For simple drum parts that involve at most a snare, three toms, and three cymbals, it's easy to map them to colors in 4-lane drums.
- Red: Snare
- Yellow: High rack tom, hihat
- Blue: Low rack tom, ride
- Green: Floor tom, crash
But few drummers outside of pop and jazz keep their kits so limited. So you have to work whatever the drummer may use into the lanes you have. We start with the base mapping above to keep things familiar, and deviate when needed.
A quick note on lefty drumming: the base mapping and everything built around it assumes a right-handed drumset layout. If the drummer is left handed but still using a right handed layout, you should still chart it according to the normal positions of the drums. If they are using a left handed layout (usually indicated by main hi-hat on the right, main ride on the left, floor toms on the left) then chart it in reverse.
- Drums are charted primarily to position, not pitch. Toms are usually pitch ordered, but not always, and cymbals are often positioned by purpose. The chart should reflect the physicality of the drum part as much as is possible within the limits.
- The most important aspects of a good drum chart are accuracy, consistency, contrast, and playability. The chart should reflect the actual drum part being played by the drummer (if there is one); similar parts should be mapped similarly; and different parts should be mapped differently. The chart should not be significantly easier or more difficult than it would be to play the real drum part (barring differences in hardware representation, like double bass or hi-hat pedal).
- Having a good understanding of real drums in general is important. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_kit for lots of information about the parts of a drum kit and their usage.
- For drum parts played by a real drummer, researching the specific drummer can be very helpful. The layout of their kit, the techniques they use, and in best cases an actual playthrough of the song you are charting by the original drummer, all contribute to making a consistent and accurate chart. Even when it's not played by a real drummer, you can get insight into how it might be interpreted to real drums if they have a live or session drummer.
- The base layout and most of these guidelines are just that, guidelines, not hard rules. There will always be exceptional or complex drum parts that benefit from more creative mapping, but stick to these guidelines until you have a good understanding of how drums map positionally to the game.
- These guidelines differ from the historical RBN-era Harmonix approach in some ways, mostly because that approach was not initially developed with pro drums in mind. For example, open hi-hats should be charted on the same cymbal as when closed, snare accents or ride bells should be charted on the same color, etc.
A key technique when it comes to distinguishing both toms and cymbals among themselves is paying attention to panning. Drum recordings will almost always preserve the panning of the drums, so you will hear the left hi-hat more on one side and the ride more on the other. Most commonly it will be panned either from the drummer perspective (left drums to the left, right drums to the right), or reverse panned (audience panning). It is also occasionally a strange mix of these, research the drummer's kit layout or videos if you are unsure. This is most useful to distinguish crashes hit with the right hand and crashes hit with the left hand, or one tom from a different one. It can be misleading to rely solely on listening for pitch because both toms and cymbals ring out, corrupting the pitch of the following hits, and their pitch may not come into full effect until after the drummer has hit something else. Unfortunately, if a recording is particularly low quality it may not have usable panning either.
Keeping a drum chart consistent will help it feel like the real drum part. The following guidelines are different ways to keep the chart consistent, and they will often contradict each other, so you will need to decide what is most important for each part.
- Global consistency. Try to use the same colors for the same drums wherever possible throughout the entire song. Softest guideline because drummers will often use too many cymbals and toms for this to be completely feasible given the remaining guidelines, but can be important for particularly distinctive cymbals like a loud china. However if the drummer uses 3 or fewer toms or cymbals for most or all of the song, keep them consistent wherever possible.
- Local consistency. Try to use the same colors for the same drums within a specific part. This is much more important because it's immediately obvious while playing the part.
- Pattern consistency. Try to use the same colors for the same drums when a recognizable pattern repeats during a song. This helps a rhythm feel comfortable. Along the same line, try not to use the same colors if it is a similar but different pattern, to show contrast.
- Positional consistency. The same cymbal or tom can be used to make very different sounds, but this should not be a reason to use a different color. The most common example is open vs closed hi-hat, but it can also be hitting the ride bell, using the ride as a crash, hitting the rim of the snare, accenting certain snare hits in a roll, or even hitting a tom harder can produce a very different sound. Despite the different sound, the actual drum that was hit is more important to the drum part, and the player can choose to emulate the dynamics in how they play on their kit.
- Motion contrast. Try to avoid having two different drums in the same part consecutively use the same color. This is often the most difficult guideline to keep and thus often broken out of necessity, but like local consistency, is immediately obvious while playing the part. With pro drums distinguishing toms and cymbals, it is acceptable to have consecutive toms and cymbals of the same color, but try to avoid significant back-and-forth because it can be visually confusing.
- Sticking. The colors chosen for a fast-moving part should allow the part to be played with the same sticking (order of left or right hand stick) the original drummer uses, this is also a way to check that you've chosen the correct positioning of notes. The most common sticking for rolls or alternating cymbals is to start on the right hand and alternate, but there are many variations like left-hand-lead and paradiddles (patterns with double or triple hits on one hand); watching videos of the drummer can help get an idea of how they stick parts. Note that even with straight right-left alternating sticking, crossovers and moving both hands together are techniques to move the left hand past the right or vice versa, so it's not uncommon for a normally-sticked part to be charted R-Y-B or even R-Y-B-G, for example.
Cymbal mapping is often much more nuanced than toms because there are so many different kinds, they aren't "pitched" like toms, and are not generally played in any sort of order. Think of it as a priority system, where a certain type of cymbal will have a ranking of the colors that make sense for it, and you push it down the ranking when its preferred color is needed for something else. Some guidelines specific to types of cymbals:
- Hi-hat. These can be used open and closed which can sound very different, but you should not chart a different color unless the drummer actually uses a different hi-hat (having a second hi-hat on the right is not uncommon). Do not chart "stomps", that is, timekeeping hi-hat pedal clicks that the drummer plays only with their foot while playing another rhythm or during a quiet part. Left hi-hat prefers yellow, and right hi-hat prefers blue.
- Ride. This includes regular time-keeping ride, and ride bells which are much more pronounced, but again should still be mapped to the same color. Ride prefers blue, except the somewhat rare case of a left ride which prefers yellow (particularly if it is used with a right-side ride). Ride can often be moved to green to allow both yellow and blue to be used by the left hand because they are positioned very far right in real kits, but make sure to do it for the whole ride part.
- Crashes. These are often the most varied part of a drummer's kit, they may have anywhere from 2 to 10 or even more. Initial preference for a crash is green, especially to contrast it with hi-hat and ride parts using yellow and blue. Some of them are more distinctive, like chinas or trash cymbals, and these often prefer blue to contrast them with the "main" crashes. Left-hand crashes prefer yellow, especially in a double crash or immediately before or after a right-hand crash to emphasize hitting crashes on either side of the kit. In order to preserve motion but also distinguish them from surrounding cymbals, these preferences are easily broken and all three colors are quite often used.
- Double crashes prefer Y+G and B+G, with Y+B as a last choice or when green is clearly a different cymbal from the two used in the double crash. But note that B+G on cymbals requires more movement from the drummer's left hand in most setups so may need to be used with care in complex parts.
- Splashes. These are tiny cymbals that make a brighter, shorter sound. These prefer yellow and blue to distinguish them from the ringing large crashes, but can easily go on green during a hi-hat or ride part.
Cymbals will often be used for timekeeping, which means whatever you choose for that cymbal will be consistently used throughout a section of the song. This leaves you with only the two other cymbal colors for other cymbals that occur, so you may need to take this into account when choosing the color for the timekeeping cymbal. For example: during a yellow hi-hat timekeeping part, other cymbals go on blue or green only (Y+G is still acceptable for double crashes). During a blue ride timekeeping part, other cymbals go on yellow or green only (and yellow should be reserved mostly for left hand crashes or hihats/splashes).
For toms, deviations are needed when either you have a part with more than three toms, or they are played simultaneously with cymbals.
The most common time you will need more than three toms is a tom fill. These are often played from highest to lowest tom but can vary, and may or may not involve the snare. General guidelines to follow:
- Try to keep each actual tom pitch to the same color through the fill, i.e. if you chart the drummer's highest tom on yellow and the fill goes back to that tom again, still chart it as yellow; in later fills, you can keep it still consistent or you can change it if it helps with the layout (and according to the guidelines mentioned regarding consistency).
- Always preserve motion: when the drummer moves to a new tom, so should the chart. Never chart two different consecutive toms as the same color.
- Try to keep the directional flow of the original fill, of course this is restricted by the number of pads you can use. If the drummer goes through five toms that are all in a row on their kit, you'll need to wrap it, but otherwise keep the fill going through consecutive colors so the motion is the same wherever possible. Avoid "skipping" colors unless the actual fill skips toms.
- If the fill does not contain snare and isn't directly preceded by snare, it can make sense to use red as the highest tom of the fill so you don't have to wrap it as much. Do not re-use it when wrapping (unless the fill actually goes back to that highest tom).
- Overall try to avoid making the part more awkward than it is on real drums. Wrapping will inherently make it more awkward, but it's still reasonably natural to move both hands together back to an earlier tom, don't change the part to "compensate" for the wrapping.
With these in mind, here are some ways you might wrap different tom progressions, assuming these all go through consecutive toms in order. These are just suggestions, there are always more possibilities that can make sense.
- Snare + 3 toms, or 4 toms w/ no snare: R -> Y -> B -> G
- 4 toms: Y -> B -> G -> B // B -> Y -> B -> G
- Snare + 4 toms, or 5 toms w/ no snare: R -> Y -> B -> G -> B
- 5 toms: Y -> B -> G -> B -> G // Y -> B -> Y -> B -> G
- Snare + 5 toms, or 6 toms w/ no snare: R -> Y -> B -> G -> B -> G // R -> Y -> B -> Y -> B -> G
- 6 toms: Y -> B -> Y -> B -> G -> B // B -> Y -> B -> G -> B -> G
Here is one of the more extreme examples, a fill across 8 toms and ending in a green crash: https://i.imgur.com/EGr55DP.png
These tom wrapping guidelines can be extrapolated to longer tom-heavy patterns, with more focus on pattern consistency and sticking to green as the lowest tom in the pattern.
The other common reason to deviate on tom mapping is when they are played during a part with cymbals, such as toms played with the left hand during right-hand timekeeping. In this case, you will often be limited to the yellow and blue toms with timekeeping on green, or just the yellow tom with timekeeping on blue - in the rare case where snare is not being used for the whole part, it could make sense to use red as well. Thus wrapping is relatively straightforward due to the limited choices - try to preserve motion if you have multiple toms available, and consider moving the cymbal to green even if it is not a crash.
For the case where a drummer has only two toms, as is common in jazz, use the two toms that best represent the positioning, this will often be yellow for the rack tom and blue or green for the floor tom; choose a mapping for each tom and keep it consistent throughout the song.
Tom flams use two colors to map two nearly-simultaneous tom hits, where the drummer might actually be hitting the same tom, or two different toms (both are common). You have limited choices for these; flams should only include red if the snare is involved (snare flams are R+Y), so for dual-tom flams you have the choice of Y+B, B+G, and Y+G. Single tom flams (like snare flams) will still require two colors even if it is globally consistent on a particular color otherwise. Reserve Y+G for when the drummer is utilizing two far-apart toms, or as a last choice for near- or same-tom flams, or as a flam "in between" the pitches of Y+B and B+G.
In the rare case where there are more than 3 different tom flams in the same part, you will have to duplicate them. They can either be duplicated consecutively (YB YB YG YG BG BG or YB YB BG BG) or wrapped (YB YG BG YB YG BG or YB BG YB BG). Consider which method plays better for the particular case.
Cymbal flams that are not double crashes are rarer, but will usually be mapped to Y+B, such as a flam on a hi-hat, on a ride, or across two splashes.
Sometimes a drummer may use unconventional pads or instruments, like a wood block, chimes, gong, or electronic pads - or in electronic songs, they use percussion sounds that aren't exactly like the standard set of drums. These have no particular "default" mapping, but for a single pad, right hand would slightly prefer blue and left hand would slightly prefer yellow. Consider whether they are more like a "tom" or "cymbal"; more ringing or swelling sounds should be mapped to cymbals, and more percussive sounds to toms. Some sounds (like cowbell) could be considered both, so use whichever works better, just keep the mapping consistent. Percussion played by other band members, like tambourine or synth sounds, should not be charted to drums.