Score Reading From Scratch: Part 1
Posted on July 31, 2008
Counting 4 Quarter-Notes, creating measures by adding bar lines!
In an earlier post i told you 5 common rumors about drum notes and why it’s important to get into score reading.
Now it’s time to start a workshop series for absolute beginners. You will learn to fool around with those f**g notes and how you can use them to master your playing.
It’s a start from scratch so it possibly bores the more experienced of you… but it also might be an inspiration for some.
So calm down, notes are cool, and this workshop will take the pain from you ;)
If you’re looking for more advanced score stuff here on dooDrum.com i recommend the post Chris Frazier Transcription…
How we count a usual 4/4 Beat and write it down!
Just start by counting to 4. Do it loud and with a straight rhythm as if it was your Bass-Drum in a song:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -
Okay. Now restart at 1 and repeat:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -
Do that again and repeat it on and on. Every number is equal to each other, no variation in tempo, just imagine a heart beat. That’s the reason we’re often talk about the “pulse” of a song.
Write it down!
Now, let’s say you have counted the four numbers numerous times and you want to write it down. But look at this:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -
This is a mess! Right after a few numbers your eyes can’t follow the numbers easily anymore. It’s just hard to read!
So we subdivide the numbers with a vertical line:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - |
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - ||
Wow, cool! Reading these groups is much easier than before. What we did was simply adding bar lines. Every group of four is a measure. What we have here is a clear straight 4/4 beat!
This just means it goes to 4, by 4 equal steps. Don’t think too much about this point, we will figure it out soon enough ;)
Doubled bar line!
Note that i’ve closed those 8 measures with a doubled bar line. Here it marks the end of the score but we can use doubled lines for many other reasons.
Count out loud, read while you are counting and stop at the double bar line.
Bar lines and doubled bar lines are only optical elements that help to organize a score sheet. They make it easier to read and have no musical meaning. For example, you don’t have to make a break or play a special tone only because you’re crossing a bar line.
Time Signature
If anybody gives you a sheet of music it’s most unlikely that there are numbers on it like in this lesson.
Also, in most cases there will be much more notes and signs than only our four quarters. Perhaps it looks like this:
O o O o O o O o | O o O o O o O o ||
I’ve changed the numbers (quarters) into big O’s, filled the space between them with small o’s, which makes it look a bit confusing again, even with bar lines.
How many quarter notes does this measure contain? You can hardly be sure on the first sight.
To give you a hint i add a time signature at the beginning of the part:
4/4 || O o O o O o O o | O o O o O o O o ||
Now you can see directly that this is a 4/4 Beat which makes it a little bit easier to get into the sheet…
Odd meters!
Possibly you are still a bit confused about that or just think that it’s easy to identify a 4/4 on the first sight anyway.
But there can be many other time signatures like 3/4, 7/8, 12/8, 5/4, 15/16 for example. I call them odd meters because they are not so common like the 4/4 Beat, except 3/4 (Waltz) and 12/8 (Blues)
When you’re reaching those heights there will be no more questions about notation ;)
Repeat Sign
Let’s go another small step ahead. Sometimes (pretty often) the song requires to repeat one and the same part, one after another.
Instead of writing down both parts (which are actually the same), we better use the repeat signs ||: and :||
4/4 || 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - ||: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - | 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - :||
When you cross the first mark ||: try to remember its position.
When you reach :|| jump back to the first mark and play all following measures again.
After reaching :|| the second time, just ignore it and keep on playing the rest of the song.
While the whole part sounds like 5 measures we only need to write 3 onto the paper, cool eh?
How does it look like on the music paper?
Quarter Notes
I’ve just put all of the information onto a stave.
You can see the time signature, the repeat signs and 4 cool Quarter Notes instead of numbers and o’s.
You can easily figure out that there are four strokes, all appear to be same looking, which means that they all are having the same length and there is no change in tempo or rhythm; just 4 permanent beats.
In the next lesson we will orchestrate these 4 strokes and i will add some sound files.
Stay tuned and keep on rocking.
» Filed Under Drum Score
Comments
Leave a Reply
