A course to play and write drum parts in the style of Sunny Day Real Estate, The Appleseed Cast, and Shiner. Every groove, number, and tab on this page was measured live from the real MIDI files, so you are learning from what these drummers actually played, not from a textbook.
Seven rows, top cymbals to bottom kick: CC crash, RD ride, OH open hi-hat, HH closed hi-hat, T tom, SD snare, BD kick. In the tabs below, x is a normal hit, X an accent, o an open/ringing cymbal, - a rest. Each line is two bars of 4/4, split by | at the barline, sixteenth-note columns.
CC|----------------|-----------x---x| OH|-----------o-o-o|-o-o-o-o--------| HH|---x---x--------|----------------| SD|---x-------x-x-x|-x-x-x-x-xx----x| BD|-x-----x-x-x-x-x|-x-x-x-x---x-x--|
CC|-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x|-x-X-x-x-x-x-x-x| OH|-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o|-o-X-o-o-o-o-o-o| SD|-x----X--xX---X-|-x-X--X-X--x---x| BD|x-Xx----X--x----|x-XX------x-x-x-|
CC|---x-x-X-X-x-x-x|-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x| RD|-oo----X-X------|-o-o-----o-o----| SD|xxxx---X-X-----x|-------x-x-----x| BD|---x------------|---x-x-------x--|
CC|xx-x---xx-------|x-------x-----xx| HH|x-x-X-xx-x-X-x-x|-x-x-X-x-XxX-x--| SD|--X--X-X--X---X-|-X---XXX--X---x-| BD|----X--XX---XX--|X--x----X---XXX-|
CC|----------------|--------X-------| RD|o-o-o-o---------|----------------| OH|--------o-o-o-o-|--------o-o-o-o-| HH|--------xx-x-x-x|--------xx-x-x-x| T|----------------|-----xxx--------| SD|x---X-------X-x-|----X--x----X-x-| BD|x-x---x-X-----x-|--x---x-X-----x-|
Before any style, the snare marks beats 2 and 4 and the kick owns beat 1. Read the SD and BD rows above and you will see it in every one. Measured snare landing spots for Rodeo Jones cluster on the backbeat slots [8, 4, 12, 14]. Learn to play a bar with only kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4, and hat on the eighths until it is boring, then everything else is decoration.
This is what makes these bands sound like these bands. They almost never sit on a tight closed hi-hat. Measured closed-hat hits per bar: Rodeo Jones 0.7, Fishing the Sky 0.4, Forever Longing 0.1. Instead they carry the pulse on the open hat, the ride, and the ride bell, which is why the wash sounds wide and airy rather than tight. If your part rides a closed hat, it will not sound like this no matter what else you do.
A ghost is a very soft snare, velocity under 40, placed between the backbeats to make the groove breathe. Across the references the ghosts fall just after the backbeat, on the sixth and eighth sixteenths of the bar. Play them so quiet they are felt more than heard. Note that the Songsterr exports of these songs have zero ghost notes (they flatten every hit to one velocity), so this layer is something you add by ear, not something the tab gives you.
A flam is a grace note a hair before the main note, on the same drum, which thickens an accent. They live on the lead-ins, the seventh and fifteenth sixteenths, walking you into beat 3 and the downbeat. Practice: play a snare, then add a soft left-hand grace just before it until the two sound like one fat hit.
Loud sections add kick and snare, quiet ones strip back to the cymbal bed. Fishing the Sky runs hot at bd 6.6, sd 4.0, hh 0.4, oh 3.7, rd 3.9, cc 2.4, t 0.2 per bar; Shiner The Egg sits busier and evener at bd 4.8, sd 4.4, hh 4.9, cc 1.2, t 0.5. Write your quiet bars first, then earn the busy ones.
The trap that cost this session hours: your DAW said 120, the song was actually 131.75. A part written on the wrong grid drifts out of phase over a couple of minutes even when the length looks right. Before you write a bar, verify tempo from the audio or the bass onsets, not from the project field. Set a click to the verified number, and only then place the backbeat.
Put a click at your verified tempo. Lay the backbeat, kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4. Swap the closed hat for an open-hat or ride pulse. Add two ghost snares just after each backbeat. Put one flam as a lead-in to beat 3. Then play it against your guitar or bass and only keep what locks.