Winds/strings have chord charts or scores in jazz and rock, and classical music uses scores for drums and percussion. How do jazz and rock drummers and percussionists chart their parts so that they play the same way each time a song is performed? I’m especially interested for prog rock, where the drum parts can be very detailed and intricate.
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Think about the process and how often a song has to be practiced and rehearsed before you eventually get to play it. You may play something a thousand times in smaller gigs and practices. It also really helps when you are the one writing the songs and working through improving it that helps it stick better.
Drum parts in jazz and rock have a high degree of repetition and short length of repeated units. A lot of drum parts are variations on a few basic patterns. Prog rock drum parts are more complex, but there are often still repeated sections. This makes them easier to remember.
Besides repetition (both inside the song itself and during rehearsals) there is such a thing as sheet music for drums in the non-classical field but that’s more of a learning tool than a consistency thing
Magazines for drummers often contain sheet music for the most interesting parts of certain songs, the same way guitarist magazines have riffs and licks in tab format
Plus there are plenty of online resources like https://thedrumninja.com/drum-transcriptions/
Drums have charts too. Some drummers use charts, some memorize. There’s a lot of repetition, so it’s mostly a combination of practice, and memorizing things like “the solo lasts 5 measures” etc. prog rock is particularly difficult, but it’s all just a combination of practice and remembering things.
They don’t. Not always. There’s lots of mistakes.
But so long as they’re sharp on the transitions — the signals to the other musicians or the signals from other musicians they have to follow — it all sounds just as if it was perfectly planned and executed.
(Same for guitar players; bass players; keyboards; vocalists: mistake happen but you get really good and just moving on!!!)
Used to play in a rock/alt/prog band.
Our drummer never used charts, but instead we spent a lot of time in the writing/rehearsal stage nailing down the structure.
We’d lay out the broad strokes i.e Verse 16 bars, pre-chorus 4 bars, chorus etc etc and lock that down before getting into the nitty gritty stuff like matching drum fills to the scratch vocal track or synchronising runs with the bass guitar.
With enough rehearsal and practice a 7-min song with multiple meters and parts becomes second nature.
>so that they play the same way each time a song is performed?
Part of the answer is that this rarely actually happens. To someone just enjoying the song as a listener, the minor variations won’t be noticed. If you were to record several live performances of the same drummer playing the same songs, then intricately analyze each of these performances you would most often find small differences. The foundational beat remains the same but the “spice” will be different.
Metal drummer here. I’m «classically» trained and can easily read notes. Still, when playing in a band 99% is memorisation and some improvising to keep the songs fresh and fun both for myself and the audience.
Even when playing for other projects I usually just memorise rather than read. I find myself having more energy to actually perform and immerse myself into the music when I don’t have a big sheet of paper in front of my face.
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