Sunday, March 16, 2008

Drum Charts

I was playing a piece for some folks today and I realized they had no clue what was going on., so I showed them the chart and started to explain what was happening in a certain measure. One of them asked what key signiture the chart was in, and I explained that it's not in a key signiture because it's a drum chart. then he asked if it was some kind of tab. On further investigation, I discovered these fellows had no idea that there is such a thing as drum music, and one of them is a drummer! This is not the first time I've run across this situation. There seems to be a common misconception that you can't write down music for the drumset. Well, you can. The example I've added here is from a song called Time To Kill with drummer Bill Bruford. The top line represents hi-hat/cymbal, the middle space is for the the snare drum, the bottom space is bass drum, everything else is a tom-tom. Notes and rests are the same as any other music.

No comments: