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Jellynote
Experienced from the Perspective of Drummers
Introduction:
One of the best ways to learn a song is to seek out the note-for-note transcription of it. If you can’t write the song out yourself, you can always find a version of it somewhere on the Internet to download. Finding transcriptions is often a lengthy task as many songs are available while many others aren’t.
We came across a website called Jellynote that acts as a centralized hub for people to upload transcriptions of songs. We loved the idea of this! So, we’re going to take you through everything we thought when browsing through the site and let you know if Jellynote is the best option for finding drum transcriptions.
First Impressions:
The layout of the site looks highly professional. It’s always a great sign as it gives the impression that the website is going to provide you with high-quality content. You get the immediate idea that this is a site that provides you with transcriptions of songs.
This is because you immediately see a few song options to choose from, but it’s also because of the clever branding. They’ve masterfully fitted staff lines into the name of the site and throughout all the landing pages.
To have access to the transcriptions, we needed to make an account. So, we did that and moved onto the first step of checking out the home page.
Table of Contents
Jellynote for Drummers
1. Home Page
The very first thing that we noticed about the home page was that there was no drum kit option in sight. At first, we were a little disappointed, but we realized that drums aren’t the most marketable instrument when it comes to note-for-note transcriptions. So, it’s completely understandable!
The home page has a few instruments to choose from with very clear names to click on. These instruments include guitar, piano, bass, ukulele, violin, flute, and clarinet. There’s a final section labeled “other” which is where we eventually found the drum kit option.
The rest of the homepage is full of testimonials, popular transcriptions, and features of the creators playing to the songs that they transcribed. There’s a section where you can click on the profiles of the creators to see their biography and a list of songs that they’ve uploaded.
2. Transcriptions
The vast majority of the transcriptions on the website are very high-quality. They cover an incredible amount of ground and Jellynote makes it easy to find songs in different categories.
The site will show you transcriptions of different difficulty levels as well as different musical styles. You can also find transcriptions that follow different themes. An example of that would be Disney music.
You can find sheet music that has been scored in a variety of ways. Some will be note-for-note transcriptions while others will be lead sheets or chord charts. Many of them include the option to choose between those different ways.
Overall, you get a serious amount of value when looking through all the sheets on the site. It’s a paradise for anyone looking for material to go through on their instrument.
3. Drum Set
After we got an overall feel of all the music for instruments, we wanted to focus on the drum set section of the website. After all, we’re a drumming website ourselves! So we went to the “Other” section on the home page and selected the drum set category.
The drum set section seems to be fairly new compared to the other instruments as there isn’t as wide of a selection when it comes to styles. However, the site covers songs that fall under rock and punk, which is all we really needed to be honest!
Some of the transcriptions were part of full band scores while others were dedicated drum sheets.
4. Transcription Styles
One thing that became evident when looking at the different drum transcriptions on the site is that there are a variety of different transcribing styles. The reason for this is that multiple people can upload transcriptions onto the site and not everyone writes drum parts out in the same way.
It was something that we easily got used to after checking out a few songs. However, it has the potential to confuse some beginner drummers, especially when one person writes a hi-hat in the ride cymbal line and vice versa.
A few songs we checked out had slight mistakes, but most of them were very accurate to the original tunes. The best way to keep consistency is to find a creator that you like and then stick to the songs that that creator has uploaded.
The writing style differences aren’t as evident in any of the other instruments on the platform.
5. Range of Songs
As previously mentioned, the range of songs for the drum set section mostly includes pop, rock, and punk songs. We found a huge amount of popular songs on there to read and play through.
Having these songs makes the site incredibly attractive as popular songs are a great teaching tool to use. If you’re a drum teacher, having your students play to songs that they know helps dramatically in their learning journey.
So the website is great for personal use as well as getting teaching resources for your students.
It looked as if there were only 3 writers currently uploading sheets to the drum section of the site. That’s very impressive for the amount of content that is on there. It also means that the site will continue to grow and improve as new writers jump onboard eventually.
Cool Things:
Playalong Features
The playalong features are what separate Jellynote from many other transcription websites on the Internet. There are a few things that you can do to help you read and learn the songs.
The first thing to note is that every transcription has an audio file attached to it which you can listen to and hear what the parts sound like. This already separates the sheets from most of the competition.
The audio file can be slowed down so that you can hone in and practice on parts. Having the ability to play along with the audio file at a slow tempo will help you learn the song at a slower pace than the actual track goes at.
There’s an option to use a metronome along with the audio track which is very useful. You can also select a bar to play and activate a countdown click to bring you in.
Band Mode
One of the most impressive features of the site is the band mode. If a song has multiple instrument parts written for it, you can play them all together and mute different instruments as you please.
This allows you to play along with the score while muting the instrument that you’re personally playing. We found that even if a song doesn’t have a drum part, the band mode acts as an excellent tool to practice the drum part with the rest of the instruments.
You can use all the previously mentioned playalong features, giving you plenty of control over what you’re doing.
Attaining Scores
Since we had a membership on the site, we could freely see all the sheets and transcriptions. However, they’re mostly available in a browser. You can’t download them to print and use physically.
If you want to download any of the transcriptions, you need to buy them. We’re assuming this is where Jellynote makes their money back. We feel it’s a great system as all the scores are perfectly usable when looking at a browser. You could set a tablet or iPad up on a music stand and you’d be good to go.
You can pay for the scores to have the convenience factor. It will also contribute to the writers that provide content for the website, encouraging them to provide more in the future.
One of the bonuses of being a premium member of the site is that you get a small bit of credit every month so that you can download a few sheets at no extra cost.
Blog
Once we checked out everything the site had it terms of sheet music and scores, we wanted to see what else they had to offer. The only other notable thing on the site was a blog page. We thought this was an excellent touch as it gives you a bit of a break on the site with some fresh articles to read.
There were no articles about drum kits. That’s okay, you can read about those on Drum Ninja. There were, however, many articles about other instruments. These include blog posts about some of the creators as well as practice tips and advice articles.
Conclusion
If you want some material to work through or to teach, we highly encourage checking Jellynote out. It’s a fantastic platform that has a lot to offer. We can clearly see that a large amount of work has gone into it, and we fully back the guys over there with everything they’re doing.
Go make an account and check it all out for yourself!