Drum Arabesque Communique # 7:
Pressure, release, pressure, release (pressure....)
I've not been drumming much this week,
but in all other musical regards I am constantly reminded of the
beauty in simplicity, and the immeasurable importance of subtlety in
feeling. All these ideas just keep dancing around in my head in a simple waltz that slows on the third beat, always letting the tempo slide
into slower and slower cycles. By way of contrast, the complex books I am
reading require of me a slower and more careful approach, as
sentences stretch over many lines, becoming paragraphs depicting the
most picturesque of ideas, becoming pages turned over and still the
central arguments build with tenacity and precision and an
unstoppable logic that finally when the hammer is brought down and
the author deigns to speak the final words, I am left carrying the
weight of a thousand years of poetry condensed into a page turned
over a paragraph that all began with a single idea.
It is this combination of the
simplicity of the waltz, and the complexity of ancient literary texts
that brings me to today's lesson.
I've talked about it before in class,
the notion of pressure and release, roughness and smoothness, open
rhythms and closed rhythms, sustained and separated notes bookended
by hammering boot marching, gunfire patterns of hail-storm quality.
It is these competing pressures of all life that contribute to good
music. Never more so than in music intended for dance, which in
itself seems to be an expression of competing pressures, of
intellectual conceptions and thoughtful, deliberate choices in
choreography, and the utterly instinctual movements of one who is IN
THE DANCE, devoid of thought or language or syntax, unaware of
composition, choreography or conception. One who feels the contrasting pressures and responds as birds do to thermal layers in the atmosphere.
So the question then is, how do you
create pressure in music? Take the classic combination of a slow
Chiftatelli, or even a slow Macedonian Cocek, followed by a filled
Malfuf...for example.
Cocek x3 Malfuf x2
D-kT-kTk/D-kT-kTk/D-kT-kTk/ DkkTkkTk/DkkTkkTk
The second part, the x2 cycles of
Malfuf, is played quickly, taking as much time as a single Cocek
cycle. This also utilises one of my favourite patterns of making
five feel like four.
That's three Cocek, and two Malfuf, for
a total of five rhythm cycles, played over the time it takes to play
four of the 'tonic' rhythm, the dominant, slow Cocek.
It's a good idea to record yourself
playing one of these rhythms, and to practice playing the other
over the top. Practice playing Malfuf at the same slow tempo as the
Cocek, then practice doubling the tempo. Practice all this in your
mind as well as on your drum. I said that I haven't drummed much
this week, but I have practised every day on my knees and on my dog
and on my steering wheel, listening to the world and playing
counter-rhythms to the patterns in my head. This kind of daily
drill, maintaining a circadian discipline, is, I think, the source of
the deep confidence that I have in my hands. They know more than I
do, they trust more than I do, because I let them guide me in my
everyday practice, and as such, it is never a chore, it is only the
instinctual reflex of an animal at rest.
In nature, the sun rises and sets, the
moon lights the darkness, the dawn brings a chorus of birds and
twilight is forever shaded blue and mysterious with the pending
shadows of night.
So too it shall be with our music.
We look before and after
and pine for what is not
our sincerest laughter
with some pain is fraught
our sweetest songs
are those that tell
of saddest thought.
Percy Shelley, from The Nightingale
