Drum tab

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peteski2014

Junior Member
Hi all

Just wondering if its only me struggling to find good drum tab to follow. I hunt high and low on tinterweb but find almost nothing! Example being Get off my Cloud - easy tune (i'm only beginning to learn) - but finding good tab anywhere is proving impossible! Where do you guys go and am I just looking in the wrong places????

Bit depressing because there's heaps I want to learn but learn properly from people who have much more experience than me and know what they are doing when tabbing out tracks.

Cheers
 
This might be the right opportunity to learn to write tabs - or better yet, notation - and Get Off My Cloud is a simple enough way to start.

Listening to drum parts in order to write them will better put you in touch with those parts, and inside the head of that drummer, like nothing else can.

Bermuda
 
I've been playing around with Guitar-Pro6 software writing down my drum ideas and adding in chords and melodies and sending them my band mates.
I can write in guitar, piano, trumpet, trombone and saxophone lines in there along with the drums.

The software can be used to write and play drums. The drums writing and playing is fair, but it is good enough to learn musical notation. I posted the question on another thread one time before asking for another notation software that was better for the drums, but it did not yield anything better for the drums from the readers.

I like writing things in the computer, and although I have a ton of books at my house, I am getting tired of storing all this paper from the past.

I agree with Bermuda, writing down and figuring out your own drum parts with arrangements is a useful skill that yields a lot of ability. With the software you can test your writing ability by playing the parts after you wrote them down to see if you got it correct.
 
I guess just coming from the world of guitar where there seems to be 300 different tab versions for every song I could ever wish to play is a surprise but I guess as well everyones a guitarist..... maybe less drummers less people to put the stuff out there.....
 
...and add to the fact that rhythmic notation in tabs is inherently very flawed. Honestly, I'd be looking at learning drum notation. It's much more flexible and accurate and you can more easily share any transcriptions you've done as well as picking up other transcriptions for when you decide to play with other people.

I don't know of any professional player that uses tabs as a reference for playing. It's notation, personal notes or nothing. In my opinion, tabs are effectively useless for drums.
 
peteski2014 said:
I guess just coming from the world of guitar where there seems to be 300 different tab versions for every song I could ever wish to play...
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I'd say that most drummers try to make a part "their own" and aren't necessarily interested in copying or even referencing the actual parts. So, less demand, less availability of such drum parts.

There are some specific efforts though, with books dedicated to Ringo, John Densmore, Bonham and a few other classic drummers (and BTW those are all written in notation.) But generally, drummers aren't so fascinated with reproducing the exact parts. They may love a part, they may love the technique, but it's rare they really want to see it on paper.

Bermuda
 
peteski2014 said:
I guess just coming from the world of guitar where there seems to be 300 different tab versions for every song I could ever wish to play is a surprise but I guess as well everyones a guitarist..... maybe less drummers less people to put the stuff out there.....
Click to expand...

If I can make a guess for this reason of not many drum parts written and available on the web, I think it is that the two instruments are very different in their ways to learn how to play with others. You can buy guitar and piano music for those songs, it would be rare to find sheet music for the drums.

The drums are an instrument where you are trained to improvise more than the other instruments. Listening to what others played and in the process of writing it down you will learn eventually how to improvise. I used to call it developing an eye ear coordination. You will eventually learn to listen to the drums and know if the drummer is using sticks, brushes or mallets. You will eventually be able to hear different ways to play the high-hat, fully closed, partially open, or closed while being hit. You will be able to determine if the snare was on or off when the drum was played.

But, after a while, you should be able to write your own parts.

Perhaps to further your education, you may want to get a live in the same room with you instructor.
 
BacteriumFendYoke said:
I don't know of any professional player that uses tabs as a reference for playing. It's notation, personal notes or nothing. In my opinion, tabs are effectively useless for drums.
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Tabs are a shortcut, and they'll get you part of the way there. But notation is a more expressive, versatile, widely-accepted method. I've also never seen a pro write (or read) tabs, not even with guitar players where that would be more common.

I can read tabs, although I don't find them necessarily easier than notes. The fact that Rock Band drums are essentially dynamic tabs* doesn't lend any credibility, either. :)

Bermuda

* Sounds like a good name for a band - The Dynamic Tabs!
 
I've seen a few very good guitarists use tab but the ones that are really good use their ear, notation or combinations therein. I would suggest that most guitarists these days can read tab but most also accept that it's deeply flawed and that notation is far, far more useful. I reference guitar tab when I can't work a part out by ear but it takes a while for me to get to the point where I feel like I ought to resort to it. For the record, I'm a fair guitarist but by no means good.
 
I'm new to software music applications.

Is there software that will write drum tabs or notation for you if you play the part?
Can you tap out the drum part on an ekit and have the software automatically write out the tab or notation?

If the software does not exist, why does it not exist? Seems simple enough to me.
I know that software exists that will automatically write notation as you play on a keyboard.

.
 
My teacher loves it when I ask him to help me transcribe a song. We will go through it by ear(s) with blank sheet music and figure it out. Many many times during the figuring out process he will say something like, "And right here Mike if you wanted to you could play XYZ instead of what he/she is doing, or even ABC." He understand the need to cover the song note for note while offering me opportunities to put my "signature" on it. About 1 time out of 90 my signature sounds cool - that ratio will improve I am told :)

MM
 
FrontierGibberish said:
My teacher loves it when I ask him to help me transcribe a song. We will go through it by ear(s) with blank sheet music and figure it out. Many many times during the figuring out process he will say something like, "And right here Mike if you wanted to you could play XYZ instead of what he/she is doing, or even ABC." He understand the need to cover the song note for note while offering me opportunities to put my "signature" on it. About 1 time out of 90 my signature sounds cool - that ratio will improve I am told :)

MM
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Absolutely!

I remember taking Classical singing lessons a long time ago. Some of the pieces were written to be sung through twice (usually Baroque pieces). The first time you would sing it 'straight' and the second time you added embellishment. I had a Hell of a time with my teacher going through the score looking for points to embellish (with all the taste that a 14-year-old boy has). Those became 'signature' embellishments.

It's like with any instrument. Once you develop a voice then you can start adding in things that are specific to you. It might be a simple fill, it might be the use of a particular dynamic but that's what it's all about. Finding your voice.
 
Another vote for the "learn to read" option.

Recently my drum teacher gave me a piece to learn which he'd only been able to find in tab. Tab is horrible. I found it much easier to transcribe the tab into music notation and learn from that.

And this is from somebody with a little over 18 months of drumming/reading music so hardly a superb reader of those funny squiggles.
 
JustJames said:
Another vote for the "learn to read" option.
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Learning to read, yes. But learning to write is just as important. It includes learning to listen, whose benefits cannot be overstated.

Bermuda
 
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