How to read drum music for the drum kit - Beginner Drums.
Reading Drum Notation. This lesson is intended to give you a quick-overview of all the drum notation symbols used on this website. You can think of this page as a drum-key or legend for all the different drum set voices that you play within beats, fills, and solo patterns.
When a music note is depicted on a particular line on the music stave, it means that the pitch of the corresponding music note is played. On the drums, certain symbols and lines on the music stave is crucial for your performance dynamics as it depicts how the drums should be played.
Percussion notation is a type of musical notation indicating notes to be played by percussion instruments. As with other forms of musical notation, sounds are represented by symbols which are usually written onto a musical staff (or stave). Percussion instruments are generally grouped into two categories: pitched and non-pitched.
Each note on a page (or “sheet”) of drum music has a value. The note value is the length of time that passes before playing the next note. The note value (or “duration”) is defined by a combination of the note head, stem and flag. If you are playing an instrument like the piano or saxophone, you would keep playing the same note for.
Online music notation software. Whether you're a beginner or a professional composer, our user-friendly music composition software gives you all the tools that you need to make your own sheet music.
If your music contains only one type of instrument, such as a piano solo, and does not contain percussion, consider the bargain priced intelliScore Polyphonic to convert audio to notation. The music can be polyphonic (playing several notes at the same time) or monophonic (one note at a time).
While in a classical piano piece it is necessary to notate every single note and articulation, that is very much not the case when charting for drum set music. Proficient drummers have been trained to interpret simple writing on a drum chart into a full musical drum orchestration.