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Drum tabs

A person who has never seen drum tabs written out might not understand what it even is they are looking at. Drum tabs look different from other written music and can appear almost to be a new language.

Typical drum tabs will list the parts for cymbals on the top and then list the parts for a tom on the bottom. A person should only use as many lines as he needs to show all the drum parts. A general rule for writing drum tabs is that they should be as simple as possible.

A person who wants to write drum tabs must be able to know what the abbreviations for different drum parts are. Knowing this can take some studying. BA or B represents the bass drum. If a person owns a double bass, he might write B1 for the first bass and B2 for the second.

SN or S represents the snare; RC or R is for ride cymbal; CC or C represents the crash cymbal; SC represents the splash cymbal and HH or H is the hi-hat. The trick is to remember what each of these abbreviations means when the drum is being played.

• Symbols used – There are symbols used in drum tabs that let people learning the music know more about what is written down. For example, v.slow means very slow, while v.fast means very fast. Also, the letter x can be used to help a person understand more about the music that has been written. For example, if x3 is written down in the drum tabs, this simply means that a selection should be played three times.

 

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