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Thread: Sight reading

  1. #1

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    Hey guys, I've been drumming for awhile now, and I started out just playing not reading music. Its gotten to the point where i really need to learn how to sight read, what would be the best way to go about this. I have tried to sight read, but i cant find the perfect way. taking all comments. Thanks guys.
    They say im the crazy drummer, I have to disagree, I am the psyhcotic drummer.

  2. #2

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    To become proficient at sight reading you have to do it, and then do it some more, and then do it even more, and when you are doing with that, sight read some more.

    Do you know how to read music at all? There are some decent online tutorials that will teach you some fundamentals such as time signatures, note names and values, basic rhythms, concepts like sycopation, holds, rests, attacks/accents, dynamic markings, etc, and how that all looks on the page.

    As a trumpet player I depended upon my ability to read music and sight read. As a drummer, the most I have ever done is to put together a shorthand chart - I "can" read drum charts if I absolutely have to, but I'm not very good at it, and I have never done it for an ensemble. One of the things I enjoy about being a drummer is that I can play off the cuff without looking at a page and it's perfectly ok.

    I was in my local Guitar Center one day when Dennis Chambers happened to be in there (he comes in every now and again because he lives nearby) and one of the topics that came up was one day when he was recording, and the producer got all bent out of shape because Dennis doesn't read music. Dennis' contention was to simply say, "just tell me what you want, and I'll give it to you." I mean, he's Dennis Chambers - there is a reason he gets the work he does.
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  3. #3

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    I know the notes. But I can't sight read. I can't even sight read stuff I already know how to play. Go figure.
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  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kazaamski View Post
    I know the notes. But I can't sight read. I can't even sight read stuff I already know how to play. Go figure.
    That's what you should work on first - dig in and slowly go through it so that you really know what it is you are seeing and can correlate it directly with what you are playing. That's the only way to make that connection. I know - I make it sound easy, and the truth is, I've kind of forgotten that learning process - I started learning to read music in 1981 in 5th grade band!

    Just keep after it. It's like anything else - you have to reall work it before it will become second nature.
    Your = possessive - your stuff, your dog, your car, etc
    You're = you are - a contraction.

    Learn it. Love it.

  5. #5

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    Well, i played trumpet in Band through out school, i know how to read music that's a definite, i can read drum music to a certain level, but i find it hard to sight read drum music, even though i know the notes. i guess where I'm so use to reading trumpet music, I'm so used to seeing it. i just wanted the best way to actually read, i'm guessing take it slow and play it out note by note, and gradually speed up up as i catch on?
    They say im the crazy drummer, I have to disagree, I am the psyhcotic drummer.

  6. #6

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    I think that as a trumpet player, the hardest thing about reading drum music is incorporating multiple lines of different rhythm into a single cohesive idea.

    A good friend of mine is an accomplished organist - when he's reading music, he's typically reading 3 lines at once - treble and bass clef for his hands, and another line of bass clef for the pedals.

    Just take it slow and keep after it. Progress on something like that is not measured in days or even weeks - think months and years.
    Your = possessive - your stuff, your dog, your car, etc
    You're = you are - a contraction.

    Learn it. Love it.

  7. #7

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    You can practice sight reading with books you may already have. For example, if you have the stick control book, you can play jazz beat on the ride, two and four on the hat then go for pages playing the written parts on the snare, then the bass. For fun you can play the written parts on the base and fill in the missing triplets on the snare. The teen pages work best in that book.

  8. #8

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    I'm with Kaz on this. I can "read" music, but can't sight read to save my a**.

    I was in a improvisational jazz band in college. Took the guy teaching it almost 2 months before he realized I was just pretending to look at the charts.

  9. #9

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    Are you drumming for an orchestra or in a marching band? It might not be a necessary skill to learn if you're just jamming with your friends in a garage band. I mean it's a great skill to have, but it's not always needed depending on who you're drumming with. A school will likely demand you learn to read sheet music, but if you can learn songs and master drum parts without it- why worry?
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  10. #10

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    I'm not in an orchestra, or marching band, i just want to be able to read alot better, I would just like to have the skill when looking at doing drum covers.
    They say im the crazy drummer, I have to disagree, I am the psyhcotic drummer.

  11. #11

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    When doing simple reading exercises, read vertically as well as horizontally. That's what we have in common with piano and keyboard players. I get all my students to know their note and rest values - know the difference between 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16th notes and their corresponding rests, know how that simple rudiments such as singles, doubles, triplets, rolls, flams and drags etc help to make up fills and rhythms and how to locate a familiar rudiment within a written figure, and also quickly see what written pitch on the stave corresponds to what part of the set, especially when coming up to fills at the end of 4 bar, 8 bar and 16 bar phrases in exercises or charts. The thing is, you have to start reading with real simple rhythms and fills, before you can push yourself with the harder stuff. Do it daily, incorporate it as part of your practice routine for a few minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, then more. You'll need the guidance of a good drum teacher, or even a friend or someone you know who is a good drum student who is competent enough with reading.

    Treat it as a language that you're starting to learn, because then when you have reached a level of proficiency, looking at a chart or exercise will be like reading a book in that language. Don't forget, a number of languages have very different writing systems or alphabets, but apart from English, French to a lesser extent, and a few others, the vast majority of world languages are more or less phonetic. To give you an example, Russian, which I only studied for less than a year in high school over two decades ago. It took me two weeks to master the 33 letters in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian shares this with Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and a few other Slavic languages from Eastern Europe). Two Aussie-born Russian friends of mine used to hold up some home-made 'cue-cards' with these letters for me to memorise, but what I also found was that some letters were already familiar because they came from Greek letters (things you can be familiar with when you do maths). No, although nowadays my Russian's really,really rusty, because the alphabet's been so 'burned into my brain', so to speak, that virtually any sign, subtitle etc written in Russian or Cyrillic, even though I may not really understand it until I pull out the dictionary, at least I can straightaway read and pronounce it, then ask a native speaker what it means. It's just like an instant reflex for me, even now (and yeah, it does freak a few people out, considering that I've never even have remotely stepped into that country). It was just that for that period of time I was hanging out with these two mates just about every day and next thing you know it became natural. I've done the same thing with Italian, only for much much longer....for me, it's just as natural to switch between Italian and English as it is for native speakers who are friends of mine. You just don't think too hard about it, but in orer to get there I really had to get my grounding in the grammar, vocabulary and so forth. All made a lot easier seeing that I read it a lot still to this day. The key is do it frequently, as daily as you can, just as you should be doing with reading music. In fact you got to thank the Italians for standardising the way we write and read music nowadays.
    Last edited by Drumbledore; 02-14-2012 at 02:56 AM.
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  12. #12

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    Sight reading is a weird thing. It's one of those things you just have to do and do and do and do and do. It's funny because I also play the piano and I'm awful at sight reading on the piano however on the drums I am confident and can sight read with ease. I think it's because the way I learnt the drums way by sitting down with a book working through the excercises by sight reading my way through them, meaning that I've basically always sight read the drums. However because I was considerably younger when I started learning the piano I learnt in a different way. All I can say is buy a book that when you look at the music in it it seems easy but then just work your way through them.
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  13. #13

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    Crazed, are you looking at Drum Tabs to read or actual sheet music? I ask because there's a difference and a lot of people confuse the two. Tabs are more common and many are free on the web. Sheet music you usually pay for the use.

  14. #14

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    I'm looking at tabs, not sheet music.
    They say im the crazy drummer, I have to disagree, I am the psyhcotic drummer.

  15. #15

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    Tabs, OK, now we're getting somewhere. Being an older drummer tabs really confuse me-it's almost as if I have to be familiar with the song before I can make sense of some of the directions! So no help from me, I'm sorry to say. Just a warning that not all tabs are accurate!

  16. #16

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    That cool, thanks for your help though. I have noticed that alot of them aren't accurate, but i guess, for now ill just take it slow.
    They say im the crazy drummer, I have to disagree, I am the psyhcotic drummer.

  17. #17

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    Practice, simple rhythms, and then sight read it backwards. You know what it sounds like forwards, but not backwards! When I play the trombone for concert band, my teacher suggests reading the pieces backward after reading it forward, to improve my sight reading. It definitely helps!
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  18. #18

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    Tabs are a lot easier, at least the ones I have used before. They use abbreviations and letters instead of symbols like you find in sheet, making less guesswork for you. I love tabs.
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