Sight-Reading. Too much info on a Chart?

Besides the level of difficulty of a particular song, a chart can have either too little or too much information, and in both cases it's equally annoying when it comes to sight-reading.

The first time I had to read this "What is Hip" by Tower Of Power chart I felt a bit scared, it was pretty confusing. This is a good example of a chart that is hard to read due to the amount of information on it, it's almost a transcription instead of a chart, and that's why I decided to write a more "sight-readable" version -if that word makes any sense-.

When you have too little information you need to focus on listening more than reading so you can find in the music that you're hearing from other musicians the data that's missing in your chart. Other musicians part is going to give you a general idea about the style of the song and what to play. It's important not to get lost since you're not paying much attention to the chart. Even when you don't have much to read you still need to follow your chart and the structure of the song.

On the other side, when there's too much information the chart gets confusing, it gets really hard to sight-read. What you need to do is you need to try and get the essence of the song, the main groove, the most important hits and ignore unnecessary details that can drag your attention and pull your tempo back tearing down the groove. That's something you always need to avoid even if it means simplifying things to a point where you are ignoring some notes on your chart -which believe me, nobody in the audience or even on stage will be able to tell the difference anyway-.

Basically, as Dave Weckl said: "Honor your job as a drummer, keep the tempo".

So, what I did with this "What is Hip" chart is I transcribed it cutting out all that unnecessary information and keeping only the main groove and the important hits that we can not miss, that way the drummer can relax and drive the band. It's still the same song, same arrangement, it's only a different way to write the chart which I think it's more appropriate for sight-reading.

If you listen to the bass player in the recording you'll find he's playing all 16th notes. You can use that as a guide to play some ghost notes on your snare and fill up the groove, but if we wrote those on the chart it would get overloaded with too much information.

I'll leave you with the links to download and compare both versions. If you have any questions please leave a comment below.

What is Hip - Original chart

What is Hip - Sight-readable version

You can play this over the original song on Spotify or on YouTube.

"Repetition is the key to real learning"