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(rock music)
- Hey guys.
It's Randy Cooke here at Drumeo.
And I get asked this question
all the time
throughout the years,
how do you do as many gigs
as you do if you can't rehearse all the time.
Do you memorize everything that you play?
And the answer is no.
Thank goodness, I can write cheat notes.
I can write little charts
to get me through the songs
as accurately as possible
to recreate what I'm hearing
and to play the song as close as possible
to the drums that I'm hearing.
What that does is it alleviates you
from having to memorize
every single song every time you play somewhere
because there will be times
when somebody will say,
"hey, we don't have time to rehearse,
"can you actually just show up to the gig
"and learn 20 songs?
"And the gig's tomorrow."
Now, imagine trying to memorize 20 songs for tomorrow.
Very difficult.
Some can do it, but most cannot.
So, here is a survival method
of writing a chart
where it's clean,
you're not using staff paper
that makes it look busy or messy,
and it's shorthand.
It's drummer shorthand.
Write the least amount of stuff
that you need to get on the paper to still
make you play the right thing.
So I'm going to explain,
we're going to play a track
from a band called All Good Things
that I've recorded a bunch of songs of
and two or three CDs with.
And I'm going to actually play
the track
and stop it and start it and show you how quickly
you can make a cheat note
and how accurately and thoroughly
you can recreate what you hear
without writing tons of notes
and tons of notation on the piece of paper.
Okay.
So I'm going to do this on the fly.
I'm going to listen to the music.
Start it and stop it, write out the notes.
If you can't see this very clearly,
you can download the pdf in the description below
and read along with it.
So here we go, it's going to be fun.
I'll show you what I do.
So we're going to listen to the first couple of bars.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
Well, there you go.
There's no drums there.
There's a loop, a drum loop.
So, you're not supposed to play for two bars so
we're just going to go rest,
two bars.
There we go.
So don't play anything.
Let's hear the drums come in.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
There's the first drum beat.
(imitates drum beats)
I'm using a marker.
What didn't I write?
You can't see this,
I didn't write
any hi-hats.
Any ride cymbals, any crash cymbal,
I didn't write anything.
I just wrote the kicks and the snares.
Well, I'm just going to put in the corner here,
HH
eighths.
So,
there's my little note.
HH eighth notes.
Because
why do you need to write
eight notes
you just know to play eighth notes.
Most pop rock music, pop music, funk music,
it's all 4/4, it's all eighth notes on the hi-hat.
Or it's to the ride or eighth notes on the floor toms
so just write eighth notes.
There's the first part.
So as you can see, I'm already telling you a secret.
Hi-hat eighth notes.
If it changes to ride, just write ride
eighths.
If it changes to crash and the crash is quarters,
crash, quarters, that's all you need.
You don't need to actually write every quarter note out.
Okay, so,
we're going to go on.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
Okay.
At the end of that second bar,
there was a little variation in the kick pattern.
It went
(imitates drum beats)
There was three kicks.
I'm going to ignore those.
I'm going to just say,
one
plus
fill.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
Now,
because the guitars are playing with that fill,
right about I might just put
four 16th notes
right up here.
Maybe some accents right above them.
And here's another thing.
You'll notice.
I don't always actually write the notes because
why do you need to write the little
note part?
You can tell that it's a grouping of four 16th notes.
I can tell if I can write the little dangly notes there
but really,
I didn't have to do that.
I didn't have to write these little things.
If I just see
a grouping like this,
you know that that's four 16th notes.
You don't need me to write the big ball things on the end.
Fine so,
here we go, moving on.
There's our drum fill.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
There's the first part.
Now you can tell
the guy's gone to crash ride so
oh by the way that guy was me.
I'm just going to write crash.
And let's listen to the drum beat in the first part.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
(imitates drum beats)
Notice that I'm just writing groupings.
Listening again.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
One more snare drum at the end
of that fourth beat so I've written it in.
So there you have it.
Here is the first bar.
(imitates drum beats)
So,
let's listen on.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
Now you just heard four bars.
There were a couple of different things on the snare
right near the end.
Skip over it.
You've got the core drum beat.
(imitates drum beats)
you can variate a little bit.
Maybe you might miss a snare here and there but
you've got the gist, you've got the energy and the essence
of this section.
So I'm just going to put four underneath it
and fill.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
Now here we are on the verse.
So I'm going to put V.
I'm going to write hi-hats again.
Once you get used to this method,
you wouldn't even write hi-hats
because you know in every verse,
it's normally going to go to the hi-hats
so you may not even write HH eighths.
That's what I wrote there.
Let's listen to the pattern of the verse.
("Are you Ready for this" by All Good Things)
♪ Living breathing for a single moment
♪ We left everything we had behind
There it is.
(imitates drum beats)
So there's our verse part.
And it's going to repeat.
So let's just count along.
♪ Living breathing for a single moment
♪ We left everything we had behind
♪ Time to roll brothers out and over
♪ Nothing to lose nothing but time
Now there's something special at the end of that fourth bar.
So I'm just going to write three under there
and we're going to write out that fourth bar.
Let's listen to the fourth bar.
♪ Time to roll brothers out and over
♪ Nothing to lose nothing but time
(imitates drum beats)
Almost.
♪ Brothers out and over
♪ Nothing to lose nothing but time
(imitates drum beats)
And there we go.
There's that fourth bar.
Now,
notice
instead of writing
actual 16th note rests in between these two 16th notes,
I just literally,
I have a marker so it's a little thicker,
I just put dotes
and sometimes if I'm using a pencil or pen,
I literally now
just do dots.
So, let's pretend you got four 16th notes.
Here is the actual right way
and here's what I do.
Let's pretend you have
a grouping.
Here's what it's supposed to look like
right?
There's your figure
with two 16th note rests in the middle.
All I do is this.
Do you see it?
Looks like two eyeballs.
So you can see this means 16ths.
Here are my two notes.
And the two dots means a rest and a rest.
Now when you get fast and you start writing like that
there's less on the paper
and you can get through it.
Okay, moving on.
♪ Nothing to lose nothing but time
♪ Are you sure you want to take this road now
And the first bar, that next verse,
I want to write that out too
because it's a little different
which is one and two
(imitates drum beats)
rest, um, bap
(imitates drum beats)
listen to it again.
♪ Nothing to lose nothing but time
♪ Are you sure you want to take this road now
There you go.
There's that bar.
Let's listen on.
I think it goes back to the regular verse pattern.
♪ This road now
♪ Are you certain that you're gonna win
♪ Did they tell you that
♪ Are you sure you wanna take this road now
♪ Are you certain that you're gonna win
♪ Did the tell you that it could be over
♪ Over and done before you begin
Okay so,
again,
it goes back to the regular verse pattern.
And even though
you heard that fill at the end of the four bars,
this is your time to shine.
Play the fill that you like
that still fits in the vibe and
in the 16th vibe of it,
you don't need to write the fill out
that's never important I promise you.
So all I've done is
written three
and fill.
So three play this bar three times and fill.
Now we're at the pre-chorus already.
♪ Over over and done before you begin
♪ Everything you know will not prepare you
♪ Nothings gonna change if you resist
♪ Everything you got bring it on we dare you
This is amazing.
We see this all the time in bridges and in pre choruses.
Floor tom ride.
So am I going to write out every floor tom hit?
Of course not.
I'm just going to write
F-L, T-M, ride.
I'm not even going to put eighth notes
because the whole tune so far
has been eighth notes.
Whether it's crash or hi-hats,
floor tom ride,
there it is.
And the kick and snare pattern is just
(imitates drum beats)
It's that simple.
Of course, while you're playing the
(imitates drum beats)
you want to put some extra stuff in there.
So sometimes in brackets,
I just write the word loopy.
Like loop.
Extra
(scatting)
if I don't write the word loopy
and I just write straight,
I'm going to be really simple about it.
So anyway, here we go.
Almost at the chorus.
♪ Nothings gonna change if you resist
♪ Before you begin
♪ Everything you know will not prepare you
♪ Nothings gonna change if you resist
♪ Everything you got bring it on we dare you
♪ Nothing will compare to this
♪ It's an avalanche
Four bars and fill.
So I wrote four and fill.
No need to script out the exact fill.
You know if you're filming a video for this,
of course you want to have this but anyways,
we're almost done.
We're at the chorus.
I heard that it's crash.
Right, so I just put crash.
♪ Everything you got bring it on we dare you
♪ Nothing can compare to this
♪ It's an avalanche
♪ It's a critical mass
♪ It's a massive attack
♪ It will kick your ***
♪ Bring the fire take your chances
Okay so,
you can hear
the main beat changes only a little bit,
but the main beat is just
(drumming)
That is the main essence of that beat.
You can add a snare here or there.
You can add a kick drum here or there.
But I'm not going to write any of that out.
Because you're just going to naturally play
a couple of little different things
but keeping the main
(drumming)
you can go
(drumming)
or
(dumming)
you get it right?
So super simple so.
Here's the chorus, let's just listen out.
♪ It's a critical mass
♪ If you resist
♪ Everything you got bring it on we dare you
♪ Nothing can compare to this
♪ It's an avalanche
♪ It's a critical mass
♪ It's a massive attack
♪ It will kick your ***
♪ Bring the fire and you take your chances
♪ Start the fire and we'll bring your answer
♪ Whoa are you ready for this
♪ Whoa are you ready for this
Now you hear these shots.
So I'm going to write shots.
Put one and then the two e
rest and rest.
The shots
I'm just going to put
snare drum slash kick
slash floor tom.
So now,
you can see
I just have the figure here
bum, way and a two e, three,
four
one e and a two e, three, four.
Let's see how many bars that happens for.
♪ Are you ready for this
♪ Whoa are you ready for this
And I had the little snare
snare fill.
Just write
and snare fill.
You can make your own.
And we're already at the second verse.
Of course, when you're writing this with a pencil or pen
you can do it much smaller.
But this is the idea.
I'm going to play along now.
I'm going to go back to the beginning.
I think I can just play along with this.
And you get the idea.
If I'd never heard this song before,
ever,
and I came in and I played this
the way I've written it,
you'd be fine.
You would be absolutely great.
Hopefully, you're playing to a click
so you got the right tempo.
But you be at the hi-hats when it says hi-hats,
you go to the crash when it says crash.
You go to the floor tom when it says floor tom.
You're going to be good to go.
So, here we go.
This is a method, this is a short hand that works for me.
I've seen other guys write to
different words for a loopy,
they write funky
or they write more grace notes.
You pick what works for you
but just
pick up
the idea that
you don't need to write everything,
just write the main stuff
and the bar numbers and when to play a fill
or when not to play a fill
and you're going to be good to go.
I'm going to play along with this now
from the beginning right to the second verse.
You can download the pdf and play along, read along.
And I'll see you back at Drumeo
where there's so much more stuff to be
be heard and listened to and learned
and play along with, it's going to be so good.
I'll see you guys.