3. Writing tab

Drum lanes

A drum track is written like tab, with a lane for each piece of the kit in place of strings. A hit sits on its piece’s lane, and its symbol says how it’s played: a cross for a closed hi-hat, a circle for an open one, a diamond for the ride’s bell. Everything you do with notes (selecting, copying, the step length, articulations) works on hits too.

Drum lanes and the kit

Available on every platform.

Getting a drum track

Open the track’s menu (right-click a track’s header) and choose Add Track › Drums for a drum kit, or Add Track › Percussion for hand percussion. The Drums and Band templates start with a kit. Drum parts from Guitar Pro and MIDI files come in with the lanes they play.

Typing hits

Put the caret on a lane and type the technique’s letter. Each piece has its own:

• Hi-hat: x closed, o open, h half open.
• Snare: o a hit, x cross-stick, r rimshot, f a flam.
• Ride: x the bow, b the bell, c the edge.
• Kick and toms: o.
• Crashes: x, and # to choke.
• Hand drums: o open, m mute, s slap.
• Cajón: o the bass, s a slap, x a tap.
• Darbuka: o doum, x tek, s pa.

A capital letter adds an accent, and typing over a hit changes it. The digits 1–9 pick a technique by its number on that piece.

Moving a hit to another lane keeps what it means where it can: a closed hi-hat dragged to the ride becomes a ride hit.

The lanes

A drum track holds up to 16 lanes. In the track’s menu, Add Lane lists the pieces by kind (Kit, Cymbals, Hand Drums, Bells & Blocks, Shakers & Jingles, Other), and MIDI Note… adds a lane for any MIDI note.

The rail at the left names each lane by its piece’s code (CR, HH, SD, BD…), and the whole name sits faint at the start of the lane. The name stops where something is written in its lane (a hit, the caret, a selected hit): it fades out just before it, and isn’t shown when a hit sits right at its start. During playback the names are hidden. Click a code to mute that piece (⌥-clickAlt-click to solo it): a muted piece’s code is faint, with the mute mark (a crossed-out speaker) before it; a soloed one is in brass.

Open a lane’s own menu on its code (right-click); it is titled with the piece’s whole name, and offers:

• Mute, Solo, Pan, Tune and Decay, for that piece alone, and Reset Element.
• Rename Lane…, Change To another piece, Move Up, Move Down and Remove Lane.

Each of these is one undo step, and the hits move with their lane. What the kit sounds like is in Drums and kits.

The step grid

Turn on Step Grid on Drum Lanes, from the View menu, the pane’s ⚙ menu or the track header’s menuthe pane’s ⚙ menu or the track header’s menu, and each lane is drawn as a row of cells, one per grid step:

• Click an empty cell to put a hit there, a grid step long.
• Click a hit to take it off.
• Drag along a lane to fill every step you cross, in one undo step.

The cells follow the grid (Step length and the grid), and disappear when you zoom out too far to aim at them. Each pane remembers whether its step grid is on. With it off, a click selects, as on strings.

Grooves and fills

Available on every platform.

A groove or a fill gets you started; then you change it hit by hit.

1. Put the caret in the bar where it should go.
2. In the drum track’s menu, choose Insert Pattern › Grooves or Insert Pattern › Fills, then a pattern.

The pattern replaces what the track held over its bars, adds any lane it needs that the track lacks, and is one undo step. If there’s no clip at that bar, one is made.

Grooves include Rock, Half-Time, Punk, Four on the Floor, Funk, Boom Bap, Trap, Drum and Bass, Reggae One Drop, Bossa Nova, Metal, Double Kick, Blast Beat, Shuffle, Jazz Ride, Disco, Motown, Samba, Dembow, Train Beat, and grooves in 3/4 and 6/8. Each comes three ways:

• As Written.
• Sparser: no ghost notes, the hi-hat or ride a step coarser (sixteenths to eighths, eighths to quarters), the kick on the beats.
• Busier: the hi-hat or ride a step finer and softer, ghost notes on the snare, and a kick on the “and” of four.

Fills include Snare, Last Two Beats, Around the Toms, Toms Down the Bar, Unison Hits, Triplets, Snare Roll, and fills in 3/4 and 6/8.

A pattern keeps its steps’ length, so in a bar of another time signature it’s cut short or repeats.