In our Level 1 lessons collection a lot of individual ideas are covered to improve your drumming, but what we haven't done is discuss how these will all be combined when learning a song. In this lesson series we are going to be discussing a step by step process on how to work through a piece of sheet music that is going to be particularly useful for absolute beginners. It may be useful to look at our General Reading Tips lesson too.
Before I list the steps here's a bit of general information about things that are common to every piece of sheet music.
- Page Numbers: Pretty self explanatory. In our newer sheet music these tell you what page you are on out of how many pages. In older sheet music it just gives you the page number.
- Title: The title of the song. In newer sheet music this is shown at the top of every page from page 2 on.
- Metronome Mark: This is directly beneath the title and is a note value with '=' followed by a number. This tells you the tempo of the song. Put that number into a metronome and it will click at the correct speed.
- Artist: This is directly across to the right from the metronome mark and shows who the song is by.
- Structure Markings: These are the strange abbreviations in the left hand margin. We have a very comprehensive guide to these in our general lessons section but they basically tell you which section of the song you are in.
- Cleff: This tells you what note range you are playing and in drum music it looks a bit like this '||'. This is the cleff for untuned percussion.
- Time Signature: This is the two numbers above each other right at the start of the notation. Check our guide on this subject for more information.
- Bar Numbers: These are the small numbers at the start of each line. These are used as a reference point to help show which bar we might be talking about.
The 6 step process is listed below.
Step 1: Scan
Have a scan over the sheet music and look out for anything in the notation that you really don't understand. What you are particularly looking for are any note heads you don't know. If you do come across one, have a look at our guide to parts of the kit. Remember, if the note head is a circle it's a drum, an x a cymbal and anything else is likely to be percussion.
The point of this scanning process is to make sure you understand all of the notation in the score so that when you sit down to start working on the parts you can move through it much quicker. Whilst looking through the score you will also start to spot parts that you already know how to play.
Step 2: Listen
When you are happy that you understand all of the notation our next step will be to listen to the song whilst trying to follow the sheet music along with it. If you do this with headphones you will hear the drum part much clearer. The aim here is to familiarize you with tempo, structure, basic parts and to highlight any areas you may find hard to learn. This will also help you understand how repeated sections might be working.
It is useful to do this a couple of times before you move over to your kit. If the song is particularly fast it can also be useful to use software to slow the tempo down. I personally use Windows Media Players 'play speed settings' to do this, audacity is another of many options.
Step 3: Learn The Parts Step By Step
With many songs you will be able to sit at the kit and just dive straight in and sight read the vast majority of the parts. If, however, you are new to using sheet music or are perhaps learning a song above your level of playing it will be much more beneficial to break the song down into several smaller parts.
First of all go section by section. By this I mean learn the intro first, and don't move on until you have the intro part down. Then move on to the next section and keep moving through in this way. Whilst doing this identify parts that you are struggling with. Maybe highlight them or put a mark above them on your sheet music then spend time playing that bar over and over. The Two Minute Rule practice technique is great for things like this.
Step 4: Put The Parts Together
Once you have learned all the parts and sections separately you will then need to put them all together to create the full part. In this step you will be focusing on transistions between both structural sections as well as individual bars. Make sure there are no areas that you consistently slip up on.
Step 5: Practice And Memorize
The last step is all about getting rid of any little bugs in your playing then memorizing the part so you don't need to use the sheet music any more. Here you will be playing a long to the recording of the song and ensuring that you can do this. If you keep going wrong in any areas you will probably need to jump back to steps 3 and 4.
Step 6: Improvisation
This is an optional step! Whilst going through the above steps you may have found some different ways to play the parts that you think sound cooler. This is awesome and is what music is all about! I would advise learning the song as written first so that you can take away some new ideas for your own playing but once you can do that go crazy with it!
