RELEARNING DRUMS

I used to play drums a lot in college during the late 1970’s, doing everything from pop, to rock, to jazz, and even avant-garde. But I stopped playing completely from 1987 until the mid 2000’s. I was suddenly called back into action after twenty years for two small gigs in 2007, first for three songs for a school reunion with a fellow parent/friend, and second for three songs in a pop-rock production in Saguijo. While it was a lot of fun, the expectations were minimal. So there was no real pressure on me to churn out a polished performance. I did however realize how rusty I was from decades of atrophy. Then in early 2008 I took the stand for a jazz jam at a local club. Apparently, my old friend Johnny Alegre heard about it, and invited me to play a gig with his band Affinity. I was very surprised with the invitation, given that I had not played all that much for so long. I was also slightly intimidated given that Johnny always plays with the top drummers in Manila. But he insisted, and thankfully gave me two weeks notice. In those weeks, I had to learned and relearned quite a lot in the course of preparation.

First, I went back to practicing rudiments, which I hadn’t really worked on extensively even in my younger days. It was an interesting experience. I didn’t have a drum set to practice on, so I did all my preparation on a small practice pad. All my work was focused on stick work, and nothing whatsoever for the feet. I barely scratched the surface of the “40 PAS International Drum Rudiments”, opting to stay with mostly rolls, and only the most basic diddles and flams. There is only so much one can master in a couple of weeks. But I was at least satisfied with being able to reclaim some of my abilities. This laid the groundwork for the second target.

For this gig, I tried to develop a new personal style of playing. By the time I stopped in the 80’s, most of my playing was single stroke stuff, exacerbated from playing a lot of rock. Since Johnny’s gig called for traditional jazz, I revisited all my favorite jazz drummers. For small ensemble playing, I’ve always preferred listening to the more aggressive drummers from the “modern”, period. My favorites include Elvin Jones, whose driving poly-rhythmic work defined the genre; Tony Williams who brought huge drums, multiple “explosions”, and a rock sensibility to jazz; and Roy Haynes, whose playing sounded like a continuous drum solo in spite of the fact that he was playing accompaniment. But while I revere their playing, I’ve never tried to play like them. I believe one should never directly imitate others, and must strive to develop a personal, identifiable style. What I wanted to emulate was their sense of “flow”. So for the “new” me, I tried add more fluidity to my style. I used to achieve this via my instrument selection, opting for longer decaying cymbals and drums. But this time I decided to rely on myself, making greater use of multiple strokes to get that elusive “flow”.

At the gig, I managed to deploy the multiple strokes I practiced, modestly achieve a slightly more flowing style than I was used to, but still retained the heavy hitting that I had developed prior to having stopped playing. It was quite a long set, almost two hours of jazz standards. It took a while to adjust to a real drum set after preparing exclusively on a practice pad. In fact, I had to tune the drums rather high to get a bounce similar to my practice pad. But I eventually got a hang of it. By the end, I wasn’t tired at all. I could have gone on for another hour. As expected, my footwork was very, very inconsistent due to the lack of right foot drills, and an uncooperative and improperly adjusted pedal. When I asked for an honest opinion, club owner Skarlet stated that my major problem was that I wasn’t locked with the bass player, no doubt due to my inconsistent right foot. While this was a clear indication that I still had a long way to go, I was at least halfway pleased that I had found a way to articulate some of my stylistic targets. Before we parted for the evening, Johnny made me promise to play for him whenever he has a gig in Myra’s Ten-02 bar in QC (but only there, because I don’t relish driving any farther in the evenings). I didn’t know how serious he was about this until ……

A month later, Johnny invited me to play for him again. This time around, I knew I had to do better than the last gig because I had less excuses. That meant practicing my footwork. However, I still didn’t have a bass drum pedal to do drills on. I had begun canvassing for one, but resisted the temptation because I still didn’t think I would play often enough to justify actually spending on one given my my meager teacher’s. Lo and behold, a month before the gig, Raimund Marasigan surprised me on my birthday with a shiny new pedal. I had mentioned to him my interest in getting one a week earlier. But that was just in passing, and I didn’t expect him to take it seriously. Armed with my new gear, I set up the pedal and a piece of wood beneath my computer work desk, and was doing drills with my right foot for consistency, control and endurance. Nothing fancy, just steady half and quarter notes. It took many frustrating days to not only gain consistency, but to set up the pedal for the “right” response. Last week, I started putting my hands (on the practice pad) and right foot (on the pedal) together to play along with some mildly complicated jazz records. I was pleased with the development, and I anticipated that I could at least minimize falling off the beat due to my right foot come performance day.

Another thing I revisited a couple of days before the gig came was maintaining the rhythm in your body. I remember reading back in the 1980’s how Steve Gadd learned this from Chick Corea, who had learned it from Tony Williams. If I remember correctly, Corea once took to the drums, let the sticks freely fall, then came right back to the rhythm without missing a beat. Gadd concluded that ones internal rhythm was more important that what was going on with one’s hands and feet, and that one could “impose” a rhythm without actually playing it. I had tried this before with limited success in practice, but never did it in actual performance. So I tried to play as “out” as I could, then see if my body could maintain an internal rhythm. I managed to get it 50-50, even managing to recover after unintentionally falling out of playing a pattern. I figured this would be handy whenever I would trip over a fill.

I had a lot of fun at the gig. Some of the friends I invited showed up, like Raimund, Vin and Kris. I was also pleasantly surprised that Shinji Tanaka’s band was playing that evening. But the biggest treat of the evening was playing with Dondi Ledesma. We had an unforgettable gig back in the 80’s and I always wanted to play with him again in my lifetime. In addition to the fact that he is an awesome soloist, I found that he also has an ultra-stable internal rhythm. Because of this, I was often able to play on the outer limits of a beat, but stay within the rhythm. It was exhilarating. As always, Johnny was a great leader. We didn’t have any set “pieces”. Given the combination of Dondi and me, he said before hand that we be doing mostly fusion jams. He would start by calling out a pattern, like “medium shuffle”, guiding Dondi and me through the chord changes as we went along, establishing a melodic or harmonic “theme”, then letting us loose. Listening to Johnny and Dondi spar was a special treat, and I noticed it drove the small but enthusiastic audience wild. I still fell over the beat a few times, but I managed to deploy most of what I had worked on, like my pedal work and internal rhythm. My negative comment about myself is that I feel my playing is heavy in a sluggish way. While it may be due to that fact that we were playing closer to the rock spectrum than jazz, I noticed my tempos occasionally dragging.

There are lots of things I’d like, and have to work on in case I ever get invited to play another gig. This would include developing my left foot (high hat), reclaiming multiple strikes on the bass drum, improving the ability to put the brakes on, and accelerate out of a stroke sequence, and controlling the swing of a pattern without disrupting the rhythm.

I don’t know what the future holds in as far as public performance is concerned. I can still only see myself gigging once every couple of months. But I am really fortunate that someone with limited technique such as me can get to play with these fine musicians. This has taught me that reasonable targets, focused practice, and a personal stylistic framework can go a long way.