I've got some HUGE arrangements coming up where I'm arranging for a "smallified" church orchestra. However, it's gonna be TOUGH to coordinate parts because our drummer, even though he's playing on a professional level skill-wise, can't read music at *all*. 
I know you guys work with groups and do studio stuff like this... is there anyone who could throw some tips my way at how to make sure he still gets everything in?

The only thing I can think of is to sequence the drum parts yourself using your DAW and a drum VST, then give him the recording to work from. 

Sharke has the idea.
 
You didn't mentioned what notation editor you have (or plan to acquire), but Notion 6 (and I suspect a number of others) can bounce individual staves or busses (e.g., just the drums/percussion) to WAV files. If you don't have a notation editor yet, plan on a learning curve. Not one I've tried makes drum entry easy from a keyboard.
 
You could sequence the drums in SONAR as sharke suggests, but then you have your drums in one place and everything else in another place.
 
It might also be possible to arrange the drums in a notation editor and export the drums stave as MIDI for import into SONAR to generate the audio file. Then all you have to worry about is the drum mapping.

Are you wanting to dictate hits, or are you wanting him to see the song structure?
 
A leadsheet should suffice for the latter.

I agree that a lead sheet with the arrangement should be enough for him.  Drummers usually play by feel, not really dictated hits.  

Well if you've got a score, it means it should be metronomically correct?? Just have him play to a click track. He should be able to count, create a simplelifed score, which shows the one...then conduct him.
 
You haven't said if this was a recording or a live thing. If it's a recording, record the his drums...midifi them and then fix. This is the way I woud do it.
 
This is going to be controversial, but in this day and age...drummers are pretty obsolete - unless live - most composers should and will have to work out how to scribe realistic drum parts into whatever virtual enviroment they use. You can dial in the human groove so long as you know how to use midi effects. But this is just my opinion.
 
Ben 

BenMMusTech
 
 
This is going to be controversial, but in this day and age...drummers are pretty obsolete - unless live - most composers should and will have to work out how to scribe realistic drum parts into whatever virtual enviroment they use. You can dial in the human groove so long as you know how to use midi effects. But this is just my opinion.
 

I suppose you could apply that to any musician or instrument, but I know I'd rather have a real drummer responding to a track than spend endless hours tweaking MIDI files to get 'somewhere near'

I'm learning to play drums myself because it will be easier in the long run for me to just record them than spend all that time tweaking.

Ben's comment sounds like it could be from someone who obviously does not play drums or understand them that well.  As a drummer of 47 years! with a beautiful sounding kit (Sonor Rosewood) recording them is a dream for me.  Mine are ready to go in the studio at any time.  I don't need to midify anything or replace anything.  (why would you!)  Nothing actually compares to the sound and feel of a live player either in the studio or live.  The feel and groove is just sublime and virtually impossible to replicate.  Check out Dave Weckl playing with Chick Corea Elektric Band to get an idea.  It would take 6 months to program what he can play in a few seconds and even then it won't sound quite the same.
 
Check this out if you don't believe me:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROsMCkNavgg
 
Drummers are the pulse and the groove in the music and will never be obsolete and they are not going away anytime soon.  Hey when drum machines first appeared in the 80's that is what they said then.  They would all be replaced.  They seem to be still around!
 
Back OT a very basic chart could be written with just the melodic phrasing of the very important hits,phrases and stops that need to be played e.g. if there are horns in the band or accents are important to the music.  There is no getting around the fact that the drummer will still have to play but keep an eye on the chart.  It is not that hard.  If there are any vocals present as well a big help is to just have a few lyrics written above the stave here and there in the right places.  That really helps if you get lost reading a chart like that.  The rest does not have to notate the complete feel etc, so the drummer can basically do his thing feel wise but just make the important hits and stops etc..Sections e.g. A, B, C etc can also be put in to alert to major changes in the arrangement as well.

Jeff Evans
Ben's comment sounds like it could be from someone who obviously does not play drums or understand them that well.  As a drummer of 47 years! with a beautiful sounding kit (Sonor Rosewood) recording them is a dream for me.  Mine are ready to go in the studio at any time.  I don't need to midify anything or replace anything.  (why would you!)  Nothing actually compares to the sound and feel of a live player either in the studio or live.  The feel and groove is just sublime and virtually impossible to replicate.  Check out Dave Weckl playing with Chick Corea Elektric Band to get an idea.  It would take 6 months to program what he can play in a few seconds and even then it won't sound quite the same.
 
Check this out if you don't believe me:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROsMCkNavgg
 
Drummers are the pulse and the groove in the music and will never be obsolete and they are not going away anytime soon.  Hey when drum machines first appeared in the 80's that is what they said then.  They would all be replaced.  They seem to be still around!
 
Back OT a very basic chart could be written with just the melodic phrasing of the very important hits,phrases and stops that need to be played e.g. if there are horns in the band or accents are important to the music.  There is no getting around the fact that the drummer will still have to play but keep an eye on the chart.  It is not that hard.  If there are any vocals present as well a big help is to just have a few lyrics written above the stave here and there in the right places.  That really helps if you get lost reading a chart like that.  The rest does not have to notate the complete feel etc, so the drummer can basically do his thing feel wise but just make the important hits and stops etc..Sections e.g. A, B, C etc can also be put in to alert to major changes in the arrangement as well.

Hiya Jeff, I'm sorry if you took my opinion as an afront to drummers. It wasn't...I also forgot you were a drummer. Firstly though, I'm actually pretty au fait with drums as an instrument. This is because I once knew a drummer that could have been the next big drummer. He could play Bonham, Moon (I know you don't consider these guys as the pinnacle of drummers), he could also do jazz, funk and even orchestral. I would give him 5/4, 7/4 any time signature...he could play it. He taught me about syncopation and playing between the bears. He was also like you and prefered 'real' drums over virtual ones. So I made him play a very early Roland electric kit which could break your wrists if you hit it too hard lol. My point is I understand drums very well, and so hence my opinion. Furthermore, I can visualise music, thanks in part to my ASD (extremely high functioning). This allows me to see patterns, and since drums are nothing but patterns...their very easy to sequence.

Now the problem is, which you so rightly brought up is feel, how do you replicate feel? Whilst I've been able to sequence realistic drum parts for some time, feel has taken longer. This is because feel is a combination of the right music technology, and working out when to intervene in time. So when I compose a new track, there are many ways I approach creating the feel of a track. If the composition is created on guitar, then I tend to lay guitar down first. I then fix any notes too far off the best, but because I'm a top class guitarist these days, I can leave the basic feel of that guitar rhythm track as the feel template of the track. On my classical compositions, and because I don't quite understand how to write ritando into the software, my ritando usually gives the piece it's own unique feel. Everything is in perfect time...but the piece pushes and pulls. Furthermore, I add in very short tenutos, 0.1 to 0.9 secs throughout the piece to humanize the feel. Then on top of that, I scribe in depending on the piece, a number of swing humanize types of grooves...nothing more than -9 to +9. I can tell you that this works,and it can be very random. Finally, in regards to feel and time, if this is not enough to set a good groove, in post production, just before final mastering I will use Reaper's digital varispeed which is pitch locked to create rits and acels as well as fix the groove by inching the speed of the piece up or down. :).

Getting the right velocity is another key to feel, and this is something that is very easy these days, either through scribing dynamic markers into Notion...which includes hairpins and the like. If I do it in Sonar, you put a velocity plug on each clip section that needs to a have a specific feel, and you randomize it slightly.

What I'm actually talking about is music innovation. Whilst I respect you as a musician, a composer and an engineer Jeff, it's opinions like your's that is holding music back. With the technology we have today, we should be in another musical renaissance. Instead, we have Bieber and Sheeren. The issue is, great music, composers, music technology have a symbiotic relationship. Think Beethoven, he wasn't happy with the pianos of the day, so he got someone to build the first piano forte, on which he created moonlight sonata on. He was also not happy with the size of the orchestra...So he doubled it, and then came Symphony no.5. He wanted to add voice to the symphony, then came the ninth. Beethoven's symbiotic innovations also had a profound effect on the types of concert halls being built at the time, and indeed is the first point in the democratization of music. Which actually might be a bad thing lol. Of course a more recent example of the symbiotic relationships between music, composition and innovation is The Beatles. The Beatles take the sonic arts techniques of the historical avant-garde, combine these with rock, blues, country, classical and eastern music. The rest is history as they say. Without Beethoven pushing the music technology of the day...no Beatles. Without The Beatles pushing music technology, no Pink Floyd, no Queen and indeed no modern sampling movement. Actually no modern sampling movement might be a good thing lol.

There were many people like you Jeff, who said similar things to Beethoven and The Beatles when they suggested similar innovative breaks from the musical traditions of their day. In this day and age and because music culture is fundamentally broken, I believe you should be lauding my opinion and indeed experiments to push music technology to the next level.

I get lambasted for this, but apparently I'm a sexpert in my field now lol. A Master of Philosophy qualification denotes this. I also have in principle a supervisor at Melbourne University's conservatorium...So what is considered the best music school in Oz to get my PhD in the stream of interactive composition on this very topic. So I'm pretty knowledgeable on this topic...in fact I'm pretty much the expert on this topic. I have been working tirelessly for the last three years...sometimes 7 days a week 10-12 hours a day, experimenting...pulling mixes apart, putting them back together...trying different groove settings etc. I've more or less cracked the code. I'm lacking a few.odds and ends now to really take things to another level. Something like a really good drum instrument...a level up from addictive drums.

By the way thanks for the recommendation of Waves Piano plug...Whilst I'm happy with the stock sound in Notion 4...as a music innovator I always need new toys to push me and my compositions further. I will now upgrade Notion to no.6 which allows me to create custom controls that will slow me to write in sustain pedal markings to control Wave's piano plug. Neat huh?.

Ben