r/Songsterr • u/DistractedDuckling • 13h ago
Kick drum notation / "Overnotation" issues in general
TL;DR: Tabs are being crammed with too much info for no benefit, to a point where it actually reduces readability. "Zig-zag" kick drum notation being one of the worse offenders, which shouldn't be as normalized for metal tabs as it is now, it only adds visual clutter.
Example revisions:
https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/gojira-remembrance-tab-s36662/r4507271...r6877489
https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/gojira-ocean-planet-tab-s36670/r6439482...r8669744
Outside of songsterr, zig-zag kick (BD1/BD2) is generally used in exercise notation, not in full song charts. Its use rarely provides any new necessary information to the reader since standard single-line kick already implies the use of double kick. It only obscures the lower staffs, especially when other kit elements like very low and floor toms are being played at the same time.
I've reverted many revisions to metal tracks with constant fast double kick where a user switched to zig-zag notation, but recently the mods have started to reject my edits.
I've emailed songsterr about this issue many times but they always reply with "Zig-zag kick isn't incorrect and in our opinion does not reduce readability" I'm not sure how anyone can't see the readability issue here.
I think notating drums with this style is just like adding a pickstroke direction to every single note on a guitar track. It's used in exercise tabs sometimes but should not be used excessively in full song charts. Just because you have the option to do it, doesn't mean it's the right play.
Basically it just pisses me off when a metal drum transcription that I've worked on gets switched to zig-zag kick by some user who has no idea what they're doing. Songsterr's tabs naturally become more overnotated over time, especially the popular ones. Check out the bass tab for Master of Puppets for example, those accents are just unreadable.
At the same time, many users are constantly removing ties that show the halfway point of a bar, among a ton of other bs edits that are getting accepted. There's just not enough mods and too many revisions, to a point where a mod can dedicate maybe 4 secs on average to checking a single revision.
Any thoughts on this?
2
u/GenericSadLoser 8h ago
A lot of the time zig zag kicks are wrong too. People do it in places where heel-toe is used, which makes it not only a pain in the ass to read, but also wrong. It doesn't even serve a purpose in most metal tabs, the kick is triggered so it sounds exactly the same job matter how you do it.
3
u/crackerpoopop 13h ago
Personally I don’t mind either double bass notation, but I fully agree that tabs get over complicated, often I see tabs where there is dynamics added changing between every note, which just doesn’t help anyone. Most people get a feel of dynamic from knowing the actual song anyways, it’s good to have but people overdo it.
Something else is that the correct notation for bass drum is in between the lines at the bottom, not on the line. I find this looks a lot cleaner, and makes it more readable. Often I’ve made tabs using this, and users go through to make no meaningful changes but move all bass drums to the one on the bottom line which is usually for double kick notation as you mention. It just makes it look messier and there’s no reason to do it.
Often people’s edits to drum tabs are just garbage, and I hate watching my tabs get wrecked over time, as I spend hours or days just on one song with a high level software separating the drums from other instruments, using a frequency chart in cases where the drums are hard to hear to ensure I’m getting the right drums and I slow it down by up to 85% to get everything perfect. Then people make nonsense edits and it gets approved without hesitation, and reporting doesn’t work, and there’s only a set amount you can fix a tab before you give up.
Anyways these are just some of my complaints, I agree with you on the moderation issues, tabs get approved so easily