Drum Annotation | Sticks Skins n Beats
Drum notation, as with other forms of musical notation indicates notes to be played on the drum kit, which essentially boils down to sounds represented by symbols written on to a musical staff or stave. Notation for drums and percussion instruments varied considerably based on the category they belong to (pitched or non-pitched) and from performers, teachers, students, composers, arrangers, orchestrators and music engravers who created there own symbols to cater to their techniques and huge array of instruments they used. However, based on the efforts of Dr. Norman Weinberg to notate the drum set based on the recommendations of PAS, we now have some standardized guidelines to represent drum notation on a staff.
Key or Legend
Each of the five lines and space of the staff is assigned a different part or “voice” of the drum kit and these are often laid out at the beginning of a piece of music in what is known as a key or legend or occasionally labeled when initially appear in the piece.
Clefs, Staffs, Measures & Bar Lines
The clef, which looks like a vertical rectangle and is used with non-pitched percussion instruments. It also denotes that the position of the note that indicates the drum, cymbal or other percussion instrument as defined in the drum key. The staff is separated into individual measures (or bars) of music with thin vertical lines called bar lines. The number of beats in each measure is determined by the time signature.
Time Signature
A time signature consists of two numbers (like fractions), one being written above the other, to indicate how many beats are in each bar.The top number tells you how many beats are in each measure. The bottom number indicates the size of the note that represents the duration of one beat. Time signature could be Simple (2/4) or Compound(6/8).The time signature is written at the beginning of the piece of music and wherever there is a meter change.
Note & Rest Values
Notes and rests come in different lengths, which are written as fractions. For every size note, there is an equivalent size rest. There are two half notes (1/2) for every whole note (1/1); two quarter notes (1/4) for every half note; two eighth notes (1/8) for every quarter note; etc. These relationships define the lengths (and speeds) of the notes. A Rest is just what it says: don’t play. Sometimes you’ll see a note or a rest with a small dot written next to it. This indicates that the note will last 50 percent longer, or 1 1/2 times its normal length. These are Dotted Notes & Rests.
Rhythms are written by using combinations of notes and rests, so it is important to memorize them to quickly identify and play rhythms. There are several different parts of a note: the notehead stem and flags or beams. Recognizing them will help you learn to identify notes.
Cut Time
A semicircle, or , is sometimes used for 4/4 time, also called common time or imperfect time. The symbol is derived from a broken circle used in music notation from the 14th through 16th centuries, where a full circle represented what today would be written in 3/2 or 3/4 time, and was called tempus perfectum (perfect time). The symbol , a “semicircle” with a vertical line through is also a carry-over from the notational practice of late-Medieval and Renaissance music, where it signified tempus imperfectum diminutum (diminished imperfect time)—more precisely, a doubling of the speed, or proportio dupla, in duple meter. In modern notation, it is used in place of 2/2 and is called “alla breve” or, colloquially, “cut time” or “cut common time”.
Ghost Notes
A rhythmic figure may be punctuated by certain notes which are accented (emphasized), in which case we would say that the unaccented notes in the figure are played with a ‘normal’ degree of emphasis. Ghost notes are purposely deemphasized, often to the point of near silence.
Tie
The tie indicates that the two notes tied together are played as one. Thus, two tied quarter notes would be played like a half note. This is commonly done across bar line and when linking notes of different values.
Tempo
You will often run into this over the beginning of a score. This indicates that the quarter note gets 132 beats per minute. That’s really pretty fast, but this is a way for the composer to tell the performer how fast to perform the music. The note indicated here is usually the bottom note of the time signature, so if we were in “6/8? time, we would see an eighth note here.
Accents
The accent mark indicates that that note is to be played louder than any of the other notes. This technique allows for rhythmic phrasing using dynamics.
? A breve above or below or a inverted notehead means slightly softer than surrounding notes.
() A parenthesis means significantly softer than surrounding notes. Ghost note is a less formal alternative term which may refer either to anti-accentuation in general or to a particular degree of anti-accentuation. Ghost notes are often considered to be especially faint.
[] A note head in brackets mean much softer than surrounding notes.
Dynamics
Dynamic markings indicate the volume level of a given passage. p stands for pianissimo, or “softly”. f stands for forte, or “loudly”. When a letter is preceeded by an m, this means the note is played “moderately softly,” or “moderately loudly”, thus giving values between p and f. p and f can also be doubled and tripled (pp, ppp, ff, fff), meaning “very softly,” or “very, very softly,” depending on the usage.
Repeats
Repeat signs are used to abbreviate a piece of music and minimize page turns. There are three common types of Repeats, a Single Measure Repeat , a Two Measure Repeat and a Multi Measure Repeat.
Triplet and other Tuplets
A quarter-note naturally divides into two eighths, but if you want to divide it into thirds, you need to use an eighth-note triplet. An eighth-note triplet is written as three eighth-notes beamed together with a number three above them. Any of the three notes can be replaced with an eighth rest or two sixteenths, or any other division of an eighth-note allowing for more notational flexibility. Triplets are usually counted “1 & ah 2 & ah 3 & ah 4 & ah.” You can also divide a note into fifths (quintuplet), sixths (sextuplet), sevenths (septuplet), and so on.
Per say there is nothing right or wrong in the way you annotate music as long as you provide a legend defining the meaning of each line of the staff and the significance of the different noteheads and symbols. Some even prefer to use Drum Tablature (i.e. instead of the durational notes normally seen on a piece of sheet music, a drum tab has a series of X’s and O’s, which represent when to hit each part of a drum kit) instead of Drum Notation. Unlike guitar tabs which often fail to accurately represent timing information, drum tabs usually describe timing information very accurately.
Related Articles:
Meters and Time Signature
Triplets and other Tuplets
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