Hi,
I have a question regarding drum notation of eigth notes and more general music notation of eighth notes and if they are different.
I learnt music notation at school many years ago but picked up guitar at that time and got extremely lazy and basically used guitar tabs and my ear. Maybe lazy is the wrong word but my ear was already good so I never bothered.
I love reading and writing drum notation now and I really feel it compliments my ear in learning things in a different way.
When I re-learnt reading / writing music for drums I guess whatever webpage I was reading told me to always group notes with beams so that you can see the main beats of the bar. So, since then (for a bar of 4/4) I have beamed two eighth notes together, 4 sixteenth notes together and 8 32nd notes together. Basically to always end up with 4 main groups and notes and therefore 4 main beats. I think this makes things easier.
lately I have realised some drum notation would have an eigth note groove in 4/4 written as two groups of eighth notes, each group with four notes. It kind of throws me when looking at it at first as I imagine it as only two quarter notes, when of course on closer inspection, it is four.
Is there a reason for beaming eigth notes in this manner? I guess there is no right and wrong way of doing it but it still interests me why so its sometimes written this way. Does it differ between drum notation and more classical (pitched-instrument) music notation?
Cheers,
Andy
I have a question regarding drum notation of eigth notes and more general music notation of eighth notes and if they are different.
I learnt music notation at school many years ago but picked up guitar at that time and got extremely lazy and basically used guitar tabs and my ear. Maybe lazy is the wrong word but my ear was already good so I never bothered.
I love reading and writing drum notation now and I really feel it compliments my ear in learning things in a different way.
When I re-learnt reading / writing music for drums I guess whatever webpage I was reading told me to always group notes with beams so that you can see the main beats of the bar. So, since then (for a bar of 4/4) I have beamed two eighth notes together, 4 sixteenth notes together and 8 32nd notes together. Basically to always end up with 4 main groups and notes and therefore 4 main beats. I think this makes things easier.
lately I have realised some drum notation would have an eigth note groove in 4/4 written as two groups of eighth notes, each group with four notes. It kind of throws me when looking at it at first as I imagine it as only two quarter notes, when of course on closer inspection, it is four.
Is there a reason for beaming eigth notes in this manner? I guess there is no right and wrong way of doing it but it still interests me why so its sometimes written this way. Does it differ between drum notation and more classical (pitched-instrument) music notation?
Cheers,
Andy