|
|
|
The joy of taking part in the swinging rhythms of the music away from pitch and trombone embochure! I'll never be a great technical drummer
with lightening fast rolls and mind-boggling coordination, but to just get inside the time of this music as I know it is enough for me. Everyone should
have a drum set! When I was a kid, I always had a pair of brushes around to play time with the records, and having a drumset now takes me even further
back into that role of listener... But how similar playing on ride cymbal is to me to moving the trombone slide! In fact, when I play the drums
I just simply imagine I'm
playing trombone, relaxing into my memory of the rhythmic line forms
through the ride cymbal, letting the other limbs just fire away instinctively, filling out the shapes as
note heads or densities of color or light moving horizontally and vertically like the lights on a stereo's sound equalizer. I actually feel
like the drum set is just one big articulating mouth: tip of stick on cymbal is tip of tongue, high-hat is air in cheeks, snare drum is rolling tongue
or back of throat, bass drum as tongue sounding "dah" from the roof of the mouth... ____________________________________________ |