drumming

Improvising Music on the Drum Set

The drum set is not typically a solo instrument, so I find it challenging when I have the opportunity to play improvised pieces in this area. It’s a kind of playing that requires confidence and sensitivity where the outcome is a reflection of the sum of my musical skills and sensibilities. The context will usually determine what I play. In situations where there’s a need for atmospheric music, I’ll develop a loose compositional structure. If I’m playing for a dancer who is improvising, their movements inspire the things I play. Occasionally, I’ll take a more of a narrative approach, where I try to take the listener on a musical journey.

As I begin a piece, I try not to be too judgmental about the first sounds that come out, I have to allow time for things to develop. The process involves establishing musical parameters such as tempo, meter, repetition, contrasting timbres, changing dynamics and musical style. I try and create musical consonance and dissonance by juxtaposing musical extremes and the shades that lie between them. I play phrases that are smooth and connected and contrast them with ones that are more disjointed or angular. I can also do this by changing between playing in strict time and free or irregular time or setting sections that are polyrhythmic against parts that are built on simple rhythms.

Yesterday, in a sparsely lit performance space, I created over a dozen short drumming pieces for improvised dance solos that were done by the students in a modern dance class. I was set up in the rear corner of the space, and the students and the instructor sat in a row of bleachers, which were situated beneath a set of lights. Each dancer came up to my drum set to acknowledge that they were ready to begin. A few of the students whispered their musical preferences: a funky beat, something tribal, a nice groove, play slow and full, or nothing too loud or crazy. At the end their dance they returned to me to signal that we were done.

As I constructed the pieces I tried to make each contrast to the one that preceded it. I used drumsticks, brushes, timpani mallets, and my hands to create varying sounds. I sometimes played only the cymbals or just the drums. I also played the two types of sounds together in varying combinations. There were also two hand drums to my left, which I used sporadically. In one instance I limited my sound choices to the floor, the small movable wooden riser that the drums were set up on, and the metallic cymbal stands.

My recent experience was challenging and rewarding. Overall the dancers seemed to appreciate my contributions to their improvisations. The dancers who had experience in this type of moving before danced with abandon. I feel that my drumming help to launch them and carry them through space. For the students who were not quite as comfortable moving this, I think that my playing made it easier for them to explore their creativity.

I should play in this format more often. It’s very different the role of sideman, which I usually play in. Luckily, as a dance accompanist, I get to do this kind of playing.

Why the Drums?

As far back as I can remember I had a strong connection to music. I was also very curious about how music was created.

As a child, I sang all the time. I would often make up songs about where I was and who I was with. My grandmother would tell the story about a night that I was staying with her and my grandfather, when I was discovered standing in my crib and singing, “In the night, in the night, in the night at Pawpaw and Lorlie’s.”

My earliest experiences of participating in musical activities were singing hymns in church and being in the school chorus. I liked the idea of my voice blending with others, and I’ll never forget following along with my grandmother’s voice as we sang from the church hymnal. These melodies along with the songs my parents sang to me are some of my earliest recollections of expressing music.

I was also a fan of popular music. I learned about it from television, and by listening to the records my parents or my baby-sitters would play. The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand, Soul Train and countless variety shows featured the top artists of the day. There were also tv shows like The Monkees and The Partridge Family, which were about people who formed bands  I was also introduced to rock and roll music by the teenage girls who often looked after me. Girls like my cousin Donna and Jill, the girl who lived next door. My friend’s older sister Jan, as well as a pair of distant cousins who I met when I was visiting my grandparents in the mountains, also introduced me to new songs and artists. I also listened to the radio all the time. When I heard a song that I liked, I would try to get a 45 r.p.m. recording of it. All of this was like a course in popular music appreciation.  By the age of five, I knew about the Beatles, and I knew that a combo consisted of electric guitar, a bass, keyboards, and drums.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, I had the chance to get a firsthand look at drumsets and drummers playing them. A friend of mine named Finley had an older brother who owned a gold sparkle drum set that I was allowed to fool around on.  There were also two bands that rehearsed in the basements of nearby homes. My friends and I would sometimes go watch one of the bands through the basement windows of the house where they practiced. When the teenage boys took a break to smoke cigarettes, we were invited in for a closer look at their instruments. Once, a different band set up in the driveway of the home down the street, where they put on a short concert for the neighborhood – I remember them playing “Come Together,” by the Beatles. At that time I thought that playing music was very cool.

Then there was my third-grade teacher Ms. Carter, and her colleague Ms. Neely, whose classroom was across the hall. These two African-American teachers introduced me to African-American culture in 1969: The Jackson Five, Joe Frazier, Mohammed Ali and soul music. I didn’t spend a lot of time learning the traditional school subjects that year; but, as I spent my time going back and forth between their two classrooms, I learned about different things, which were outside of my white middle-class world. These things would continue to shape my interests. My parents felt differently. They put me in a private school the following year.

With so much of it around me, I thought that music was another one of the elements in the natural world. And learning to play a musical instrument was the next step in the process.

My father bought me a snare drum and cymbal for my eighth birthday, I guess it to see if I’d stick with it before he invested in a full drumset. I don’t remember taking any music lessons, nor do I recall playing anything musical on that drum and cymbal; however, I must have demonstrated something, because the following Christmas day, I got my first drumset! Soon after that took my first lessons from a drummer in one of the neighborhood bands. At the age of eight, I became a drummer.

First Drumset

This is where it all began. My first drumset.

 

More Video of Me Playing Drums for a Dance Class and Some Spilled Coffee

Here’s another video of me playing drums for dance class. It’s a little longer than the previous video I posted, and it’s a little more exciting. In this video, I’m playing for the first two exercises  in the “warm-up” portion of a jazz dance class. The camera is set up in such a way that you can see the students in the background as I play. The first part is their opening stretches, and the second part, which is a little more up-tempo, is cardio training and isolations.

I never plan what I’m going to play for these warm-up sequences, and I rarely play the same thing twice. The instructor sets the sequence of the exercise and I base my playing on that structure–changing my patterns to fit the shifts between the character of the movements. In some classes, a warm-up can last up to ten-plus minutes and can have tempo changes and shifts in meter. Longer warm-ups can take weeks for the students to learn and teachers may add to the structure as the dancer’s abilities improve. As you can see this opening warm-up is fairly short and straight forward.

https://vimeo.com/328618597?activityReferer=1

The reason the second part is abbreviated is that my phone/camera and the cup of coffee it was leaning against, wound up on the floor, creating a small puddle under the piano in the dance studio. I couldn’t stop playing, so the remainder of the exercise features a shot of the dance studio’s ceiling accompanied by the sound of my drumming–all of this was edited out. The cause of this debacle was that the camera and coffee configuration became destabilized due to the vibrations created by my drumming and the dancers’ movements–the floor is springy. The instructor used recorded music for the next part of the warm-up because I had to mop up the coffee spill.

 

Three’s Better Than Two

My intention over the next six weeks is to create five blog posts per week. So far, I’ve only made two; however, I still have today.

Looking for a topic for this third post eluded me up until five minutes ago when I decided not to give up and write first thought that came to me, which was, “although I have very little time today, writing three posts is better than writing two.”

It was a gift to myself and to anyone who reads this to know that by taking action, we’re exerting some control over our destiny. Self-determination can be freeing, and it can give one a sense of peace. Why? Because we’re not giving in to apathy and defeat. It’s empowering to know that amid our crazy lives, where so many outcomes are out of our control, good things can happen as a result of sitting down and doing the work, getting on our yoga mats, or going for a run.

Having coffee on hand always helps!

My Mission

I have always approached playing music with a lot of passion.  Much of my professional life has been spent learning how to transform my approach toward playing so that I do it with more ease.  I’ve also had to refine my playing, learning to play with good timing, technical control and knowledge of different musical styles.

Most often, I find my expression as a musician playing in live settings, either accompanying dance classes or playing in bands. I’m at my best when I get positive feedback from my colleagues or the people I’m playing for. I probably rely too on this interaction for motivation, and I’m learning to look past it. Instead, I try to stay within myself and focus on the stream of musical ideas that come to me as I play.

My ultimate mission is to create music that brings people closer to their souls and to open my heart so widely that my audience can connect to it. It’s not just about creating a moving experience for people, it’s about helping them to discover their own passion.

Opportunities. As a dance accompanist, I create music five days a week. Playing in bands, I perform almost every week. The avenue that I rarely explore is composing and recording my own music, but would there be an audience for it or a financial return?  Who is my audience? Do I even need to think about that? Am I that naïve? I would certainly have to answer some questions as I embark on such an endeavor.

I’ll be exploring these questions and other aspects of playing music in upcoming posts.