Book Review: Jim Riley's "Song Charting Made Easy"

First off, sorry to all my loyal readers for my lack of blog posts in the month of March.  At the end of February, I received a nice opportunity to begin working on a transcription and article for Downbeat Magazine, so I've been pretty busy getting all of that together.  However, I need a break and I've been wanting to write a post on Jim Riley and his great book for a long time now.  I hope you enjoy, and thank you as always for visiting!  Last month the blog had close to 2,000 unique visitors!  I always appreciate the nice emails I receive each week, and I encourage you to go one step further and "like" the articles, as well as write in the comments box, so we can help spread the word further.  Thanks!

For those not yet familiar with the great Jim Riley, he is the drummer and musical director behind Country mega-group, Rascall Flatts!  Not only is Jim an accomplished and busy tour/session drummer, he is also a highly sought after clinician and private instructor throughout the US.  Recently, Jim was a featured at the Modern Drummer Festival where he performed along such greats as Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and John Riley.  This accomplishment, among many others, has quickly made Jim Riley a household name in the drumming world. 

My lesson with Jim:

I always prefer to write about personal experiences, and as luck would have it, I had the great opportunity to study with Jim at his home studio in Nashville.  To put it mildly, Jim has the greatest drum/man cave you have ever seen!  If you missed the recent article in Modern Drummer showcasing "The Drum Dojo", then please click here to check out a video tour by Jim!  It's a virtual drummer's paradise!  My experience in the drum dojo was very inspiring and I highly recommend that anyone in the area book a lesson.  Not only is Jim a fantastic teacher, but he is also an inspiring person to be around.  Jim is a drummer's drummer; a musician's drummer; and an all around decent human: a combination of which is rare in this biz, believe me.

I was a little nervous driving down to Nashville from Chicago to study with Jim, so much so that I booked a room at a hotel near his house so I was 100% SURE I didn't have a problem making it to the lesson on time.  Up to that point, the majority of my life had been spent as a classical percussionist and jazz drummer deep in studies at Interlochen and Berklee with some of the greatest teachers in the world, so I was very excited to take a formal lesson with someone outside of those genres.  At the same time, my mind was spinning...  What was this monster of country and rock drumming going to think?  Had all my years playing with singer/songwriters, wedding bands, and cover bands done any good?  I ate a little breakfast, fought through some nerves, and made my way over to the Drum Dojo to find out! 

After a ring of the bell, Jim appeared at the door sporting a Boston Red Sox hat, an instant mark of an intelligent man!  As a professional drummer myself, and someone who is pushing to get to the next level, I had plenty of questions written down prior to the lesson with Jim.  As we spoke, Jim seemed to size me up pretty quickly and we discovered quickly that we had a lot of similarities in our path to drumming.  To me, Jim seemed as hungry as I was to keep achieving and growing, which was inspiring in itself considering his vast accomplishments in the field.  After a good chat about our careers and the Nashville studio/tour scene, we moved over to the drums and played along with tracks from his debut book, "Song Charting Made Easy."  The lesson wrapped up nicely with Jim taking me into his office to show off his amazing collection of Boston sports memorabilia and signature snare from Ringo Starr!  At the end of the lesson, Jim was nice enough to walk me out to my car to sign a drum head for me.  Although the head had been beaten into submission after a string of gigs in Chicago, the ink managed to stick!  Currently, the drum head is hanging in my studio right next to my prized Elvin Jones signature drum head. 

Jim's lesson was great and the perfect combination of information and playing.  I drove back to Chicago feeling inspired as I listened back to the recording of our lesson.  Sure enough, my back beat did need work and my fills needed more clarity.  Hearing the velocity and confidence behind Jim's driving beat both in the lesson and on the recording taught me about a million things all at once!  I haven't left the shed since.  Thanks, Jim!

The Book:  (Click here to buy book)

I know I've given a lot of love to Jim Riley up to this point, but the love fest must continue!  Jim's book detailing the Nashville Number System is an amazing and extremely important book for every drummer and musician to have in their collection.  I can't even begin to describe the ways that this book has streamlined my own work, especially when someone hands me 3 CD's to "learn by Friday".  I know for certain that this method will take whatever cheat sheets or manuscriptis you have used for your rock/pop/country gigs and make you re-think your approach.  Humbly, Jim would probably argue that the Nashville Number System has always been out there and that he just put it into a book.  However, the fact that he organized the information so masterfully for all instrumentalists and featured tons of ear training examples and play-a-longs to help people of all levels, makes it an instant classic.  Honestly, it raises the bar for all of us who are attempting to write our books.   

So is the Nashville Number System meant for every style of music?

No, it is not meant to be used for specific writing of melodies and highly detailed drum parts per se, but this method is perfect for mapping out the harmony and sections of a song, showing all the hits, and getting everyone on the same page.  In other words, you can use it for most modern music, just not to write out symphonies or big band charts.
 

I won't give out specific details from Jim's book because you should pick up a copy, but at the basic level the Nashville Number System uses numbers instead of chord symbols.  For example, if we were in the key of Bb major and we wanted to show a simple ii - V - I chord progression, instead of writing Cmin  F  Bb...  we would write 2- 5  1 ...  If we changed keys, the numbers would stay the same.  Think about that for a minute...

So what's the big deal?

The big deal is that you can write ONE chart on a single page for the entire band, and it is instantly transposable for all instruments in all keys!  Normally if you had a chart in your book and say a singer sits in who couldn't sing it in that key, the whole band would need to do some pretty quick mental math to wrap their head around the new key.  Although tranposition is an essential skill for all instrumentalist, it sure would be nice to have one chart that made all of this easier.  The Nashville Number System totally streamlines the process of writing charts and it is used in high level professional situations on a daily basis.  Sound simple?  It is, but it serves the purpose unbelievably well.  There is much to learn about this system and I can't possibly detail it all in the this blog, you just need to pick up the book.

But, there are hits and breaks in songs...  what then, ahhh!? 

No worries, in the book Jim discusses techniques Nashville musicians have used for years in detailing these charts.  These are universal symbols that any musician/band can learn in five minutes, tops. 

But I'm a drummer, I don't care about chord symbols?

*leaning in*....come closer....closer....  How are you going to communicate with other musicians and understand music if you don't have an understanding of melody, harmony, and chord progressions?  Smarten up buddy, it's time to evolve!  "But, but...Ringo and Bonham...?"  You aren't them!  :) 

Ok, I'm being a jerk, but if you want to be taken seriously and contribute to the writing process in your band, let alone survive studio sessions, you had better get your theory chops together.  It will change the way you hear music.  In the meantime, there are some great substitutes for chord symbols that drummers can use in their charts...  Jim discusses one technique in his book that works well for drummers, and you can read that to find out.  In addition to his method, I like to use numbered bars in each section of my charts.  These numbered bars aren't meant to represent chord values, but instead simply detail the number of measures per section. 

Here is an example chart for your reading pleasure, High and Dry, by Radiohead.  You will probably see a few symbols here that you don't understand, but they will be further explained in the book.  I added in a few of my own symbols that Jim doesn't use, namely a circled number meaning an important crash, but that's just my own thing.  The good thing about this system is that you can customize charts in ways that make the most sense to you...unless of course you are sharing this with everyone as an actual Nashville Number chart, in which case you would need to write actual chord numbers for the band. 

The template you see above is something I developed in Excel so I didn't have to always re-write boxes and lines.  If you would like to Download your own blank template for your use, please click here.

Thanks everyone, and enjoy!