Writing Your Own Drum Charts: A Guide for Drummers by a Nashville Drummer 

Haha! I absolutely always have a bruise strategically placed on my thigh - you should have heard the conversation when my girlfriend saw it the first time! But I had left shoulder surgery two years ago and unfortunately can't play more than 20 minutes without resting it (much less a 4 hour gig with no breaks in downtown nashville). Although it does promote a lazy and sloppy left hand, it doesn't promote pain pills so I'm taking the trade off for now! Oh and the snare is a Tama SLP Power Maple with a 42-snare strand. Thanks!

Hey Edmond! I normally stick to 8ths unless otherwise notated (esp with the music I tend to cover). Even if you forget, very few people in the audience will be able to hear the difference if it's not quintessential to the song and when you've got 2 days to chart and learn a 40+ song list, kick and snare come first in my opinion. Mostly due to the fact that 9/10 the bass will follow the kick and not the hh. To save time and space I might even write an 8th or 16th note with an arrow to show that the pattern continues. Hope this helps!

I'm assuming you mean cymbal rolls since cymbals will naturally sustain unless choked. For cymbal rolls, I normally do the length of the note (say quarter for example) and a "z" through the stem with a tie over the top to the when the sustaining stops. Hope that helps!

insanedrummer89 I can do another video of a short hand version that I do as well - also another video on chart writing if you can't read music. As I say in this video, it was for a bigger gig that I wanted to nail the parts fairly close to the record and then have the chart should I ever need to pull it up again down the road.

@@RyanFowlerDrums I watched this video through, then your playthrough, then had a listen to the original and yeah, it's clear you already knew the song, so am I right that this is a bit of a memory-jog chart? I've only been notating for approaching five years (after previously playing for 20 years as a "memoriser"). In recent times I've gotten into preparing cover band standards that I've never had the chance to play before, so that if I *do* get called to do them, those songs will be in the "played them once years ago" memory-bracket, if that makes sense? I'd be interested in seeing how you would write a chart for that scenario, especially if you wanted to retain some of the detail. At this current time I'm resigned to having to still need to get on the kit, in order to get *into* the song and find the best way of condensing the structure/drum parts, as opposed to doing it all at the desk. I do write it at the desk, but as soon as I get on the kit and play the song, I'm not long into the structure before I'm hit by a pile of things that my brain *wants* to see while reading, which I haven't written.