The Drums
As bass players improvise their parts within the rhythm section, they are typically supported by drummers performing, to use Charli Persip’s preferred term, “multiple percussion.” The instruments are more commonly known as drum sets, trap sets, or, simply, traps. Persip reports that the modem trap set evolved from a combination of drums and cymbals used in early marching bands and from the various percussive “trappings of circus and commercial drummers.” Its nineteenth-century roots lie in “the invention of a bass-drum pedal with an attached cymbal striker” that enables a single theater orchestra drummer to play bass drum, snare drum, and cymbal simultaneously.8
Even in its most basic configuration, the trap set is like a small ensemble all its own. Its components provide a colorful array of sound with varied percussive timbres and distinct or elusive pitches, each having unique acoustical characteristics of attack and decay. Typically, the drum set includes a large, deep-voiced bass drum, operated by a right-foot pedal, and a hi-hat or sock cymbal, two cymbals brought together by operating a left-foot pedal. Mounted above the bass drum are any number of additional cymbals used for unique effect: a large ride cymbal often used to keep time; small splash cymbals to create novelty sounds; crash cymbals for accenting the music; and sizzle cymbals, whose loose vibrating rivets produce “a distinctive sustained sound.”9
To the left of the player is a shallow snare drum, which rests on its own stand; to the right, a variable number of tunable tom-tom drums, either attached to the bass drum or resting on a floor stand. Finally, drummers may extend the drum set’s timbral palette with the bright, penetrating sounds of cowbells, washboards, hollow-sounding Chinese woodblocks or temple blocks, or a number of small percussion instruments. Some players also include timpani or African, Latin American, or Indian drums in their assortment.10 Musicians perform with sticks, mallets, or brushes; sometimes they produce special qualities of sound by striking with their bare hands.
The importance of the drums within jazz groups reflects the general value attached to rhythm in African American musical traditions. Because of the early commercial position of jazz as accompaniment for dancing, the drummer’s central function has been to maintain a strong, regular beat within the framework of conventional tempos and meters. The trap set’s performance practices have remained integral to the stylistic evolution of jazz as the music moved from dance halls to nightclubs and concert halls where serious listening was the main attraction for audiences, and danceability no longer imposed its constraints upon performance. At the same time, the practices of contemporary drummers reflect the legacy of their early forerunners.
Ragtime drummers performed various operations in a style that “combined simple, march-like figures with syncopation and improvisation.”11 Often, they emphasized the music’s formal structure by featuring a particular rhythmic pattern with embellishments throughout each chorus, changing it from chorus to chorus. At times, they increased their written part’s density by playing twice as fast as the beat and filling in the rests around their prescribed figures, a practice known as doubling. Reminiscent of playing marches, the drummers also used “suspended cymbal crashes . . . at the end of introductions, . . . at phrase junctures, and at the end of pieces.” Additionally, the drummers periodically reinforced the band’s accented phrases with strong cymbal accents, or kicks.
In contrast to ragtime, the music of New Orleans jazz was “less sectionalized.” Correspondingly, drummers were not tied to marking off choruses with repetitive figures. Instead, they tended to improvise their parts by combining various “one-bar rhythmic patterns” on snare drum or woodblock and by drawing on rhythmic elements borrowed from other band members, including the soloists. They emphasized the suspended cymbal sound less than for ragtime, but continued its style of performance by “choking” or dampening the cymbal sound almost immediately after striking it.
Jazz drummers in Chicago placed renewed emphasis on the suspended cymbal, developed conventions for playing with brushes, and integrated the bass drum within their performance of fills, short one- or two-beat figures interjected into the music “at points of inactivity or stasis (between phrases, choruses, or solos or during a sustained note).”12 Additionally, when keeping time, they commonly used the bass drum for beats two and four, while the string bass or tuba mark one and three, or sometimes to delineate four beats per measure, “especially during the [final or] out chorus.”
During the swing or big band era, drummers like Gene Krupa built upon such practices. Krupa typically emphasized the bass drum on every beat, while performing “repeated rhythmic patterns interspersed with rim shots on the snare drum.” Within the context of big bands, an alternative model for drum accompaniment grew out of the contributions of Walter Johnson in Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra. One feature of the new approach was Johnson’s unique use of the hi-hat, soon after its appearance about 1927. In contrast to the staccato, choked cymbal sound of earlier players, he developed a “smooth, legato hi-hat technique.” Playing the hi-hat four beats to the bar, he produced different timbres on every other beat by alternately opening and closing the cymbals as he struck them.13 Jo Jones used the technique with great success interacting with bassist Walter Page in Count Basie’s innovative rhythm section. In fact, Jones sometimes dropped the bass drum from the accompaniment, producing an especially “flowing feeling” of time with his sustained, ringing hi-hat pattern.14
During the bebop period, as drums and string bass attained greater musical independence from each other, drummers celebrated new options available to them to express their imaginative concepts. Building upon the lighter time-keeping concepts of their predecessors, Kenny Clarke and Max Roach shifted the emphasis of four-beat time-keeping patterns from the hi-hat and bass drum to the ride cymbal. Before such innovations, Tommy Turrentine recalls, some drummers “came to the gig” with hi-hat, bass drum, and snare drum alone. Typically, in the new style, the ride cymbal played a prominent syncopated pattern that connected regular hi-hat accents on the measure’s second and fourth beats—a convention that artists varied to add interest and individuality to their performances (exx. 12.5a–e). Bebop drummers strove to balance their parts in relation to those of the string bass so that both could be heard clearly.
In the meantime, many increased the complexity of their parts overall, displaying the ability to play the drum set as a “cohesive unit” rather than as a collection of individual percussion instruments.15 The innovators took full advantage of the set’s capacity and exploited the independent use of hands and feet, creating intricate multipart inventions—separate but coordinated patterns distinguished at each level of the drum part’s musical texture by subtle differences in melodic compass, shape, and color. They also created interest by exploring the possibilities of asymmetrical rhythmic phrasing.
In this regard, once the ride and hi-hat cymbal combination assumed the time-keeping function, drummers used the bass drum for improvising unpredictable rhythmic accents known as bombs, kicks, and punches. Tommy Turrentine regards the bombs in Max Roach’s accompaniment as adding punctuation marks like “commas and periods” to the phrases of soloists. Hard bop disciples of the artists preserved and extended these practices during the fifties. “In the original bebop era.” Keith Copeland explains,
the drummers had to play time on the bass drum and drop bombs. The guys laid down the time, and then they made accents around the time, but always went back to the time, so it made for a really solid foundation for other players. But as the music started to become more adventurous, they started stretching out more. In the hard bop era of the amplified bass, the drummers didn’t have to play with the bass player in the same way. They created a constant interplay between the snare drum and the bass drum against the ride cymbal and the hi-hat, dropping bombs. Today, especially in big bands, drummers need to be able to play that foundation in the bass drum and to drop bombs, making the accents. They need to be able to function both ways.
As
past conventions have been carried down to the present, the drummer’s role continues to be a diverse one, including various foundational and interactive aspects. Drummers propel the ensemble rhythmically through driving cymbal patterns that include subtle variations in the interpretation of the beat, syncopation, and corresponding effects of tension and release. Imaginative drum accent patterns of varied rhythmic density also produce forward motion, “punching,” or “kicking” different beats within the measure and different portions of beats with expert precision: the second half of the beat at one moment; at another, the last third of a triplet subdivision. At the same time, drummers can imbue figures with distinctive contours, creating high-low or low-high patterns with melodic implications by orchestrating the figures between the snare and bass drum and developing the patterns through repetition and variation (exx. 12.6a–c). These possibilities are expandable through the linear performance of tom-tom drums and additional percussion instruments.
Drummers pursue their diverse options in accord with the music’s requirements and their own improvisational system. Like their counterparts, they draw upon a common vocabulary pool, transforming patterns to personalize them. Max Roach recalls his early discovery of the effectiveness of such procedures at a time when the drummer was part of the big band rhythm section and did not “stick out” unless he performed a solo. “On my first record date, Dizzy called me to play with Coleman Hawkins in ‘43 or ‘44.” Instead of playing two quarter notes on the bass drum, Roach tried out a few “simple” variations, like playing two eighth notes on the snare drum for the first beat and a quarter note on the bass drum for the second beat. “That was very revolutionary, [and] people would say, ‘Ahh!”‘ Receiving this positive response, Roach began to expand on the concept, dealing with different combinations of tom-tom drums, snare drums, hi-hat, and bass drum. “It was good for people like Dizzy and Charlie Parker, ‘cause they understood it, you know. The more conventional players who wanted a straight rhythm section [might] raise an eyebrow,” he acknowledges.
Similarly, in constructing more complex figures, drummers achieve individual expression by arranging basic rhythmic elements in different schemes of repeating and non-repeating units to create phrases of differing lengths overall. They add further distinctiveness to the phrases by adding or deleting selected elements and by applying personal approaches to orchestration (exx. 12.7a–c). Redistributing the elements of a conventional figure among drum components in varied sequences can not only change its melodic shape but create the acoustical impression of splitting the figure into different fragments, bringing a variety of rhythmic configurations into relief. Drum or cymbal strokes of like pitch, timbre, or dynamic intensity tend to migrate into new patterns, emerging from the original figures with transformed identities. Ultimately, players can combine ride and hi-hat cymbals or use them independently, alternate the voices of different drums or blend them, integrate the sounds of cymbals as melodic elements within the flow of drum patterns, or treat the cymbals as distinct time-keepers within the larger complex of sound.
Beyond the intrinsic interest variety creates for them within a drum part, the language of rhythmic gesture allows drummers to interact with group members. At times, drum punctuations reinforce fragments of other artists’ improvisations. At other times, they provide a rhythmic counterpoint to them. Ronald Shannon Jackson recalls veterans teaching him in particular about the left hand’s comping with the snare drum to perform “what they called poly-rhythms.” Michael Carvin, in differentiating the “solid” or fixed rhythmic patterns within the drum set’s performance from the “liquid” or changing patterns, describes giving to the band, for the purpose of maintaining the beat, whichever “limb” he uses for time-keeping on the bass drum, hi-hat, or ride cymbal. Meanwhile, other limbs take greater liberties performing fluid comping patterns, which he likens to the riffs or shout parts of a big band’s brass section.16 Additionally, drummers improvise short fills between the phrases of other players and perform set-up figures that cue solo and ensemble entrances at critical points within arrangements.17
Drummers also interpret and represent the music’s structure at various levels of organization. To mark the boundaries between four-measure segments of a progression, they can maintain a time-keeping pattern for three measures—embellishing it, perhaps, with spare punctuations—then increase rhythmic density in the fourth measure. They resolve its tension by returning to the time-keeping pattern in the fifth measure, sometimes emphasizing the return with a definitive accent on the downbeat or the second half of the preceding beat. Toward such ends, drummers commonly perform specialized one- or two-bar fills as structural markers.18 Triplet patterns, or dense, rhythmic patterns with pronounced off-beat accents, or drum press rolls, or other figures providing contrast in dynamics and color commonly serve this purpose (exx. 12.8a–c).
To delineate larger harmonic components, a player can apply the same procedure over the eighth and ninth bars, or the sixteenth and seventeenth bars, or, to signal the close of each chorus, the last few measures of a form. Drummers may reserve the use of particular figures, such as press rolls, for the last turnaround of a solo, marking off the larger performance.19 Sometimes, players feature particular ostinatos or motivic figures to further highlight the harmonic phrases delineated by turnarounds or to distinguish segments within the phrases.
Applying their vocabulary uniquely, individuals may emphasize time-keeping over conversational interplay in their parts, or vice versa. In the latter instance, they allow the developmental possibilities of their own inventions or those of other players to dictate their part’s formulation, at times improvising constantly changing drum patterns. Overall, each drummer individually may favor such differing values as relatively stable, repetitive expression, on the one hand, or dynamic contrast, on the other. Within these aesthetic parameters, they structure their accompaniment according to different designs. One drummer accompanies the soloist with a spare, time-keeping pattern and consistently introduces structural marker figures of greater complexity at the close of eight-bar harmonic segments. Another initiates a performance in this manner, but then deliberately withholds formal markers or introduces figures of comparable complexity where least expected—to add an element of surprise to the music. Varying the length of conventional figures can also produce exciting results. Dizzy Gillespie describes Art Blakey’s classic snare drum press roll with great relish, likening its suspension of time to the effect of stretching a huge rubber band. The soloist feels the increasing tension of the mesmerizing press roll, until its eventual release rearticulates the piece’s rhythmic structure with so emphatic an accent that “the world knows that that’s where the beat is.”20
Similarly, although one individual may maintain the beat unequivocally with a cymbal ostinato and spare drum punctuations, another takes greater liberties in interpreting rhythmic form, obscuring the metric structure to create suspense. Since the innovations of players like Elvin Jones, Eddie Blackwell, and Billy Higgins during the free jazz period, the ride cymbal has come increasingly to imply rather than to delineate the meter. At the same time, drummers have exploited the possibilities of constructing complex polyrhythmic drum phrases across measures. This draws attention away from the beat’s maintenance elsewhere within the part and challenges listeners to keep track of the beat. Over the accompaniment’s larger course, drummers typically create different designs by alternately increasing and decreasing rhythmic density. They may also shape their part by gradually increasing rhythmic density throughout (exx. 12.9a–b).
Learning the Drum’s Role
Drummers learn many of the conventions they are expected to know by performing in different bands. “I had some experience playing club dates with my father and other musicians older than myself where we had to learn how to play for dancers in that earlier jazz tradition,” Keith Copeland recalls. “And I had to learn how to play time in my foot on the bass drum for that. When we played for dances, we weren’t playi
ng tempos as fast as they did in the bebop period, and I mastered a little of what drummers refer to as the loud/soft technique. That was the ability to pat the bass drum very softly on all the beats so it’s more felt than heard and then to accent louder when you want certain accents to be heard.”
The hi-hat has its associated practices, as well. During the bebop period, various groups requested that Ronald Shannon Jackson emphasize the hi-hat cymbal to delineate the music’s beat. In response, Jackson added heavier springs to his hi-hat pedal and began rigorous physical exercises to strengthen the muscles of his left leg and ankle. This equipped him to articulate cymbal patterns with greater force within his part’s complex of rhythmic patterns, successfully reproducing the bebop drummer’s characteristic sound. Later, Jackson expanded his vocabulary of rhythmic structural markers in order to remain abreast of the jazz community’s developments. “One of the first things that John Hicks told me when I got to New York was, ‘You’re going to have to learn some new turnarounds. Turnarounds are the key.’ In the bebop style, many people were locked into cliches,” he observes.
The horn players were always listening for a particular phrase for the drummer to play at the end of their solos. All the drummers were playing certain turnarounds that “Philly” Joe Jones had been playing. A lot of turnarounds were basically played on the snare drum, like a steady roll or a triplet figure leading to a crash on the drums. But then, about that time, Tony Williams joined Miles, and he began introducing new turnarounds. The group was still playing bebop, but the turnarounds were different. They made the music move a different way. Then other guys started changing the figures, breaking up the rhythms and playing them on different drums and cymbals. It changed the whole color of the music and freshened it for the other musicians. If they heard the drummers play something different, then they might come up with something different.
Thinking in Jazz Page 49