I had a revelation this morning. As I am writing a blog about drumming I think a lot about music education. I was thinking about the majority of instructional drum videos out there. So many of them are the equivalent of a writing teacher coming into class and saying,
Good morning class. How many of you want to be the best speller you can be? It takes practice. Here is how you spell "Apple." A P P L E. Now once you have figured that out let's see if we can spell "conformity."
It's subversive to be poetic. It cuts against knowledge itself towards the supreme darkness of Being. New words, new spellings, and the whole gamut of human life from suffering to emergence into the light. We need to empower musicians to rise above vocabulary, spelling, and recitation, and into the field of the terror and joy of innovation and romance with sound.
Drummers are obsessed with rhythm. But not the moon rhythms that drive the oceans, no the pre-fatal abstraction of machine rhythms. Devotees to the false god of the clock. Perfectionism among drummers is an epidemic, and because of that the paralysis of the fear of the unknown is rampant.
The grid is a very small area, just as visible light is an extremely narrow wavelength. The grid I define as the area where a traditional "note value" could theoretically house a "note"....similar to the options on a drum machine, any quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty second, and maybe sixty fourth, in whatever numerical subdivision up to say 12.
Yes the the grid is worth knowing. And if you are looking to be employed where metronomic exactitude is the karaoke death sentence of Sisyphusian muledom then by all means learn accountability so one can be of service to all styles and feels of music. Even though there is survivalist sarcasm here I fully believe in knowing the grid. Marcel Duchamp says, "I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."
But this loyalty to the machine, to the standardization of the ear, to the extremely narrow bandwidth of "rhythm" I think is causing drummers to be too careful.
To fully gain control there has to be the courage to completely lose control. The reins are held loosely. Shamanic trance, drumming as painting, drumming as breathing, drumming as language, words, love letters mailed and love letters set on fire, the freedom of off-the-grid exploration. For some off-the-grid will be a place to live and to work and to never come back to the compressed heart of the machine. For others it will be a way of relating to the instrument with a new perspective so that the grid becomes more lively and dynamic rather than a fixed and passive structure.
Some antidotes to perfectionism and slavery to the grid.
First the "grid" can always be loosened and humanized. Allow imperfections, fluctuations in tempo, fire up the neurons in the heart and bypass the cul de sac autoeroticism of the intellect in a searing arc of red meteor fire.
Accelerations: (feet play ostinatos on the grid:) hands speeding up slowing down creating rhythms based in the joy of movement and the feeling of the sound as the criteria. No devotion to bar lines or time signatures and each hand has freedom of tempo, dynamics, and domain. Practicing total freedom of the language of the hands while the feet hold down a very tight pattern or an extremely loose unfixed pattern. The soul itself can become the groove and that needs no commentary and all music becomes ornamental to that primary condition of ecstasy.
Monologues: In the same way that speaking does not require any practice to a metronome. Drum for or to someone or something.
Weather: waves, rain, haunting of fog, the wind, the atmosphere is full of images and beautiful pulsations that are off the grid, natural, and primal as fuck.
Minimalism: let silence be the dominating voice like a very distant thunderstorm. Practice primarily listening and get transfixed in the ecstasy of non-doing.
Making love: The dynamics of lovemaking, infinitely silent and sweet to violent euphoria and abandon.
Polyrhythms: Set up both sustainable and unsustainable systems. Experience not being able to maintain a rhythm as an entrance into it's own oscillation of creation destruction creation destruction. That is a very primal thing to be a part of. Fall off the horse and get back on. Invent new ways to gallop.
Sound barrage: Avalanche, eruption, downpour, experiment with a full and complete unleashing on the drums but play at a dynamic that IS sustainable, in other words let it increase your energy rather than playing over the edge that will deplete you. Try a quiet incessant barrage and then build from there.
Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance: This is a pre requisite for all drummers
Sing Sing Sing Sing Sing: This is a pre requisite for all drummers
Master uilleann piper Tim Britton just commented on an old blog post. At the end of his comment he left a mysterious and fascinating audiophile forum link. I read through it and below is a passage that struck me. It confirms my growing intuition about dynamics and the ideas of space that I have been conscious of in music that thrills me. Dynamics are crucial for drummers with access to such a huge range of volume. With this raw power comes a great responsibility :) Weeeeeeeee!
Loud ‘Forte’ passages sound altogether louder and appear to be at their very loudest when they are strongly in juxtaposition with extremely quiet ‘Piano’ passages.
Great music has its most powerful impact when the natural dynamics and contrasts are preserved that make sound continually interesting to the ear and brain, in a way, that naturally engages them.
If you fail to hold the listeners attention over time, by not providing proper relief for their ears and brain by eliminating the contrasting dynamics that would demand their listening attention and enrapturing enthral them.
Ultimately you will force the listener away from the source of sound, if you insist upon totally maximising level continuously, for in the last resort, the ear has a safety mechanism called ‘temporary threshold shift’ which acts to shut off sound, when it is delivered above a certain level continuously.
*to read the full passage click here starts on post #23
Recently i had a long conversation with drummer and percussionist Stephen Taylor Hodges who has played with the likes of Mavis Staples, John Hammond, Smashing Pumpkins, Tom Waits.
One of the first things he said about playing the drums was "how hard would you pat your baby?"
This resonated with me immediately because as a drummer and a father I have realized that volume has a limit. In fact this conversation opened my eyes to what I already believed, that the drums should invoke silence, that the dynamics of the trees should be the reference point, the swaying of the ocean, the aura of the moon of the snare drum has ancient power at the level of the whisper.
It's not so much a negation of volume, but an embrace of the full dynamic range holding close to the center as the silent hub of the wheel and from there exploring the lightning of the storm and the violence of ecstasy always returning to the whisper of the leaves and the black sky.
It has completely transformed my practice routine. Right now I am going through stick control for R i hit the bass drum soft for L i use a brush on the snare and in my right hand I am using an egg. Mr. Hodges said that using shakers is a very powerful way to bring you back to your center. Also playing at this volume allows you to use a metronome without headphones which is amazing.
I had an amazing experience tonight. My drum set is in the living room now because I am playing at a volume like a quiet radio. My son's room is right next to my drum set and while my wife was putting him to bed I continued playing dropping my volume to the quietest possible. Barely audible, my kick with the synthetic lambs wool beater sounded like far off thunder, and on the snare with the snares off I used a Native American drum beater. I felt like I was in a dream playing this music that could facilitate the transition from waking to sleeping. It was shamanic, primal, mystical, and grounded in the dynamics of nature. So I have decided to dedicate a blog to my experiences along this path so clearly illumined by Mr. Hodges. .
