The curse of the drum set in modern music

[Benedict]

Yes Respirator, my point exactly. Much of the music we listen to (in the west) is cold but it longs to be hot. Not understanding the distinction and how to get there it merely turns up the volume and the Bum-cha becomes inappropriate.

Modern pop is also very hidebound now. Both record companies and audiences don't want to give any artist or style a chance to develop. It's merely off to market or off to the scrap heap.

You are obviously yearning for different styles and perhaps the more experimental (most of which will fail miserably) so go out and try other things and perhaps there you will find peace.

In the meantime pop will continue to be as simple as it can get away with, whilst still moving the punter's feet and wallets.

[Voidoid Surrealist]

There is all sorts of east european folk music with fives and sevens and nines.

Check out Bartoks dances in Bulgarian Rhythm.

Hell, check out Bartok, period.

Or skip the middle man, and go staight to the source: traditional Bulgarian folk music.
9/8 13/8, 11/16, 15/16, all sorts of stuff.

Check this out:
http://www.geocities.com/dospatsko/B_Jo ... j_Mome.mp3

[o'malley]

I am a percusionist. That is my life. My main thing is jazz and latin drumming.


Breaking away from streight 4/4 patterns doesn't have to be weird and experimental. I play poly rhythms and triplet things all the time and it totally fits into the idioms I play.

It's really hard to explain all the things I do. I do a lot of 3 aginst 4 patterns. You can make up a bunch of poly rythms, like 5 against 2. five bars of 2 equals 10 beats, so does two bars of 5. Simple. but not really, it takes a lot of practice, but you see what I mean.

I also do a lot of things based on triplet groupings. Like I will play 4 sets of triplets in a bar like this: RRL LRR LLR RLL And use different drums with each hand or something. It all fits in a bar, but it is totally interesting. I think you need to listen to some more good drummers.

I highly recomend listening to Elvin Jones (He played in Coletrain's band). Listen carefully, you'll see what I mean.


Or heck, listen to me : http://omalleysound.panicnow.net/other_ ... _sadie.mp3

Might not be the best example though.


And then there is latin music... don't even get me started.

[herodotus]

There is all sorts of east european folk music with fives and sevens and nines.

Check out Bartoks dances in Bulgarian Rhythm.

Hell, check out Bartok, period.

Or skip the middle man, and go staight to the source: traditional Bulgarian folk music.
9/8 13/8, 11/16, 15/16, all sorts of stuff.

Check this out:
http://www.geocities.com/dospatsko/B_Jo ... j_Mome.mp3

Great link!! (Or it was rather, as it appears to have gone AWOL. )

But I will keep my Bartok thank you very much!!

[Voidoid Surrealist]

Hmm...link still works here

Well, here's another bit of fun, a Macedonian folk song (Revisko Oro) in 11/16, as played by Kevin Ferguson on electric guitar.
http://www.debone.com/ReviskoOro.mp3

There's a nice little article on understanding unusual time signatures (as well as some more soundclips) on the main part of the site, as well:
http://www.guitar9.com/columnist353.html

[insaneacyde]

All the links and references here point to guitars, drums and other 'physical' instruments. How easy is it for you guys to get 7/4 melody or beat going using your pc softwares\sequencers? I know if i pick up my guitar i can play something off the 4/4 track easily but it just seems like a scary mission on a pc. I dont think much effort is put into creating software that can handle different time sigs as EASY as my 'brain to fingers' can.

Then again maybe I'm completely in the dark..... dont shoot!

[Jafo]

All the links and references here point to guitars, drums and other 'physical' instruments. How easy is it for you guys to get 7/4 melody or beat going using your pc softwares\sequencers? I know if i pick up my guitar i can play something off the 4/4 track easily but it just seems like a scary mission on a pc. I dont think much effort is put into creating software that can handle different time sigs as EASY as my 'brain to fingers' can.

Then again maybe I'm completely in the dark..... dont shoot!

No worries.

I usually begin with Jazz++, which makes it easy to do different tempi and meters -- you just select a text view of the events, and edit them directly.

Hmm, I never tried this with Tracktion. Lemme see... Ah, just click on the Timecode button and edit. Gotta love Tracktion -- if you can't figure it out in thirty seconds, you just need to read the helpfile for thirty seconds.

I remember Multitrack Studio having a similar ease of use. (Btw, the combination of Jazz++, the Multitrack Studio demo (three tracks total), and Audacity to mix can be very, very powerful indeed.)

7/4, 5/4, and other weird time sigs are a great way to open up one's creativity. You can start by treating 7/4 as a shortened two bars of 4/4 and 5/4 as a lengthened bar of 4/4, or group them into 2's and 3's, but it doesn't take long before you think of them in their own terms. It just happens; you just need to let them sink into your mind a bit.

[foosnark]

All the links and references here point to guitars, drums and other 'physical' instruments. How easy is it for you guys to get 7/4 melody or beat going using your pc softwares\sequencers?

Pretty easily, once I remember the ass-backwards way FLStudio defines time signatures.

[herodotus]

All the links and references here point to guitars, drums and other 'physical' instruments. How easy is it for you guys to get 7/4 melody or beat going using your pc softwares\sequencers? I know if i pick up my guitar i can play something off the 4/4 track easily but it just seems like a scary mission on a pc. I dont think much effort is put into creating software that can handle different time sigs as EASY as my 'brain to fingers' can.

Then again maybe I'm completely in the dark..... dont shoot!

I use a notation editor to write my midi files. I can use any time sig that can be written, at any tempo that can be written, with the beat divided into any 'tuplet' that can be written.

Pretty cool, if slow.

[N 4 LIFE]

The drum set was invented in the late 19th century, and has ever since played an enormous role in popular music. The drum set allows one percussionist to play a large number of percussion instrument at the same time at a great volume. It was an instrument of necessity and economy. But the drum set severely limits the way percussive sounds are used in popular, rhythmically based music. The combination of bass drum (some times called kick drum because in the early days you actually kicked it ), snare and hi-hat is so pervasive in music today that we notice when they are missing or even used in different ways.

Add to that the tyranny of 4/4 and the prevalence of bass on 1-3, snare on 2-4 (with slight variations) and the drum set becomes a straight jacket on our creativity.

In recent years the acoustic drum set has to some extent been replaced by synthesized and sampled alternatives, but most of these still adhere to the notion of the acoustic set. Bass drum on 1-3, snare sound on 2-4 (with variations). Hi-hat sounds driving the rhythm, cymbals and toms for embellishments. (OK, you got 4-to-floor, heavy rock with bass drum on every 8th or 16th, but the bass drum is present and often accentuated on 1-3 and the snare usually on 2-4). And even when music is breaking out of this formula, you still got the notion of bass drum, snare, hi-hat.

I’m simplifying things, but I think it’s a valid observation. I’ll even go as far as claiming that music that does not adhere to the formula is labelled as progressive, or even worse as experimental (there are exceptions of course, but generally spoken this seems to be the case). There are ballads – but they are ballads because of the missing or understated rhythmical drive. But other than that I can’t really think of any popular genre that isn’t slave to drum set.

So how do we free our selves of the tyranny of the drum set without making inaccessible experimental music (as I tend to do)? Can we imagine a wave of popular music that takes a different approach the percussive and rhythmic elements – or am I an old fart that hasn’t been following popular music for a decade?

not sure about you being an old fart but straight ahead jazz has all the elements you would ever want....hot cold loud soft bright dark, you name it. you should listen to some.
dance music changed from big swing bands to disco and the majority of human beings are just too stupid to understand implied rhythms....it's a bummer. but listen to some jazz my friend. the huge number of great drummers doing a lot of interesting things will surprise you.

[CrystalWizard]

Wow, a nineteen year necro, is that a record here at KVR? It seems that respirator stopped posting in 2018. That's only six years ago. It is (was?) an interesting topic.

[soundmodel]

There's already an answer to this.

Super secret production secret:

Take your drum MIDI track and map it to something else. Synths, particular parameters of synths, vocoders, reverbs, ...

I have for some while already explored "synth sequences" (not necessarily melodic or even tonal) as the main driving factor and not drum sets. They can serve the same utility, but I've noticed that by relying on synth sequences, one may be less inclined to add complex drums or even conventional, because they simply don't fit in frequencies. Often a strong synth sequence can only accomodate bass drums and treble percussions, but more rarely snares.

Have a listen to Aphex Twin's "Formula" or "Equation". This was in 1999 already. Certainly it has a lot of rhythm, complex rhythm too, but it has no drums in conventional sense, except for some processed claps in one part.

[eLawnMust]

Problem with drums is that it's an instrument any 'desktop dabbler' can play, so they tend to be way too loud compared to the single-finger maestro with a ton of FX synth pokey. I guess this is why so many start off a tune makin' 'drum tracks' which is a poor choice to start off with... I make my drums mid to mostly the very END of an instrument to add to the song so it can complement instruments far more melodic...

Playing Bass in the 70's & 80's in many bands that went nowhere never ever did we all turn to the drummer & say 'Go ahead, we'll follow along'...

With our precise computational clocking a drum isn't needed like in a live environment where the purpose is quite clear>>>

[respirator]

Wow, a nineteen year necro, is that a record here at KVR? It seems that respirator stopped posting in 2018. That's only six years ago. It is (was?) an interesting topic.

I could start posting again. But I was mostly active in the Music Cafe, and by 2018 I got almost no feedback, so I just posted a few tracks on SoundCloud. Funny to see this brought to light so many years later.

[_al_]

Didn't read any of that, but surely it's simple?
Drums and percussion make you dance.
If you take a club banger and replace the kick with a violin, you're never gonna end up with a club banger.

And that's why you don't have to tune drum kits to match the vocals or whatever. It's not their job.