Printable Drum Staff Paper
Blank drum staff paper: standard five-line staves marked with the percussion clef — the two solid bars that tell a reader this staff carries unpitched percussion rather than melody.
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- Exact-scale vector PDF
- Letter, A4, Legal & more
- Commercial use OK
Sets the staff space; every other proportion follows from it.
0 leaves the staves open.
36pt is half an inch — safe on virtually every printer.
Free, no signup. Print at 100% scale (not “fit to page”) so the measurements come out exact.
Live preview — US Letter (8.5 × 11"), portrait · updates as you change any setting.
The percussion clef
Drum kit music is written on an ordinary five-line staff, but with a percussion clef instead of treble or bass. It looks like two thick vertical bars and it means something different from other clefs: rather than fixing pitch, it declares that each line and space is assigned to an instrument in the kit. Without it, a reader would try to read your hi-hat part as pitches.
Standard kit positions
There's no single universal standard, but the widely used convention puts the bass drum in the bottom space, snare in the third space, hi-hat above the staff as an x note head, and toms on the spaces and lines between snare and hi-hat, high to low from top down. Ride and crash cymbals sit on or above the top line, also as x note heads. Writing a short key at the top of your first page is always worth the thirty seconds.
Bars and rhythm
Because drum notation is entirely about rhythm, pre-divided bars help more here than on melodic staff paper. Set four bars per line for common-time grooves and you get a page that's easy to read at a glance and easy to count through while playing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many lines does drum sheet music have?
Five, the same as standard notation. The difference is the percussion clef, which reassigns each line and space to a drum or cymbal rather than to a pitch.
What is the percussion clef?
Two thick vertical bars printed at the start of the staff. It signals that the staff carries unpitched percussion, so lines and spaces represent instruments in the kit rather than pitches.
Where does the snare go on the staff?
Most commonly the third space (counting up from the bottom), with the bass drum in the bottom space. Conventions vary between publishers, so include a short key on your first page.
Can I turn the clef off?
Yes. Switching it off leaves plain five-line staves, which is useful if you're writing for tuned percussion like marimba or timpani and need a treble or bass clef instead.
Printing Tips
- Print at 100% scale.Turn off “fit to page” and “shrink oversized pages” — otherwise your printer rescales the sheet and the measurements no longer match.
- Match the paper size. Choose the same size here as the paper in your tray. Printing a Letter PDF on A4 (or the reverse) scales it.
- Lighter lines print better. A light grey or blue guides your work without competing with it — and it uses far less ink.
- Use heavier paper for wet media. 100gsm and up for fountain pens and markers; standard copier paper is fine for pencil.