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How to Make Staves for Drums

Drummers are usually great at learning new beats and grooving or improvising on them, but drummers might lose some steam if they are asked to read music. Drum notation is complicated to read because there is often little standardization. Most percussion music is written on a set of horizontal lines called a staff (plural are called "staves"); the number of lines needed depends on the instrument being played. A triangle part will need only one line, but a drum set part requires five lines. By using different note heads on the lines and spaces of the staves, you write what you want a drummer to play.

Instructions

    • 1

      Draw five straight lines across a page. Use a ruler to get straight lines. There should be the same amount of space in between each line. Draw subsequent staves as needed but put a larger space in between the staves so you can tell one staff from another.

    • 2

      Draw the percussion clef at the beginning of each staff. The percussion clef is two vertical lines drawn from the fourth line of the staff (the second from the top) to the second line (the second from the bottom).

    • 3

      Write a key for reading music on your staves. For example, the snare drum is written on the third space and the crash cymbal is written with an "X" note head on top of the staff. Write down a note for each instrument used in the drum set and label it.

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