The Language of Drumming

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funkutron

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Drumming is a language which we become fluent in as we progress as players. If you think of music in that way, the drummer's job is to punctuate the sentences and paragraphs with periods, commas, semi colons, colons, etc., etc., thus making the musical "sentences" complete. So when you do a set-up or a fill, you are just like someone who is writing a story.....

Also, what I notice with me, is that when I'm really "into" it, when I open my hi-hat I open my mouth too! So the hi-hat is the "mouth". The kick is probably your bum, and the snare....what is that? maybe your williewinkie, I don't know, but it's all "body language" of some sort!

I used to tell my students that you must think of playing the kit two ways.....your body is either like the letter "H", or like the letter "X", and is a mixture of both at any given time. H is when you are playing the right foot with the right hand, or the left hand with the left foot, and X is when you are playing the left foot with the right hand and the right foot with the left hand. And also, there is no real independence, everything is either together (flam) or in-between. You can say I'm BARMY, but you would be absolutely right, so don't even bother!

Your thoughts?
 
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