Chart interpretation for drummers

Knowing how to play drums does not necessarily make you the right musician for the gig. This has become all too clear to me recently as the owner of a talent booking agency where I sit through dozens of auditions a week.

Some drummers have amazing chops, great time, and whatever other skills we value so much as drummers, but once the band starts playing and the drummer is “facing the music,” it’s a different story.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is not enough for drummers to be able to read the chart and play “ink” like a horn player does in a horn section. We have to seemingly guess what the composer wants but failed to include in the chart.
This can be a blessing, and it can be a pain…

You may be backing up a singer or instrumentalist who can’t understand that even though everyone has a chart, there may still be questions as to how the song is supposed to go. They may know exactly what they want but they may not be able to convey this in musical terms. Most don’t know what they want to begin with. Best-case scenario is when they know exactly what they want and know how to communicate this effectively to the drummer, and the band. (Trust me when I say that this happens 1 time out of 10).

Why? Why is it that everyone else seems to have a good chart and can just play it down and go home, while we have to figure out whether this chart is supposed to be played literally or not, whether we are supposed to add our own input, or whether we’re supposed to make up a new chart on the fly?

I believe it is a combination of a lot of variables. I believe that inadequate budgets often lead entertainers to hire mediocre arrangers. Some entertainers are simply unable to communicate to the arranger what they want the song to sound like to begin with. Most of the same entertainers have had the same charts for 25 years that show a multitude of pencil markings of last-minute changes. In this case, not only are the pencil markings making it harder to read the chart down, but also the arrangement itself often suffers in the process.
Also, arrangers that are not drummers may have difficulties writing for drummers.

So what are some of the ambiguities that we face?
Some are more technical than others. For example, arrangers often indicate a “feel” on the top left hand corner on the chart, without actually writing out a groove. It may say “Samba.” Now, does that mean they want a more traditional samba, which we may play on the snare drum and toms, or do they want a more jazzy type of samba where you play syncopated samba patterns on the bell of the ride, or do they mean a sixteenth-note hi-hat pattern with a backbeat like they often did in the ‘70s?

To us drummers, this sounds like this problem could be easily avoided, right? But to some arrangers or entertainers this can be very hard to explain. They may have a good idea about what the music should sound like because they’ve heard the original, but they may not be able to write it out properly or explain it to the drummer simply because they don’t know the drummer’s language.

Nowadays you come across a lot of charts that were printed using a music notation software. This can often lead to a chart that doesn’t make any sense to us drummers. Some of these charts even fail to put the notes corresponding to hihat, snare and bass drum in the right places. This, combined with a missing indication of musical styles completely leaves us in the dark.

Some of the problems we can encounter can be less obvious. In many cases it is hard to figure out whether the entertainer wants a chart played with a lot of energy or whether he/she wants it softer. Sometimes charts are written so badly that one can’t figure out where the climax is supposed to be, which is so important for us drummers. A band will naturally follow the drummer if he/she picks up the energy or drops it. It is thus important for us to have clear instructions on what the song structure is.

I could go on listing numerous little problems that we drummers have to deal with that stem from missing information on the chart, discussing all problems is beyond the scope of this article, however.

So does this mean we are doomed to play badly? The answer is no!

I believe that if you play most of your gigs in a specific musical setting -- musical theatre, for example -- you’ll find that a lot of the same problems keep coming up. This gives you a chance to learn from them and remember what you learned for the next time.

Nevertheless, here are a few things that you can do in order to prepare as best you can:

1. Try to get the charts ahead of time, preferably with a live recording of a previous performance of the show. This will allow you to sit down and clarify the following things:
- Name of the song (I’ve often started a song not knowing at all what to expect yet after the first couple of bars I realized that I had played this before. I never bothered reading the title)
- Style of music (compare what the previous drummer played to what’s written on the chart)
- Tempo (pay attention to tempo changes as well as ‘colla voce’ sections and fermatas)
- Road Map (including eventual changes to the arrangement)
If there are sections where you don’t play, try to find out ahead of time who does, and whether there are tempo or style changes in that section.
- Erase any unnecessary pencil markings that only lead to confusion. Make sure to leave the important ones in there.
- Try to get a hold of your bandmates’ charts, especially piano and bass, maybe even lead trumpet, in order to familiarize yourself with their parts.

2. Once you’ve prepared the chart on your own and you are unsure about something, approach your musical director or the entertainer about this before the first rehearsal.