Beginner Drums

Description

Reading Music
In order to understand how to read music, it is necessary to become familiar with
the principles of musical notation; the set of visual symbols and instructions
which musicians translate into a musical performance. Whilst musical notation
is a vast subject, you don’t need to know a lot to get started.
Drum Legend
Music for the drum kit is written on a stave comprising five horizonal lines.
Different elements of the drum kit are positioned on these lines, or the spaces
between them. As can be seen in the legend below, drums are represented by dots,
and cymbals by crosses.
Fig 2: Drum legend showing the positions of the drums and cymbals on the stave.
Drum kits can vary in size dramatically. Rock and metal drummers often have
large kits, sometimes with two bass drums and multiple toms. At the other end of
the spectrum, jazz drummers often settle for much smaller kits, with just a couple
of toms.

Fig 3: Drum kits vary in size. Compare Terry Bozzio’s kit (left) to my kit (right).
As a consequence, drum notation is not standardised, but some common practises
exist. Usually, higher pitched instruments (e.g., 1st and 2nd toms, and cymbals) are
placed near the top of the stave, whilst those with lower pitches (e.g. bass drums
and floor toms) are positioned near the bottom.
Parts of the Stave
1. These two short vertical lines make up the neutral clef. This is required
because drum classed as non-pitched percussion.
2. Music written on the stave is divided into bars to make it easier to read. A
bar line is used to indicate the end of each bar.
3. Each bar contains a fixed number of notes, determined by the two numbers
at the beginning of a stave; the time signature (see over page).
4. To indicate the end of a piece or section of music, a double bar line is
placed at the end of the stave.
Different types of notes have different durations or values; some are long and
some are short, and each note has an equivalent rest. The U.K. and U.S. names
for notes are given below, with the U.S. names in italics.
Although drums and percussion instruments use the same kinds of notes as all the
other instruments, duration is less important to drummers because drums cannot
sustain sounds in the same way as, say, a piano or a violin. A semibreve
performed on a drum sounds the same as a semiquaver!
NB: Drummers get around this by playing closed rolls, where the notes are played very close
together to produce a long, continuous sound.
Time Signatures
Time signatures comprise two numerals, one on top of the other. As a beginner,
it’s sufficient to understand the top numeral as the number of beats in the bar.
Fig 4: The time signature 4/4
For many years, I didn’t understand time signatures much beyond this; the
meaning of the bottom numeral remained a total mystery! The penny finally
dropped after I learnt about the American method of naming notes. This explains
notes as fractions of the whole note. By dividing the whole note by two, we end
up with two 1/2 notes (or minums, in the U.K.); divide the whole note by four and
we get four 1/4 notes (or crotchets in the U.K.).
The bottom numeral ‘4’ in the time signature 4/4 implies 1/4 notes. So, the time
signature 4/4 means there are ‘4’ (top numeral) 1/4 notes in the bar.
Fig 5: Four 1/4 notes or crotchets in a bar of 4/4
In 12/8, the bottom numeral refers to 1/8 notes. The top numeral tells us there
are 12 of them to the bar. To reiterate, this is using the U.S. system. In the UK, a
bar of 12/8 is said to contain twelve quavers, because 1/8 notes and quavers are
the same thing. Notice how the quavers are beamed together in groups of three.
Fig 6: Twelve 1/8 notes or quavers in a bar of 12/8