43 and 41 are floor toms.Ĥ4 (pedal hihat, stepping on the pedal rather than striking with a stick) Remember, there are more drums than these available, and you can check the GM chart linked above if you need them! GM Drums Quick Reference: Name Now, here is my quick reference for MIDI drums. If you're using Tuxguitar, make sure you uncheck the box marked 'All Tracks' when you copy+paste drums, or you'll copy+paste over your other instruments, too! Drums repeat a lot! You can enter in a basic pattern, and copy-and-paste entire measures or sections (with ctrl-C and ctrl-V), and then edit whichever measures differ from the pattern. If you're using Guitar Pro, you can speed up entering drums a little by using the 'C' key-try it! It copies whatever note(s) are under the cursor, and pastes them at the end of the measure. You may run out of strings if you use too many drums, so it's not a hard-and-fast rule, but try to give one string to kick, snare, hihat, cymbals, and two to toms as a starting point. This is very important! It can be quite confusing if you put different drums together on the same string. Notice how I put the kick and snare on separate 'strings'. Personally, I use 36 and 40 for my kick and snare in most songs. What sounds best? Well, that depends on the song, and you'll have to decide. If you enter in these notes, and play through it, you'll hear the difference between measures one and two. Let's add another measure, just like the above, but using 35 and 40 (the alternate kick and snare). Each of these sounds a little bit different! So it's up to you which ones you want to use. Now, if you look at the GM chart, you'll notice the presence of multiple kicks, multiple snares, and so forth. Don't worry! You only need to learn a few for most songs, and I'll be listing the most important drums below. If you aren't familiar with drums, this is the time to learn what each drum sounds like. In this example, I used drums 36 and 38, which are the basic kick and snare drums. Just enter the number from the chart as a fret number, like this: For a complete list of these, look at the GM Level 1 Percussion Key Map. Now that you have a percussion track, you can use any drum in GM ('General MIDI'). If you're using Tuxguitar, create a new track with Track > Add Track, double-click the track name, and check the Percussion Track check box. Click okay at the next screen, and close the next window. from the drop-down menu, and select Percussion for the type. NOTE: If you use Power Tab, read this tutorial instead.Īre you making tabs that include every part but the drums? Well, adding drums to your tab isn't too hard-you just have to make a percussion track, and know a few magic numbers.įirst, make the track.

Tux guitar drums