quick & dirty drum charts in 10 minutes
All of us drummers all been there at one time or another: you get asked to play a show but are given nothing more than a list of songs to learn. Perhaps the songs are originals you have never heard before, or are covers you don’t already know. Either way, in most of these situations, no charts are provided, which means that your personal prep time may involve many more hours of work than the actual gig itself. I might add that this type of thing happens on all levels of gigs, from casual non-pro gigs to arena concerts with big-name artists.
Okay, perhaps I should call this post Quick and Dirty Clean drum charts in 10 minutes. Even if your end goal is to memorize the songs (which may or may not be desired and/or required in some cases), I find that creating basic charts is an extremely time-efficient method for learning new material. These charts are simple enough that you can play without looking at them most of the time (giving the artist the feeling that you really know the material well!), yet they still contain enough information to effectively perform the song.
Here is my process for creating a very simple, clear visual sketch of that includes most elements needed to be able to play the song. Long ago, I used to do this work with pencil and paper, but now I do everything electronically with notation software because I can do it faster, corrections are easier, and you can create a very clean-looking layout.
Disclaimer: this is not a guide on how to make professional-quality drum charts for other drummers to read. These are quickie sketches for your personal use, using shorthand you specifically understand.
Get the song in file form (mp3 etc.) Trying to do this work with a streaming app like Spotify or YouTube wastes far too much time in the seek / skip forward / rewind process and is not suitable for the next crucial step: tempo mapping.
In your favorite DAW (mine is Reaper), tempo map the entire song. Even if the song has a completely steady tempo, this step forces you to critically listen through the entire song and map out the exact number of bars. While doing this, also make mental notes of the different sections of the song form and any peculiarities / hits / breaks etc. Note that the tempo map does not need to be super precise: I normally just mark the start of each bar. You can even do this at a faster playrate if you are a super-human (or are extremely impatient!)
Now that the song is tempo mapped, go back and add markers for the different sections of the form. You can also add additional markers for the aforementioned hits / breaks if this is helpful.
Export the MIDI from your DAW, making sure to include the markers.
Import the MIDI to your notation program (I use Dorico for this). Set your import options to convert the markers to system-attached text objects. Tip: in Dorico, import the MIDI as a “Tempo Track” rather than as a normal MIDI import.
Format your page if needed by placing logical system breaks. My default template is already set for 8-bar systems, but when a system or section has an unusual number of bars, I indicate this with extra bar counts over the bar. For example, if a song chorus is 9 bars, I force all 9 bars onto the same system and show the count 1-9 above the bars so I don’t space out and miss this. Dorico does this with “Numbered Bar Regions”, which you can simply insert wherever needed.
(optional) Add any traditional notation you might need. Less is more. The chart is intentionally full of white space so you have plenty of room to add notes as needed in rehearsal.
That’s it! Enjoy your clean, simple but awesome drum chart. The whole process should take no longer than 10 minutes for an average length song.
Song after tempo mapping and marking out the form
Song after tempo mapping and marking out the form
