry:. This is porbably a very hard question:

HOW DO I NOTATE DIDERGIDOO?

And i'm sure very few of you, if any, know how to notate it. But if anyone could give me the slightest bit of help, it would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks :)

Be very careful with this. Unless you yourself are an Australian-Aboriginal, you are appropriating a culture that may not consider it appropriate to set their traditional stories in this manner. There's nothing absolute that says you shouldn't - just be careful.

As for notating didgeridoo - just use a rhythmic system, like a djembe - different pitches on a clef-less staff, representing various techniques.

For instance, you might notate the base pitch on the first staff-line, the high-overtone sound on the middle line, with a phonated pitch on the top line.

Ah, yes. I have been told several times to be careful with this, as i am not Australian-Aborigional, but, since i last posted i have changed my overall idea for the opera. It is still going to be set to the same basic storyline, but not in its origional aboriginal 'dreamtime' form. I will just use the main concept/moral of the story and go from there.

And thankyou, for your advice on notating the didgeridoo, its a good idea and i will give it a go. I would still appreciate, though, some other ideas, to see if i find one i really like.

Well, the question is how precise do you want to get? If you want precise pitches, then you have to write down pitches of course, like in the way Christopher Dunn-Rankin mentioned. If you want to use it more as a "sound effect" where the actual pitches don't matter so much, you could go for a more graphical notation, with a wavy line designating how high the overtones should be, which might faciliate the learning process for the didgeridooist (is that a word?). But it will make your notating process harder if you write it in a common notation program :D Or you could just write down the "vowels" which should be formed, maybe even with the phonetic alphabet or something. (But I don't know enough about the Didgeridoo to be able to say how well this works).

But in the end the best thing is to get in contact with someone who plays the didgeridoo, show her or him several versions of your notation and ask how s/he would read them and whether it's understandable. Even if you can play the didgeridoo yourself it would be good to ask someone else and see whether they can make any sense of your notation.

"Exotic" instruments like this simply don't have a standartised form of notation, so it's crucial to work together with performers. Or at least be as clear as possible with whatever notation you decide on and explain it in the preface.