Notating for guys who can't read?

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. 

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

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 

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.

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

Thanks Ben for your thoughts.  The feel thing is elusive for sure.  So drums can play ahead of time or the beat.  Think of a person standing up very straight and leaning forward. (Like Michael Jackson does in his dancing in Smooth Criminal)  That is what that is like.  Not all the drum sounds are in the same spot.  But some parts are hitting the time early and others can follow.  Then you are doing maybe a slow blues in triplet time.  Playing behind the beat gives this type of groove a real nice feeling too.  (Person now leaning back)  Then there is perfect quantised time. e.g. Jean Michelle Jarre in his latest Oxygen 3 album.  I love the way he creates very interesting and complex beats with his electronic drum machines but they are all in perfect quantised on the grid time.  It is just best for that music.  Where everything else is as well.  Live drums sound silly in this context. 
 
Grooves can move from ahead to behind and in the pocket all within the same tune.  I have tried analysing the hits and it can be hard to see where the groove actually is.  It can sound great but then the hits can look random too.  Take someone like Steve Gadd playing in perfect time to a click.  How come I know it is him every time.  Not just sounds here but the types of things he plays obviously.
 
Live drums are a bit like a violin.  Yes there are great virtual violin instruments now but try and sequence something using midi like real player and see how damn hard it is.  Maybe it is the love that goes into the playing.  Now there is an elusive quality.  Bit like cooking and putting lots of love in at the same time.  It seems to stay in the dish right up to the point of the food being eaten. 
 
I did like the piano sound in your link too.  I think you did a good job with that.  I like Grand Rhapsody though for sure.  To me it just sounds excellent.  Did you download the high res version of the samples.  They sound great as well.  It does take a little time to load a sound but once it has it is fine for the rest of the session.

Jeff Evans
Thanks Ben for your thoughts.  The feel thing is elusive for sure.  So drums can play ahead of time or the beat.  Think of a person standing up very straight and leaning forward. (Like Michael Jackson does in his dancing in Smooth Criminal)  That is what that is like.  Not all the drum sounds are in the same spot.  But some parts are hitting the time early and others can follow.  Then you are doing maybe a slow blues in triplet time.  Playing behind the beat gives this type of groove a real nice feeling too.  (Person now leaning back)  Then there is perfect quantised time. e.g. Jean Michelle Jarre in his latest Oxygen 3 album.  I love the way he creates very interesting and complex beats with his electronic drum machines but they are all in perfect quantised on the grid time.  It is just best for that music.  Where everything else is as well.  Live drums sound silly in this context. 
 
Grooves can move from ahead to behind and in the pocket all within the same tune.  I have tried analysing the hits and it can be hard to see where the groove actually is.  It can sound great but then the hits can look random too.  Take someone like Steve Gadd playing in perfect time to a click.  How come I know it is him every time.  Not just sounds here but the types of things he plays obviously.
 
Live drums are a bit like a violin.  Yes there are great virtual violin instruments now but try and sequence something using midi like real player and see how damn hard it is.  Maybe it is the love that goes into the playing.  Now there is an elusive quality.  Bit like cooking and putting lots of love in at the same time.  It seems to stay in the dish right up to the point of the food being eaten. 
 
I did like the piano sound in your link too.  I think you did a good job with that.  I like Grand Rhapsody though for sure.  To me it just sounds excellent.  Did you download the high res version of the samples.  They sound great as well.  It does take a little time to load a sound but once it has it is fine for the rest of the session.

Hiya Jeff, absolutely...one of the most important things I read almost 20 years ago was a quote from Elton John, who said it was about putting notes inbetween one another or something along those lines. To do this though in a digital sense is a lot harder. Recently to achieve this, what I've started to do is divide the drum midi track into kick, snare, toms and cyms, then cut those midi tracks at various sections where I then add quantize and velocity midi plugs...This allows me to push and pull a track...much like a 'track'. If you listened to the link, you would have heard the tom fills, which I based on Moon, indeed got harder as the track went on. This was only my second or third attempt at trying this technique...so it wasn't perfect, but the technique does add to the drum track. A more early successful attempt at this technique was on When Every Song Is Sung my George Harrison track. One of the keys to The Beatles groove is Ringo's backbeat, whereas Paul McCartney is pushing...So ringo sits just behind the best, whereas Paul sits just in front. I achieved this, what let's down the track is Session Drummer 3 because it doesn't have the nuances of a really good multisample virtual drum instrument.

Another really cool thing I've learned recently, and thanks to Wave's lol is how to use different flavour compressors. Because of my ASD extremely high functioning lol, but because of my ASD...when something almost worked I stick with it because I believe the code will eventually reveal itself and work. So I stick with a few compressors because id nail a mix or a master every 3 or 4 times. But I struggled to repeat that success. A couple of months ago, because Wave's kept putting up plugs I wanted for 30 bucks I completely overhauled my plugin range, and started to experiment wildly...Something that's a bit hard even with high functioning ASD. What I discovered was, both the Fairchild limiter and Neve VComp clone could do particular things to the sonic signature of the drums. Yes this is obvious, but how and when do you use these types of sounds was and is the key to all young and aspiring engineers, because when the hardware units were introduced the engineers of the day only had one or two of these units and had to learn these devices like an instrument to get the best out of said units. I've now figured this out, and it is also key in getting that sound in regards to drums...both recorded and samples. After I worked out sonic signatures of these units, I then started to use these compressors on the master buss, which also worked and solved another problem. I'd got stuck using Wave's HComp as my master compressor, but it's a bugger to set, I chucked Waves Fairchild across the master buss to complete my When Every Song experiment (I'd brought Wave's TG12345 channel strip/nls console emulation) and mixed the entirety of the track with both these plugs, and mastered to see how close these plugs sounded like the real thing...to my surprise...it was extremely close.

My point is, and it ties in with the idea of virtuosity, is I'm advocating digital virtuosity. So while I'm trying to emulate every type of music...almost, I'm not trying to emulate to the point it sounds exactly the same, because you can't...but you can emulate every type of music and sound there is and nudge it along to make something that sounds familiar but sounds entirely new at the same time, by being a magpie and stealing across the musical ages. For example I'm working on Sonata no.6, which I've written For cello, viola, violn, piano, vocals, guitar and various percussion. I'm also using Wave's wavetable synth to create an electronic cello to double the cello line. I've also written a drum part, which I've almost modeled on a type of hip hop and Latin type of music. I've written the piece in 2/4 which helps.

Ben