Well, you've come to the right place... I've read a lot of drum tablature and I know how to use Guitar Pro 5, so I'm your man I guess.
Basically drum tablature is almost exactly like reading drum music, except that there is no note values per se.
The stave is represented by symbols for each drum, a pipe "|" and then and appropriate number of dashes "-" to show timing.
e.g.
CC|----------------|
Ch|----------------|
Rd|----------------|
Sp|----------------|
HH|----------------|
t1|----------------|
t2|----------------|
SD|----------------|
FT|----------------|
BD|----------------|
Hf|----------------|
Ct|1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a|
Key:
CC - Crash Cymbal
Ch - China Cymbal
Rd - Ride Cymbal
Sp - Splash
HH - Hi-Hat
t1 - High Tom/Tom 1
t2 - Medium Tom/Tom 2
SD - Snare Drum
FT - Floor Tom
BD - Bass Drum
Hf - Hi-Hat foot
Ct - Count
Keep in mind that because there isn't a universal legend for tablature, many of the symbols have different variations. e.g. t1 can also be written t, and t2 written T.
Also, because many of the drums/cymbals aren't used in most bars, the stave is usually compacted by removing those drums. Most of the time you'll see the stave looking like this:
CC|----------------|
HH|----------------|
SD|----------------|
BD|----------------|
Secondly, each of the dashes "-" indicates the timing of the bar. For example, in the stave above, there are 16 dashes. This divides the bar into 16th notes. This is probably the most common division of tab bars.
Hits on tablature are denoted a number of ways. The most common is for drums to be notated with "o" and cymbals with "x". However, for accents, these are usually capitalised.
Legend:
o - regular drum hit
x - regular cymbal hit
O - accented drum hit
X - Accented cymbal hit
g - ghost note
b - bell (usually used on the ride)
# - Choke (cymbal hit then grabbed by the hand to stop the note short)
Those are the ones I can think of at the moment, the most common ones, if you find any others I'll gladly tell you what they mean.
Also, when writing tablature, it's important to use the font Courier New. It is a preformatted text that makes all the letters take up the same amount of space. This makes all of the dashes line up nicely.
That's pretty much all I have for now, if you have any more questions feel free to ask.
Hope that helps,
HB58
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