Plus, in this age of the internet, tabs are the ultimate way for drummers to help each other.
Since drums don't play "notes" (for the most part), the staff is turned into a more sophisticated drum tab itself. For drums, tabs and "musical notation" are hardly different. The only difference is that our tabs can eliminate unneeded lines as we go along, simplifying matters. Now let's tab it out:ī|o-o-oo-oo-o-Notice something? That's right, they look nearly identical. So when you tab out a drum track, it looks almost exactly like the staff. Instead of everything being on a totally separate line, they use the lines and spaces. But since on our drums, all we're doing is knowing WHEN to hit a surface (as opposed to when and how long), this limitation of tabs is fairly irrelevant.įurthermore, the musical staff is simply tabs condensed. On something like guitar, this can be a HUGE thing because you can sustain notes and that doesn't really come across on a tab. The only REAL difference between the two is that tabs indicate duration spatially, the staff does it notationally. Why? Well, here's going to be a bit of a brain-breaker, so get ready.įor drums, the staff and tabs are nearly the same thing.Ĭry all you want, but it's true.
Take that measure and play it on the drums and it'll be completely different. It'll be the same melody, because all instruments play the same notes as written out on a staff. Sing it, play it on a piano, on a guitar, on a violin, a harp, a trombone, whatever. It doesn't matter what instrument you play that on, it's going to sound the same (basically). Drums don't have this issue, because drums do not use the musical staff in the way that any other instrument does.
The reason those are a problem is that the way they are written is completely different than musical notation. The problem is that drum tabs seem to be victim of the far more justified criticisms of guitar and bass tabs. The path to mastery is through understanding the theory behind how it works. Embrace time signatures and tempo dynamics. Know your polyrhythms, your common times, your tuplets and dotted quarter notes. No matter what comes after this paragraph, know that learning musical notation in all its forms is key to being a better musician. Let me start off by saying that if you're a new musician, drum tabs are a crutch that you WILL need to learn to break yourself from. So allow me to take a moment to defend this poor, misunderstood, and incredibly useful tool. The reasons they're "bad" aren't exactly unfounded, but I think they take a bit of a left turn and now are left with a stigma that they don't deserve. I hear a lot of hate for drum tabs on these here internets.
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