"Standard" drum notation alternatives

Question

For the purpose of playing live, working through ("popular") songs involving verse, chorus, bridge, intro, outro, etc., is there a standard notation that drummers use to help them know what to play, and when?

Note: I want to exclude staff music from this discussion. I am given a piece of paper with the lyrics printed out, and with chords written above. I am comfortable adding the time signature and tempo (q = 120bpm or what have you), but is there a standard way that professional drummers would "markup" their chord charts?

I would like to notate dynamics such as:

• when to come in
• when to lay out
• who starts the song (me clicking in, guitar riff, ...?)
• what volume I'm playing
• what beat am I using (e.g. Hats, ride, Tom, etc.)
• builds, breaks, etc.

Admittedly, staff music would be better, but it is not practical, especially considering that we do not always stick to a predetermined arrangement for the song.

Hopefully there's a simple answer like "yes, The Chaz. It's called the _ method"

Thanks.

Answer 1

Staff music, and indeed pretty much any system of musical or rhythmic notation, is just a means to an end. You are free to invent any system you want, borrowing symbols from any discipline or making them up as you go. As long as they have meaning to you, that's the most important thing.

Since you don't want sheet music (understandable, given that sheet music, even a lead chart, can require several pages per song to convey all the information it provides), you will have to do at least some of this invention on your own; other than standard notation and drum tablature, there isn't any other standardized percussion notation, like there is for certain regions/genres for melodic lines and chord structures (like chord/lyric charts, Nashville Number System, etc etc).

Here's one system a drummer I worked with uses: For well-known rock/blues patterns he simply writes the name of the pattern shorthand, or builds it from the kick up in a way that makes sense. Example: "K1&3-S24-HC8" is "Kick on 1 and 3 with a third hit on the 'and' before 3, snare on 2 and 4, closed-hat 'clicks' on eighth notes"; pretty much your standard rock pattern. "FOF-S24-HC8O68" is "Four-on the floor kick, snare on 2 and 4, closed high-hat clicks on 8th notes, open the hat on the 6th and 8th clicks of the bar".

For fills, turns and complex lines:

• Draw two lines across the page. Top line is your "hand" line. Bottom line is your "foot" line. You may choose to add an extra line or two to differentiate hand and foot; this can make it easier to read but requires more space and can be harder to make changes.

• Divide this "staff" into as many bars as you need for a pattern.

• Write the beats of each bar above the "staff", leaving space in between the beats and staff for additional marks. You may subdivide as necessary.

• Now, pick or invent some symbols that are easy to draw, easy to tell apart, and have meaning to you, and assign each symbol to a particular instrument or manipulation possible with the kit. Things to think about:

  • Most drums/cymbals have pretty much one way to hit them and so will only need one symbol. You can make special notations about exactly how to hit either (center/edge/rim, bell/center/edge) with a variation of the symbol or by making notes above the line.
  • For toms, consider using differentiable but related symbols common to that "family". Similar for cymbals.
  • For the snare, you can either notate how to hit it (rim tap, off-center hit, center hit, rimshot) above the hits, or use different symbols.

• Now, while listening, simply mark down the rhythms of each instrument by writing that symbol on the appropriate line, on the appropriate beat or subdivision. You can build it up in layers or, if it's easy to pick out, just write it all down left to right. If many things happen on one beat or subdivision, you can write them vertically above and below the line

• If the rhythm isn't obvious, or a lot of hits come together, you can notate the rhythm in pseudo-standard notation above the line, or you can make additional notes of any type you choose.

• In patterns where which hand (or foot) makes which hit are important, they can be notated easily with patterns of L and R written over each hit as necessary.

• Rolls get a wavy line after the initial "hit"; you can increase or decrease the height of the line to indicate crescendo and decrescendo. If the roll's hits must be at specified intervals (16ths, triplet 16ths, 32nds) that can be written above.

Keep in mind that all of this notation is just a way to quickly take down a non-standard line or pattern, to remember said pattern for later practice. Most of these will be one or two bars; the basic pattern for a section should either be easy to remember or should be written in some acceptable shorthand, and variations of starting and stopping a particular layered rhythm can just be scribbled in next to the words where you should start it. You should never be trying to "sight-read" based on this, nor expect anyone else to do so.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, the way professional drummers do this is exactly what you have said you don't like.

As @RedGritty said - percussion notation and drum tablature are the simplest ways to do this. Typically in rock bands it is more likely to be tablature, and in orchestras percussion notation as these then fit with the rest of the music.

This then gives you when to come in, notation for fills, crescendos and builds etc., and for things like who starts the song, you would just write that at the start as a comment, same as other staff notation.

Answer 3

Yes, an interesting question. Technically, no, there is no such standand, unfortunately. It is clear that standard notation does not work particularly well for drummers, out of the box. Hence, long time ago, I also invented a system that worked for me. It goes something like this:

where each mark has a meaning (time, fill, not playing, bass only, x-stick). They can also be combined within one bar (i.e. accents, pause...).

This approach offers

• visibility
• rhythm

This is all nice and easy to see in one glance but there are problems, just like with any other system. There are other methods, that I'm collecting at my notation page. The "sketch sheet" method aligns more with what I'm trying now - currently I'm trying to use real sheets and just put a bunch of repeat marks to highlight only the important information. I.e.

This is a simple tune but it demonstrates the method. Note that this is a bastardized version, where I'm using multi-bar rest marks to indicate repetition, not the actual marks, which would look like this:

A multi-bar repetition sign would help here to avoid the clutter.

I'm lately leaning toward this method as it has the following advantages:

• it is a standard
• can be played in a music notation software (i.e. MuseScore) to remind oneself of complex fills or rhythms easily
• it is the real notation, meaning there are marks for everything you'd want to put on there (dynamics, tempo, measure...)
• it is minimalistic enough to fit on one page (great for tablets)

The time will show how this will work out. The chord sheets you get from the authors are next to useless to me and I've found no good way to adapt them. I need the bar and rhythm marks.

Edit 2020-11-05: Well, after two years I have to admit that I'm using the standard notation exclusively. All the tunes I play fit onto a cover page and are easy to read on a tablet. Depending on the song complexity, this can be more or less cluttered but all the relevant marks are there. Just skip the ones you don't need.