musical drumming

But generally speaking, time keeping is just the heart beat, the rhythm. It'd be like saying the metronome is musical.

I really can't understand how you guys can say time keeping equals metronome!! How is that the same thing? Time keeping is just a way of describing a percussional pattern that probably stays the same throughout. Or are you maybe only listening to techno music??
 
Can you hum to it? ;)

I tend to agree that drumming in general isn't musical. But yes, it can be, what with all the different tones and types of instruments one can include. But generally speaking, time keeping is just the heart beat, the rhythm. It'd be like saying the metronome is musical.

But as with all things this can be a subjective thing. One man's melody is some chick's random noise.

1) I can hum to the drums, even if you can't. I can also dance to them.
2) "Musical" is not synonymous with "melodic."
3) Any sound included in a piece of music is musical by definition.
4) So if I include a metronome in a piece of music, it is musical.
5) Were you aware that a metronome has both rhythmic and melodic content?
6) The drums, even when just fulfilling a "time keeping" role, have much more rhythmic and melodic content than a metronome.
7) You're aware that rhythm is part of music? Where did you get the idea that "just rhythm" = "not musical"?
8) You not knowing what the words mean doesn't make it subjective.
 
I liked the conversation more when we talked about the kinds of moods that drums can evoke. Once you get into playing music musically or unmusically it does my head in, especially since rhythm is at least as much a part of music as melody and harmony.

Rather than "musically" I prefer terms like "tastefully", "appropriately", "evocatively" etc. That makes more sense to me.
 
Music for 18 Musicians . . .the grad students did that at the local Uni a few years back, and it was awesome. I've seen it several times by professional orchestras and even Reich himself.

I love Cage. I've performed some of his music. I don't always agree with him but have read his books several times. When you are recording a city street corner, is that music??? He really challenged the idea of art though. But if I had my choice, 99 times out of 100, I'd be listening to Barber.

Cage could never write something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBOjvIhm2Cs
 
I thought mumbo jumbo and stuff.
it looks like those points are only settled in your mind. keeping time isnt music or a metronome would be music plain as day. a random sound isnt music just because someone decided to put it in a song. if i ***** into the mic as beyonce is singing that doesnt make the sound of air escaping ******* music no matter how abstract artsy you are.
 
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When you are recording a city street corner, is that music???

Or even better, 4'33" of someone not playing the piano! All of this stuff is established music- it's so accepted that they've teaching it in college for 40+ years. I don't know the theory of why things are now considered music which were not previously, and don't care to know. If someone puts together a sound presentation and asks me to experience it as a piece of music, that's good enough for me. I can't promise I'm going to take the time to listen to it, or that I'm going to like it, but I don't care about drawing lines and saying this or that is not music.
 
it looks like those points are only settled in your mind. keeping time isnt music or a metronome would be music plain as day.

Hello???
Swiss Matthias said:
I really can't understand how you guys can say time keeping equals metronome!! How is that the same thing? Time keeping is just a way of describing a percussional pattern that probably stays the same throughout. Or are you maybe only listening to techno music??

Keeping time NOT EQUAL metronome! By the way, welcome to the forum! You made a kind of rude debut here, but it sure can get better...
 
We had out moment, thanks to you and Abe among many others. Can't live in the past. lol

Hehehe ... still, speaking for myself, I do my best! One thing I like about the past is that people seemed less angry. Now even the so-called laid-back laconic Aussie is dead and our blogosphere is full of rage-filled misanthropes frothing at the mouth over bullsh ... droppings.

Chatting about of drumming moods and use of space strikes me as far preferable to debating the equivalent of whether expressionism is art. I mean, if it's not photo-realism then a 5 year-old can do it, right? :) Is the earth flat? Hell, it looks flat so it must be. The "controversy" about the integration of noise in music was decided eons ago, as per Todd's comment about it being taught in universities for 40 yrs.


Quite a blow to find that my Three Stages of Drummers was ignored in favour of "is drumming music?" (FFS), Maybe those stages only applied to me? Maybe everyone else was too sensible to teach themselves and followed a logical, guided linear progression with the aid of a qualified drum tutor, and I'm the only self-taught loser here??

I had no idea there was such a thing as drum lessons when I started playing. There was no Internet and I knew two drummers at the time, both of whom were self-taught. I mean, why would anyone have drum lessons? After all, drums aren't a proper musical instrument haha (the circle turns).

Of course, back then I thought the occasional Cage and Stockhausen I'd hear on Mum's radio were just noise, now I have recordings of some of their "noise", along with David Behrman and, of course, The Cow ...
 
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Hehehe ... still, speaking for myself, I do my best! One thing I like about the past is that people seemed less angry. Now even the so-called laid-back laconic Aussie is dead and our blogosphere is full of rage-filled misanthropes frothing at the mouth over bullsh ... droppings.

Chatting about of drumming moods and use of space strikes me as far preferable to debating the equivalent of whether expressionism is art. I mean, if it's not photo-realism then a 5 year-old can do it, right? :) Is the earth flat? Hell, it looks flat so it must be. The "controversy" about the integration of noise in music was decided eons ago, as per Todd's comment about it being taught in universities for 40 yrs.


Quite a blow to find that my Three Stages of Drummers was ignored in favour of "is drumming music?" (FFS), Maybe those stages only applied to me? Maybe everyone else was too sensible to teach themselves and followed a logical, guided linear progression with the aid of a qualified drum tutor, and I'm the only self-taught loser here??

I had no idea there was such a thing as drum lessons when I started playing. There was no Internet and I knew two drummers at the time, both of whom were self-taught. I mean, why would anyone have drum lessons? After all, drums aren't a proper musical instrument haha (the circle turns).

Of course, back then I thought the occasional Cage and Stockhausen I'd hear on Mum's radio were just noise, now I have recordings of some of their "noise", along with David Behrman and, of course, The Cow ...

What a wonderful post...


.........................
 
What a wonderful post...

Thanks Abe! Your post reminded me of a song, and you KNOW which rendition I'll pick :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGWiKSlPR0

Seriously, I am sooo over all the anger (DW's more spirited spats are kisses compared with the political spleen being vented these days). Why are people so angry? If people can afford an Internet connection and the time to write in news blogs then there are about 5 billion people with more cause to complain ...

To more fun things ... has anyone else gone through the same three stages of drummers? ... the flash freak, the "artiste" and the artisan? I see that as pivotal to our ideas of musicality, or at least good musicality. Even old Virgil; it still raises positive emotions in those who enjoy drum acrobatics - usually young guys who get off on the adrenaline rush.

Am I flogging a dead horse here? Or more likely, can the horse be exhumed?


And thanks for not ignoring me, Matthias :) I used the Ignore feature after finding out a member had done it to me ... but I turned it off because it's more fun to satisfy one's curiosity than to hold a grudge ...
 
I had no idea there was such a thing as drum lessons when I started playing. There was no Internet and I knew two drummers at the time, both of whom were self-taught. I mean, why would anyone have drum lessons? After all, drums aren't a proper musical instrument haha (the circle turns).
lol, Polly, the same for me, I only knew one other drummer at the time and I only ever saw him on telly...

I must have missed your 3 stages thread. But I know what you mean about not even knowing drum lessons were an option. "Here's a drum kit, get on with it" I had to make everything up as I went along... I had the kit 4 weeks then I joined a band lol... those were the days
 
lol, Polly, the same for me, I only knew one other drummer at the time and I only ever saw him on telly...

I must have missed your 3 stages thread. But I know what you mean about not even knowing drum lessons were an option. "Here's a drum kit, get on with it" I had to make everything up as I went along... I had the kit 4 weeks then I joined a band lol... those were the days

Yeah, I think the people who had lessons must have gone through music class at school. Otherwise, as you say, get the kit and play to records, watch drummers at gigs, chip away at the bits you wanted to play but found hard ...

Four weeks was quick, LastMan! It took me a whole three months. First song was Smoke on the Water (which was good since I'd been playing along to Machine Head on a loop the whole time). We were dire lol. Musical drumming? hahahaha
 
Yeah, I think the people who had lessons must have gone through music class at school. Otherwise, as you say, get the kit and play to records, watch drummers at gigs, chip away at the bits you wanted to play but found hard ...

Four weeks was quick, LastMan! It took me a whole three months. First song was Smoke on the Water (which was good since I'd been playing along to Machine Head on a loop the whole time). We were dire lol. Musical drumming? hahahaha
lol, Smoke on the water..!. I wish I had been that good. We were playing our own songs so it didn't matter that I had no idea what I was doing. I just hit things in time to the music. We played our first gig a few months after that...

It is interesting that in Gavin Harrison's interview he mentions Steve Janson who happens to be David Sylvian's brother and collaborator. Another drummer who played things differently was Budgie from Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was my main influence at that time, he played for the music and ignored convention enough for me to feel at home in not knowing what I should be playing. I just had fun, the first gig turned out really well.
 
lol, Smoke on the water..!. I wish I had been that good. We were playing our own songs so it didn't matter that I had no idea what I was doing. I just hit things in time to the music. We played our first gig a few months after that...

It is interesting that in Gavin Harrison's interview he mentions Steve Janson who happens to be David Sylvian's brother and collaborator. Another drummer who played things differently was Budgie from Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was my main influence at that time, he played for the music and ignored convention enough for me to feel at home in not knowing what I should be playing. I just had fun, the first gig turned out really well.

Always liked Steve Janson's playing, always like David Sylvian period. They have style.

At my first gig, a party, I put my kick drum beater through the kick drum head during the first song. If I remember correctly I just put a ton of gaffer tape on it - lol

Budgie would have been a good role model to have. I was into the flashy types like Ian Paice, Aynsley Dunbar, Bonzo and Mitch. Impossible stuff for a newb so I was sloppy until I started realising that I was sloppy.

Oh well, it was the mid-70s and disciplined, restrained accompaniment wasn't exactly all the rage at the time ...
 
Hehehe ... still, speaking for myself, I do my best! One thing I like about the past is that people seemed less angry. Now even the so-called laid-back laconic Aussie is dead and our blogosphere is full of rage-filled misanthropes frothing at the mouth over bullsh ... droppings.

Chatting about of drumming moods and use of space strikes me as far preferable to debating the equivalent of whether expressionism is art. I mean, if it's not photo-realism then a 5 year-old can do it, right? :) Is the earth flat? Hell, it looks flat so it must be. The "controversy" about the integration of noise in music was decided eons ago, as per Todd's comment about it being taught in universities for 40 yrs.


Quite a blow to find that my Three Stages of Drummers was ignored in favour of "is drumming music?" (FFS), Maybe those stages only applied to me? Maybe everyone else was too sensible to teach themselves and followed a logical, guided linear progression with the aid of a qualified drum tutor, and I'm the only self-taught loser here??

I had no idea there was such a thing as drum lessons when I started playing. There was no Internet and I knew two drummers at the time, both of whom were self-taught. I mean, why would anyone have drum lessons? After all, drums aren't a proper musical instrument haha (the circle turns).

Of course, back then I thought the occasional Cage and Stockhausen I'd hear on Mum's radio were just noise, now I have recordings of some of their "noise", along with David Behrman and, of course, The Cow ...

Ligeti has a piece for 100 metronomes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mEKnWU19s

For me, there is a point where it gets a little silly. It's really performance art and I'd rather listen to great music.

Cage was a bit of a scoundrel. It's one thing to question whether noise is music. It's another thing to question whether music is music. Cage went to far because he didn't have the compositional skills of a great composer. It's the look at me syndrome, the point at which the individual is a little more self-infatuated than artistic.

For me, Cage's importance was less that of emancipating noise but it returning toe musicians to the world around him, the environment as compositional inspiration, rather than he strict academicism that Schoenberg was so good at. Cage was a Romantic in that sense. But Barber was able to find the best of both worlds.
 
You can sing a song without the presence of rhythm. That would be music without agreed upon time. If you say a drummer that is only keeping time is playing music then so is a metronome. Remember I said just keeping time. No accents, fills, or anything else.

Yes, you can sing it, but if you don't have agreed upon pulse with your self no one will know what you are singing because you have no subdivisions. When you sing with a pulse, well you are keeping time.

I have listened whole my life my dad's free jazz band play. Even free jazz isn't that free. Without the agreed upon pulse it wouldn't sound like music at all. It would be couple of people playing crap simultaneously. They can play different meters but they all have the fundamental pulse in common. The pulse can live but everyone knows how it lives and they follow it.
 
Ligeti has a piece for 100 metronomes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mEKnWU19s

For me, there is a point where it gets a little silly. It's really performance art and I'd rather listen to great music.

It's kind of entertaining, though, isn't it? That's not a sound you can duplicate any other way; I think I'd rather sit through this than just about any 12-tone composition I've ever heard. I think people get into trouble with pieces like this when they think there's some expectation that they take it seriously, regard it as high art or whatever. It doesn't help matters to have a bunch of serious, hatable music students set the thing up. To me it's just a light, kind of funny little thing.

Cage was a bit of a scoundrel. It's one thing to question whether noise is music. It's another thing to question whether music is music. Cage went to far because he didn't have the compositional skills of a great composer. It's the look at me syndrome, the point at which the individual is a little more self-infatuated than artistic.

I don't know about his skills as a traditional composer, but his work is for real, in the way of post-Dada artists like Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns. Especially Rauschenberg, who did some similarly outrageous things early on- the erased De Kooning drawing, the white paintings, etc. With all of these people, there's more to the work than just the obvious provocation.

For me, Cage's importance was less that of emancipating noise but it returning toe musicians to the world around him, the environment as compositional inspiration, rather than he strict academicism that Schoenberg was so good at. Cage was a Romantic in that sense. But Barber was able to find the best of both worlds.

I'll have to look into Barber- he's never been on my radar. What do you recommend?
 
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I don't know about his skills as a traditional composer, but his work is for real, in the way of post-Dada artists like Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns. Especially Rauschenberg, who did some similarly outrageous things early on- the erased De Kooning drawing, the white paintings, etc. With all of these people, there's more to the work than just the obvious provocation.

Again the question I would have to ask is, if you are viewing many of these pieces through the lens of 'art' are you truly seeing some of the nuance? Cage in particular with 4"33" or his Symphony is saying that music as art, music as craft or music as artifice is no longer important. We have sound all around us and that is interesting, that is music. Tune into that. The Romantics knew how to put that into compositional form. That's why people still listen to them. Cage realization is a great statement to be making. But it is not the artifice of art that makes it interesting? the interaction of the artist or individual performer with the art form? Of course, Cage was given a Zen medal from Japan for taking the individual out of the role of artist. And then you have the group Japan.


I'll have to look into Barber- he's never been on my radar. What do you recommend?


Barber is a key example because he was a very successful schooled composer. He knew the rigor of counterpoint, which has ruled the world of serious composition for 300 years. Thirty years after his death we still talk about him and listen to his music.

His Adagio for Strings, which came from one of this String Quartets is very popular and was the theme music for Oliver Stone's Platoon. His Summer Music, which I posted a link to above also shows that he can write with compositional rigor but yet create a piece that is very satisfying emotional. It is aurally interesting and as evocative as something like David Sylvan.
 
Ligeti has a piece for 100 metronomes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mEKnWU19s

For me, there is a point where it gets a little silly. It's really performance art and I'd rather listen to great music.

*** WARNING! ANOTHER BLAH BLAH INSOMNIA POST APPROACHING ***

Yep Ken, dada music. Nice effect - for a minute or so. Or maybe I'm just seduced by impatient sound bite society??

A gig I went to a couple of years ago:

Opening act was a guy playing an alto sax full of water while twiddling knobs on a feedback-producing doodad. As Todd said, it's fun. An interesting idea but I have no idea how you could develop it.

What was absurd to me was the po-faced seriousness with which this dada art was received. I mean, just because these people have the worthy aim of eschewing cliches and producing art that's unlikely to be exploited by the mass marketing machine doesn't warrant the kind of non-cynical reverence with which the act was received. I reckon that if I laughed I would have been subject to death by a thousand glares. I wouldn't have been laughing nastily, it was simply funny :)

Next act on the bill was a guy plying constantly overblown sax teamed with a guy who twiddled knobs on a feedback doodad. It sounded pretty awful but you have to admire someone who can overblow a sax for that long. The guy could obviously play (Google confirmed this later) but he'd seemingly decided to reject melody for statement. I admire the principle behind such a decision, but experimental art is at its best when it has visceral appeal IMO. Then I'd call it an experiment that worked.

Third act was a guy with a laptop playing a limited palette of sounds that sounded like the noises in the Windows pinball game - very loud. Some of the sonics were amazing but there wasn't enough there for me to justify the length of the pieces.

The headliner was Amanda Stewart, an experimental vocal artist (BTW, I'd not heard of any of these people before turning up). She improvised over multitracked piece that was amazing - in turn psychedelic, magical, disturbing, funny, bizarre. She showed how utterly uncompromising performance art can be aurally pleasing and emotionally satisfying.


Cage was a bit of a scoundrel. It's one thing to question whether noise is music. It's another thing to question whether music is music. Cage went to far because he didn't have the compositional skills of a great composer. It's the look at me syndrome, the point at which the individual is a little more self-infatuated than artistic.

For me, Cage's importance was less that of emancipating noise but it returning toe musicians to the world around him, the environment as compositional inspiration, rather than he strict academicism that Schoenberg was so good at. Cage was a Romantic in that sense. But Barber was able to find the best of both worlds.

I agree with Todd; there was substance in what he did. I love Imaginary Landscape.

JC had skills, just not conventional ones. And his provocations had depth (at least at times). It's well-known that 4'33" was basically an entreaty for people to open their ears and appreciate the textures of the sounds around them. He certainly knew how to use space :)
 
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