How to read drum sheet music: the drum key, counting and a first beat

The drum key, the counting exercises and the figures on this page come from the Hal Leonard Drumset Method, Book 1, by Kennan Wylie and Gregg Bissonette. The book teaches reading alongside setup and grip, then builds beats and fills in many styles, with audio and video lessons by Bissonette.

The first page of drum sheet music looks odd: a staff with no treble or bass clef, notes shaped like an x, stems pointing up and down at once. A drummer reads only two things from the page, though: which part of the kit to hit and when to hit it.

This guide explains the drum staff and the percussion clef, gives the drum key as a figure and a table, and shows how to count notes and rests. You then read a first rock beat step by step and play it with a metronome. It ends with the symbols you will meet next, drum tabs, two songs to read along with and a way to write a beat of your own.

Drum sheet music is written on a five-line staff with a percussion clef, where each line or space stands for one part of the kit instead of a pitch. In the most common key, the bass drum sits in the bottom space and the snare in the third space, with the toms around them. Cymbals and the hi-hat are x-shaped noteheads at the top of the staff. The rhythm reads the same way as in any other sheet music.

The staff and the percussion clef in drum sheet music

Drum music uses the same five-line staff as every other instrument. The five lines and the four spaces between them are counted from the bottom up: line 1 is at the bottom of the staff and line 5 at the top. You need those numbers to read a drum key, which names positions such as “third space” or “top line”.

At the start of the staff sits the percussion clef, two short vertical bars. A treble or bass clef tells a pianist which pitch each line means. The percussion clef says the opposite: this is music of indefinite pitch, and each position belongs to an instrument. Bar lines cut the staff into measures, also called bars, and a double bar line marks the end of a section.

The figure below, from the Hal Leonard Drumset Method, shows the staff with its lines and spaces numbered. Look for the two bars of the percussion clef sitting between the second and fourth lines.

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The drum key: which line is which drum

A drum key, also called a legend, is the map from staff positions to the parts of the kit. The key in this guide is the one printed in the Hal Leonard Drumset Method, Book 1, and every position named below follows it. Its layout copies the kit. The two pedals, played with the feet, sit lowest. The drums fill the middle of the staff, and the cymbals sit on and above the top line.

In the figure, the top staff holds the cymbals and the bottom staff holds the drums. Find the snare drum first: it is the round note in the third space, and after the hi-hat it is the note you will read most often.

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The table lists the same key from the top of the staff down, with the notehead for each sound and the limb that plays it.

The drum positions vary little. Most publishers write the bass drum in the bottom space and the snare in the third space, though a few charts put the snare on the middle line. The cymbals vary more. This key puts the hi-hat in the space above the top line and the ride cymbal on the top line. Other charts put the hi-hat on the top line and the ride in the space under it, and some write a cross-stick as an x where this key circles the note.

Drum notation is less standardized than notation for pitched instruments, which is why method books and transcriptions print their own key on the first pages. When a chart comes with a key, read it before the first bar and trust it over any other chart you have seen.

To connect the key with the instrument, match each row of the table to the kit seen from above. In the photo, from the same book, the hi-hat is on the drummer’s left and the ride cymbal on the right. The throne at the bottom of the picture is where you sit. What each part does, and how to set the kit up around the throne, is in the guide to the parts of a drum set.

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Round notes and x notes

Two notehead shapes carry most of the key. A round notehead is a drum: the bass drum, the snare or a tom. An x notehead is a cymbal or the hi-hat. The shape tells you whether the sound is a drum or a cymbal before you have worked out the exact line.

The key adds a few variations. A diamond on the ride line means the bell of the ride cymbal. A small circle above a hi-hat note means play it open, and a plus sign means closed. A circle around the snare note means cross-stick: the stick lies across the drum and clicks on the rim. Bigger kits add more positions, such as a splash cymbal or a second bass drum, and their charts add those sounds to the key.

Stems up for hands, stems down for feet

Most drumset music is written in two layers on one staff. Notes with stems pointing up are played by the hands: the hi-hat, the ride, the snare and the toms. Notes with stems pointing down are played by the feet: the bass drum and the hi-hat pedal. A note that looks upside down is an ordinary note in the foot layer.

Each layer has its own rests. A quarter rest printed low on the staff belongs to the feet only, and the hands keep playing above it. When two notes line up vertically, you play them at the same moment.

Rhythm on the drums: counting notes and rests

Rhythm in drum music works as it does for every instrument, with the same time signatures, note values and rests. The time signature is the pair of stacked numbers after the clef. The top number is how many beats are in each measure, and the bottom number is which note value gets one beat. In 4/4, the meter of most rock and pop songs, a measure has four beats and a quarter note is one beat. In 3/4 a measure has three quarter-note beats, and in 6/8 the eighth note gets the beat.

In 4/4 a whole note lasts four counts, a half note two and a quarter note one. Every note value has a rest of the same length, a silence that you count and do not play. A drum does not ring for four counts the way a piano does, so on the kit a long note mostly tells you how long to wait before the next hit.

The tree below, from the method book, shows one whole note splitting into two half notes and four quarter notes. The matching rests are listed under it.

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Lower on the same page, the book has a four-line exercise called “Check Your Note Values”, played on the snare in lines 1 and 3 and on the bass drum in lines 2 and 4. Lines 3 and 4 add quarter rests. Count “1, 2, 3, 4” along with the book’s recording of it and listen to the gap after each hit. It lasts four counts after a whole note, two after a half note and one after a quarter note.

Faster notes divide the beat. Eighth notes split each beat in two and are counted “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”; the numbers are the downbeats and the “ands” are the upbeats. Sixteenth notes split each beat in four and are counted “1 e & ah, 2 e & ah”, which some books print as “1 e & a”. A single eighth note has one flag on its stem and a sixteenth note has two. In groups, the flags join into one or two beams.

The next figure, also from the method, puts three speeds on the snare line in one exercise: quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes. The counting is printed above the notes and the sticking below them, R for the right hand and L for the left. Say the counts aloud while you tap it. The book’s own tip is that if you cannot say a rhythm, you cannot play it.

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Dotted notes, ties and the less common meters are covered in the guide to note values, rests and time signatures.

Read your first drum beat, step by step

The first beat most drummers learn is a rock beat in 4/4. The hi-hat keeps time, the snare plays beats 2 and 4, and the bass drum plays beats 1 and 3. The figure shows two bars of the beat with the counting under the first bar. Notice how the snare notes on 2 and 4 hang from the same stems as the hi-hat.

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Read the beat one layer at a time, then put the layers together.

1. Hi-hat. The eight x notes above the top line are eighth notes, beamed in fours. Play them with one stick, usually the right, and count “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”. Keep your left foot down on the hi-hat pedal so the cymbals stay closed.
2. Snare. The two round notes in the third space sit under the hi-hat on counts 2 and 4. Play them with the other hand, at the same moment as the hi-hat note above each one.
3. Bass drum. The round notes in the bottom space, with stems down, fall on counts 1 and 3. Play them with your foot. The rests beside them are the foot’s silence on 2 and 4.
4. All three. Count 1 is hi-hat and bass drum together. The “and” is hi-hat alone. Count 2 is hi-hat and snare together, followed by hi-hat alone. Counts 3 and 4 repeat the same four moves.

The recording builds the beat in the same order at 60 BPM: two bars of hi-hat alone, then the snare joins, then the bass drum. On count 1, the hi-hat and the bass drum land at the same moment and should sound like one note.

Set the metronome to 60 BPM and play one hi-hat note on each click and one between clicks. When you can play four bars in a row without stopping, raise the tempo to 80 BPM. Stay at each tempo until your feet no longer need your attention.

Once that beat is steady, the next step is reading beats in which the bass drum moves. The eight two-bar patterns below come from a later lesson of the Hal Leonard Drumset Method. In patterns 1 to 4 the hands play what they play in your first beat, so read only the lower layer, where the bass drum adds eighth notes and eighth rests. Patterns 5 and 6 thin the hi-hat to quarter notes, and patterns 7 and 8 move the snare to beat 3. Pattern 8 ends on an open hi-hat, the small circle above the last x.

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The book has a demonstration track for these patterns, so you can check your reading against the drums. Before it plays, count the eighth notes of a pattern aloud and name the count each bass drum note falls on. Then play the track and check whether the bass drum lands where you said.

For the beats after this one, in a sensible order, use a method book. The Hal Leonard Drumset Method, Book 1, by Kennan Wylie and Gregg Bissonette, is the source of the key and the figures on this page. It starts with setup, grip and basic reading, then builds beats and fills in many styles. The book comes with video lessons by Gregg Bissonette and with demonstration and play-along audio, including the two book recordings on this page, so you can check every beat you read against a recording.

Symbols you will meet next

After the key and the note values, a drum part adds a small set of marks that change how a note is played or how the bars are repeated. The table lists the ones a beginner meets first.

The legend below shows eight of these marks on the staff, each with its name. It is also the lower half of the free printable drum key, a one-page PDF to keep on the music stand.

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Flams, drags and rolls

Flams, drags and rolls are rudiments, the standard sticking patterns of snare drumming. The small notes are grace notes: they have no time of their own and land just before the main note. This page covers how they look on the staff. How to play them, with the sticking for each one, is in the guide to drum rudiments.

Dynamics and triplets

Dynamics are the letters under the staff that set the volume, from pp (very soft) through p, mp, mf and f to ff (very loud). A widening hairpin means get louder and a narrowing one means get softer. On a drum, volume comes from stick height, so a louder marking means a higher stroke.

A triplet is three even notes in the space of one beat, written as three eighth notes beamed together with a 3 above the group. Swing and shuffle music is built on triplets. A swing marking at the top of a chart tells you to play the written eighth notes with a triplet feel.

Longer charts add road-map signs such as D.S. and coda, which send you to another place in the music. They work as in any other part, and the guide to how to read sheet music explains them.

Drum tabs vs drum notation

A drum tab is a text version of a drum part. Each sound gets its own row, labeled with an abbreviation such as HH for hi-hat, SD for snare drum and BD for bass drum. An x marks a cymbal hit, an o marks a drum hit, and dashes fill the silence between them. Tabs are easy to type and to read at a glance, which is why so many are shared online.

Notation carries more. A tab shows rhythm only through the spacing of its characters, so anything beyond straight eighth or sixteenth notes becomes guesswork. It has no standard way to write dynamics, accents or note lengths. Notation shows all of these, and method books, school band parts and published transcriptions all use it. The figure sets the two side by side for the rock beat you have just read.

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Songs to read along with

The quickest way to make reading stick is to follow a chart while the record plays. Two of the ten songs in our list of easy drum songs for beginners suit a first read. “Beast of Burden” by The Rolling Stones is the beat from this page almost throughout: a plain backbeat with eighth notes on the hi-hat, at a relaxed tempo. “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty runs at about 84 BPM and teaches the other half of reading, counting bars of rest before the drums come in.

Open the drum score, find the key, then follow the bass drum line with your eyes for one verse before you play a note. Play along only when you can point to the current bar without losing your place.

Write a beat in MuseScore Studio

Writing a beat teaches the key faster than reading one, because you have to decide where every note goes. MuseScore Studio is free notation software, and its drum kits come ready to notate: the program sets the staff, the notehead shape and the position for each drum and cymbal. You can download MuseScore Studio free from MuseScore.org.

Add a drum kit to a new score the way you add any other instrument. Select the staff, or a note or rest on it, and the percussion panel opens at the bottom of the window with a pad for each sound of the kit. Click a pad and the note is entered at the cursor. You can also enter notes with the mouse on the staff. Hold Shift while you hover to see which instrument sits at each staff position, and compare those positions with the key of the book you are learning from.

Enter the rock beat from this page, press play and listen. Then change one bass drum note and hear what it does to the groove.

Frequently asked questions

What does an x mean in drum sheet music?

An x notehead is a cymbal or the hi-hat, while a round notehead is a drum. In the key used here, an x in the space above the top line is the hi-hat and an x on the top line is the ride cymbal. An x below the staff is the hi-hat played with the foot. Some charts also use an x in the snare space for a cross-stick.

Which line is the snare drum on?

The snare drum is written in the third space of the staff, counting from the bottom: the space just above the middle line. The bass drum is in the bottom space, the floor tom in the second space and the two mounted toms on the fourth line and in the top space.

Do drummers need to read music?

No. Many drummers learn by ear, and a repeating beat is easy to pick up from a recording. Reading helps when you want to learn a song from a chart, work through a method book, remember fills and song forms, or play with a band that hands out parts.

What do notes in brackets mean in drum music?

A notehead in parentheses is a ghost note: a very soft note, usually on the snare, played between the main hits of a beat. Ghost notes add texture to a groove without adding volume. Play them from a low stick height so they stay well under the backbeat.

Why are some drum notes upside down?

Drum music is written in two layers. Notes with stems up are played by the hands, and notes with stems down are played by the feet: the bass drum and the hi-hat pedal. A note with its stem pointing down is a normal note that belongs to the foot part.

Start with the key, then one bar

To read drum sheet music you need the drum key and the count. Learn where the bass drum, the snare and the hi-hat sit, count eighth notes aloud, and read the rock beat one layer at a time at 60 BPM. Check the key on every new chart, since the cymbals move from one publisher to the next. After that, each new beat changes only a note or two in something you can already read.

For the beats that come after this one, in order, go on with the Hal Leonard Drumset Method, Book 1, where every exercise has a demonstration and a play-along track.