A drummer’s high

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Ian Kinross

You may have heard the term “runner’s high.”

One of the pleasures of playing music is finally getting something right, often through practice. Practicing music may not send endorphins coursing through the body, like those giving a feeling of euphoria to a long-distance runner, but it does forge new connections in a musician’s brain. And those can trigger joy in his or her soul.

As I sat down at the Rogers drum kit I had dusted off during the lockdown, I recalled my afternoon practices as a teen in my parents’ basement in Don Mills. I have to give credit to my parents Douglas and Sheila, and my siblings Louise and Andrew, for putting up with the percussive racket coming out of our basement for an hour or so most days.

Practicing sometimes meant the agony of defeat. On one occasion, I was working on studies focusing on “independence” — the ability to separate and free up all four limbs, both on the kit and in the mind.

Despite many attempts, I could not seem to master one of the studies. In a desperate moment, I reared back, stood up, picked up my drum stool, and impaled it in the basement ceiling in frustration.

Damage control

As if waking from a bad dream, I realized what I had done and felt instantly sheepish. I pulled the stool leg out of the ceiling, sat back down on it, and continued my practice. Right after, I camouflaged the damage. Using a pencil to draw dots on a piece of white paper, I simulated the pattern of the ceiling tile. Then I cut it out with scissors and taped my crude circular patch job to the tile. I guess my arts and crafts studies in elementary school had finally paid off. The patch stayed there undetected, although slightly yellowed, until my parents sold the house years later. (Shhhhh! It may still be there today.)

Practice also means the thrill of victory. After getting my Rogers kits set up recently, I started to put together a fall practice agenda. It would be one thing to help get through the continuing covid lockdown, during the long Canadian winter.

First up was some Stick Control — from the classic 1930s book by George Stone. He focuses on control and liberation of the two hands, through patterns and variations.

Next, I went back over the 18th-century dance suite interpreted for snare drum by Anthony Cirone. I had almost mastered two of the suite’s four studies in the last few months, including a stately Spanish “Sarabande” in 3/4 featuring some lightning-fast passages. But I realized I had glossed over the other two pieces. I dug into the concluding Gigue to polish it up a bit. It would be nice to confidently play the four movements straight through one day.

A segue from snare to set

Those snare studies were actually a neat segue into practicing drum set. With the Sarabande fresh in my mind, I tried to adapt it for the full set, initially bringing in bass drum and high hat. Then, using Cirone’s 4/4 Allemande study as inspiration, I fooled around with a funk beat on the kit. My hands were feeling fluid and I let them drive the beat while my clunkier feet, on bass drum and high hat, filled in some spots with syncopation.

Next door, the neighbors had moved back in after a reno. But Nadine had assured me that when the door was closed to my makeshift practice area in Ali’s old bedroom, the racket was nicely muted.

I made a mental note to speak to the neighbors to apologize and let them know I would never practice after sundown.

Breaking down the shuffle

The thrill of victory came with the last component of this practice session. I had listened to Toto’s classic rock song Roseanna, and found some great YouTube videos breaking down drummer Jeff Porcaro’s fabulous shuffle beat.

The legendary Porcaro made the beat sound easy but it is complex when played at the song’s correct tempo. The YouTube video by Drumeo starts with two hands playing triplets — the right hand on high hat, and the left hand ghosting the second beat of each triplet on the snare. Then to get the backbeat, the left hand has to throw in a combo double backbeat/ghostbeat. For those who read sheet music, the Drumeo video also scores out Porcaro’s beat.

Before even thinking about adding the bass drum, I experimented with the Porcaro shuffle with my left and right hands. It started to click at a slower tempo, so I sped up a bit, feeling good as it started to feel more natural. I kept screwing up, but it felt like some new cerebral connections were being forged.

Not quite a drummer’s high, but I would take it.

Sticking with it

Posted on August 19, 2020 by Ian Kinross

I was feeling cocky when I cracked open Stick Control to its first page of exercises for the snare drummer. After all, in trying to make my drumming comeback, I had already tackled several challenging snare drums solos, including an 18-century dance suite adaptation from Anthony Cirone’s Portraits in Rhythm.

My friend and fellow percussionist Ward had reminded me about Stick Control and I remembered it from my drum-lesson days in the 1970s. During my recent pilgrimage to musical instrument store Long & McQuade, I picked up a copy of the music book, along with a new pair of sticks.

Stick Control2

The first page of Stick Control’s single-beat combinations looked simple at first glance. There were 24 in total, exploring different left-right hand combinations in a consistent stream of eighth-notes. Should be easy, I thought.

The fifth combination was paradiddles. The muscle memory kicked in and the paradiddles flowed smoothly in a right-left-right-right, left-right-left-left sequence (say PA-RA-DI-DDLE, PA-RA-DI-DDLE). I was on a roll.

But number 6 through me for a loop. It consists of standard paradiddles, but staggered to start on the second or “RA” beat of the paradiddle. My brain cramped. I tried it a few times and could not get it to flow.

Breaking bad habits

I recovered a few combinations later, and started to enjoy the challenge to my brain, hands, and memory. One thing I noticed was the emphasis on ambidexterity — a challenge to my dominant right hand. The exercises alternate downbeats with both left and right hands. A good way to break drumming habits.

Ahead of me were a total of 72 single-beat combinations. And that is just the first section.

The author-composer is George Lawrence Stone, a serious-looking man with a rudimental drumming pedigree and track record of percussion performance and teaching in Boston. Stone died in 1967 but his method is still revered by modern drummers.

“It has helped me to sharpen the tools of expression,” drummer Steve Gadd wrote. You can’t question Gadd’s musical tools — he brought a crisp fusion to his drumming with Steely Dan, Weather Report and other progressive bands.

Putting in the hours

“To the uninitiated, the art of drumming appears easy,” wrote Mr. Stone in the preface to Stick Control — “so easy in fact that unless the drum student has had the advantage of expert advice, he (or she) may fail to realize the importance of the long hours of hard, painstaking practice that must be put in.”

Doing the quick math, I figured I had solo-practiced drums and percussion about 2,400 hours between Grade 6 and Grade 13, mostly in my parents Don Mills basement. (Thanks Mom, Dad, Louise and Andrew, and sorry for the racket.)

My drum teacher Glenn Price recommended at least an hour a day, and I put in the hours, with a few days off now and again. Adding in practices and performances in rock and jazz bands, stage bands, concert bands, percussion ensembles, music camp, and a brief stint in Humber College’s music program, let’s push that estimate to a total of 5,000 hours.

Author Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the 10,000-hour principle to achieve mastery in a skill — maybe this old guy still needed to get cracking.

Doing the math also reminded me that life was simpler back then. For today’s kids, with more distractions and technology, would it be tougher to practice music, or any art form or technical skill?

Delicacy and power

Stick Control, with its relentless combinations of single beats, triplets, short rolls, rudiments such as flams, and blends of the above, was definitely on my practice list back in the 1970s.

Stone promised that with regular “intelligent” practice, his collection of rhythms, “will enable one to acquire control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm, lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution and muscular co-ordination to a degree far in excess of (one’s) present ability.”

I seconded that emotion.

Stick Control was back on my music stand.

Putting the pedal to the metal

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Ian Kinross

The bass drum pedal is a thing of beauty. Mine is a Pearl model that uses a short chain, not unlike a bicycle chain, to turn a downward pedal motion into forward beater strikes.

The bass drum itself is sometimes called a “kick” drum but that term is misleading. The drummer uses his or her leg, ankle, heel and toe to activate a pedal whose beater strikes the bass drum head. No kicking allowed.

The Ludwig and Sonor drum companies came up with this innovation in the early 1900s.

The pedal has probably saved a lot of sore backs for drummers who may have had to carry the drum around previously, or put it on a stand and whack it.

Independence!

Most importantly, once you can strike the bass drum with your foot pedal, it frees up your other limbs to play drums, cymbals, cowbells, woodblocks, gongs and whatever other percussion doodads you have added to your kit. Including the hi-hat, which sports two cymbals also operated by a pedal.

The ability of your two feet and two hands to play jointly and separately is called “independence.” With practice, your brain hives off new areas dedicated to each limb. This allows the drummer to carry out a beat with one limb, for example, and improvise independently with another at the same time. Independence also helps if you are operating with less than four limbs. For example, Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen made a successful comeback with the band after losing his right arm in a car crash.

I bet the guy who invented the bass drum pedal never thought of independent limbs and a bigger brain. He probably just had a sore back.

Driving the beat and more…

As drummers developed virtuosity on single or double bass drum pedals, such as those in the heavy metal genre, this invention gave new meaning to the term: “put the pedal to the metal.” The bass drum really does drive the beat, and can deliver both sensitive and thundering musicality.

After a long drumming layoff, I was getting back into the game with my snare drum and some classic solos. I added the hi-hat to the mix, with its brilliant Sabian cymbals. Now it was time to unpack the bass drum from its case.

Rogers bass drum

It’s a 1980s-vintage Rogers drum, with a golden five-ply shell (of maple?) and an Evans batter head. The twisted story of this old drum and its kit would be told at a later date.

Two swivel-adjusted props keep the drum fixed while you play it. Without the props, the drum would slide forward. I like the Rogers props better than the Ludwig style as they give better directional traction.

The pitch of each head can be adjusted by tightening or loosening the lug screws. Some drummers muffle the batter head and may remove the non-batter head for a harder sound. This drum had a nice deep thump to it so I decided to leave it alone.

It’s good to remember that the modern bass drum is reasonably portable. I know for a fact that it will fit in the front seat of a 1971 blue VW Superbeetle, while the rest of the kit is stowed in the back seat.

“Hot” drumming

I was practicing drums again in my older daughter’s former bedroom during a summer heat wave. When she was not delivering front-line medical care, Nadine was sometimes in our younger daughter’s former room next door sewing masks during the lockdown. The air-conditioning did not reach the third floor so my practice sessions qualified as hot drumming.

I decided to illustrate the concept of independence. My plan was to use the bass drum and hi-hat beats to underscore the musicality of one of composer Anthony Cirone’s snare drum etudes.

Next door, the renovation crew had installed the roof and siding and were working inside, so there was no one but the birds and my spouse to hear as I put the pedal to the metal.

Rogers bass drum 2

Sarabande! It’s how we roll…

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Ian Kinross

The Spanish know drama. At least that was my impression from two splendid Netflix series we watched during the lockdown: Gran Hotel and Cable Girls (Las Chicas del Cable). Both are set in early 20th century Spain.

Ambition, arrogance, jealousy, spite, revenge – these darker human traits blended with compassion, hope, romance and loyalty just as ancient Spanish traditions and social structures began to clash with the modern world at that time.

The dignified “Sarabande,” a Spanish dance, channels that turmoil and majesty. It is Etude 29 in the book of 50 classic snare drum studies I had been tackling: Portraits in Rhythm.

Composer Anthony Cirone notes the slow and stately 3/4 tempo, with heavy emphasis on the second beat of the measure. This is particularly true during the powerful theme that starts and ends the piece.

Photo credit: Nadine Wirsig

Because I had also dusted off my hi-hat, with its bright-sounding Sabian cymbals, I decided to emphasize that second-beat drama with a simple ornamentation — a controlled quarter-note crash of the two cymbals, mirroring the quarter-note snare drum roll.

Counterpoint and suspense

In contrast to the slow theme, the piece features tricky 32nd-note syncopation, some triplet counterpoint, and crescendos foreshadowing the main theme.

During practice, I couldn’t help grimace as I navigated the tough passages. I slowed them down, and also read the rhythm in my head to try to get it right. Likewise, I couldn’t help but smile when I hit the majestic main theme, punctuating its second beat and roll with a crash of the hi-hat.

I made a mental note to apologize to the composer for adding in the hi-hat to a pure snare solo, but felt it showed musical interpretation. That was my story and I was sticking to it.

Another heatwave had hit Toronto and the AC was not reaching my daughter’s old room on the third floor. I turned on a portable fan, felt the sweat bead on my forehead, and tried to get inside the music. With its majestic flow, the Sarabande had its origins in Central America, its popularity through the Baroque period in Europe, and interpretation well into the 20th Century by composers such as Debussy.

As I focused on the piece, I got lost in its dark Spanish drama.

Fireworks! Musical dynamics in Cirone’s “Allemande”

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Ian Kinross

The second snare drum solo I tackled was the Allemande, channelling elements of a traditional German dance. Composer Anthony Cirone notes the form’s moderate 4/4 tempo, upbeats, and frequent short, running figures.

But the part that really got my heart thumping was a furious section of syncopation and rolls that build on the theme introduced in the simpler first section. And how the theme is reprised at the finale.

Cirone is keen on the dynamics of music. When we look at contemporary music, some drummers make the mistake of going full-bore throughout a solo. This style, ironically, takes away some of the power of the work. In music, as someone said, without a pianissimo, there is no fortissimo.

Jazz drummer Buddy Rich sometimes got knocked for his showy style and surly band leadership but when I saw him play live several times in the 1970s, I was mesmerized by his musical dynamics. Buddy created counterpoint in his solos with a whispering snare roll or delicate transition to cymbals or drum rims. So when he went full bore and fast tempo it was like fireworks.

Percussionist and composer Anthony Cirone expores musical dynamics throughout his classic book of snare drum studies, Portraits in Rhythm.

I tucked into his Allemande, Etude 27, and practiced its different segments. Those included the simpler introductory theme and the piece’s trickier passages of sixteenth-notes, rolls, syncopation and rudiments such as the flam. Here and there I took out my pen and marked stick patterns with “R” for right hand and “L” for left hand, for better execution.

To give myself a break I sight-read through and enjoyed the next three segments of this four-part study (Etudes 27-30) channeling an 18th century dance suite. The Courante was lively. The Sarabande was powerful. The concluding Gigue was giving me trouble, so I tried to drop some of the rudiments in its trickier passages and just get the flow.

“Hot drumming”

During an early summer heatwave, my daughter’s old room was a sauna, but it felt good drumming through Etude 27 with the occasional bead of sweat running down my back and forehead. I found an old fan and turned it on to blow the hot air around.

I was enjoying the feel of the drumsticks and the sound and tactility of my CB “Percussion Internationale” snare drum. The drum with its U.S.-made heads and Taiwanese chrome shell lived up to that name, even it was a cheap knock-off scorned by some drum purists.

My two-year-old cochlear implant hearing system on the right side evoked the richness of the drum’s sound — its pitch, depth and resonance. To me, the drum sounded beautiful.

When I was comfortable enough with Cirone’s Allemande study, Etude 27, I intended to ask my spouse and covid isolation partner, Nadine, to tape my second snare drum solo on my cell phone. But she was working from home — on her phone — so I taped it myself.

The video evidence

When I watched the tape I saw a sweaty middle-aged guy with posture issues looking a bit too lackadaisical for some of the fireworks that the piece demanded. I saw myself hitting a few rough patches. On the flip side, there were some nice changes between segments and my eyes bugged out during the syncopated rolls at the end, indicating I was locked in to the music.

I vowed to practice more to nail it.

Dancing with Anthony Cirone

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Ian Kinross

I was making my snare drumming comeback with Etude 1 of Anthony Cirone’s book, Portraits in Rhythm. With daily practice, I could enjoy its syncopation, themes, and tricky passages.

But glancing further ahead, many of the 50 snare drum studies in Cirone’s book seemed intimidating. I put down my sticks and took the book away for a closer read.

Its first half focuses on musical elements such as tempo, development of musical themes, and dynamics. The second half explores a variety of classical musical forms, interpreting them for the snare drum. Hmm.

I flipped through the book until I found four consecutive studies channelling an 18th century dance suite. This series of Etudes 27 to 30 takes the drummer through German, French and Spanish dance structures:

— the Allemande, with its accented upbeat, and 4/4 time power and precision

— the Courante, in 3/2 time with its swooping phrases

— the Sarabande, with its stern and dramatic chorus, in 3/4 time

— and a lively Gigue in 3/2 to conclude the dance suite.

As I hacked my way through a sight-reading of the suite, I felt like I was fighting the music. But some neat parts started to jump out — like the syncopated rolls and power of the Allemande’s finale. There was also the Sarabande’s forceful chorus, made even more so as a counterpoint to the study’s fast passages.

My forearms tingled — I had hope. I decided to do a deeper dive starting with the Allemande, Etude 27.

Next door, the neighbours had moved out temporarily during a home reno, so I could drum unabashedly. Our older daughter’s former third-floor bedroom was my new drum studio. Nadine gave me some encouragement: “I thought I heard thunder but it was your snare drumming — sounds good.”

Composer Anthony Cirone was teaching me to dance.

My snare drum speaks

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Ian Kinross

With my snare drum dusted off and sounding crisp, I decided to tackle my first solo in 40 years.

My pilgrimage to Toronto’s Long and McQuade music store had yielded a classic and familiar book: Anthony Cirone’s “Portraits in Rhythm,” comprising 50 studies for the snare drum.

Cirone was an east-coaster. He grew up in New Jersey and studied at the top-flight Julliard School of Music in New York City before landing with the San Francisco Symphony as a percussionist. He went on to a music professorship at San Jose State University and a lifetime of percussion performance and teaching.

Musical potential

Cirone wrote Portraits in Rhythm when he was just a pup — in his 20s — but it set a standard in snare drum and percussion teaching internationally. Cirone explored musical themes, forms, dynamics and phrasing for an instrument that was sometimes neglected in classical circles. Cirone wanted to show the rich variations and musical potential of this core piece of the percussionist’s toolkit.

While studying percussion with my teacher Glenn Price in the 1970s, I had worked through many of the etudes in Cirone’s book

Four decades later, I had some trepidation when I set the book on my music stand and opened it to Etude 1.

I picked up my drum sticks and checked the required tempo. At 132 beats per minute, the piece felt blazingly fast. So I dialled back my metronome to a more leisurely 108. Then I took a crack at sight-reading the piece from start to finish.

It’s a concise study that sets a theme and reprises it in different variations, telling a musical short-story. There are some extreme dynamics ranging from double forte to pianissimo, and speeds ranging from quarter notes to sixteenths. Accents, syncopation and drumming rudiments are part of the story-telling.

I got through Etude 1 at my “Moderato” tempo in less than two minutes, with a bunch of mistakes, but with a smile on my face. I felt some muscle memory kick in, and I enjoyed the piece’s syncopation. There is a certain freedom in sight-reading, knowing you will screw up, but enjoying the ride anyway.

I started booking a daily practice section and broke down Etude 1 into segments, starting with the final passage. Once I had practiced all segments individually, I ran back through the piece several times.

Honeybees and nosy neighbors

I was a bit nervous about sending shockwaves through the brick wall to the neighbors in our semi-detached house, so started with the snares off and the drum mute on. I also laid a honey-bee-themed cotton tea towel on top to dampen the snare drum’s top head. I folded it to reveal its punny, inspirational message: Bee Happy.

In several passages, I noticed I was tripping up. One was a syncopated segment that is full of flams — drum rudiments where a softer grace note in one hand precedes the strike in the other. So I slowed down that passage and ran through it repeatedly.

My sheepishness at bugging the neighbors subsided and I could open up to full force on the double-forte passages. For the softer sections, I used the edge of the drum head to get a crisper sound. I tried to relax the sticks in my hand and let the piece flow.

Going Allegro

After a couple of practice sessions I grabbed my metronome and set a tempo of 116bpm — approaching the piece’s “Allegro assai” tempo of 132.

I searched YouTube and found some other percussionists playing Cirone’s Etude 1. Surprisingly, one of the videos with megahits featured the piece in what I felt was a dreadfully slow tempo. Hmm; drummer’s prerogative. Then I came across a couple of drummers who played it to the specified tempo of 132bpm, albeit with some of their own interpretation on accents, crescendos and other elements.

Listening to the piece online reinforced the theme and dynamics of the music.

I turned the page of my music book and hacked my way through Etude 2, sight-reading it as best I could. For fun, I mucked about with some drum rudiments like paradiddles and rolls. And a few rimshots.

Playing the drum perked me up during a troubled time. I made a mental note to ask Nadine to videotape me playing the piece. That would put some heat on me to practice more and get it right.

My snare drum was speaking to me.

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More info:

Anothony Cirone’s web site:

http://www.anthonyjcirone.com/

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