My new gear last December isn't the hard kind...
I had been teaching myself to read sheet music when learning the drum part of a song (whether it's the band or personal interest) so I can be more proficient at it.
I convert drum tabs I find online (or songs I personally transcribe) into sheet music and glue them into a folder.
I had initially been using TabTrax3, however, editing is not that intuitive, software is a bit buggy, suddenly closes at times, difficult to input triplets (more so with 16th note triplets), and most importantly, it can not produce efficient print layout/number of pages that can fit in one folder (it's possible but the bars/notes become too small and hard to read).
Guitar Pro 6 was a bit expensive for my taste, but after trying and figuring it out for a few hours, I really liked it and paid for the full license. The editing/input routine is easier because it is similar to typing a Word document and a whole song can usually be printed in 2 pages (efficient layout).
Doing/reading sheet music tremendously helped me exercise counting to figure out difficult portions and decipher note values, rests, repeating bars and sections with alternate endings.
Transcribing can be quite difficult for me depending on the quality of the recording, speed of the song and my novice drumming experience factored-in, but it is an excellent exercise for me to hone my ear to listening to drum parts and discerning what kind of cymbal that was hit or whether it was an open or closed hi-hat hit, flams, buzzes, ghost notes, and what-not.
I also use Audacity to repeatedly play sections of a song in varying speeds.
If you noticed in the pic, I'm transcribing Mukha ng Pera (The Youth). Some of my band mates want to do a cover of it. Still about halfway through the song. A few more days of after work hours and I should have a fair rendition of it.
