Getting the Rhythm Right

Jenny Jones

I can completely understand if a woman wants to identify as a ‘female drummer,’ but I have to admit to being in two minds about this. For myself as a drummer and drum kit teacher, I’ve spent the better part of my career trying not to call attention to the fact that I’m female. 

I would venture to say that most of us simply want to be known as drummers. But this is not always straightforward.  

On her Facebook site, Kim Thompson identifies herself as ‘Kim Thompson [Female drummer],’ using hard brackets and a capital F for what I imagine to be strong emphasis. This accentuation seems audacious, deliberately focusing attention to her gender. [Note: this has been changed to 'Drummer & Educator' since this blog].

The majority of the covers of the big drum magazines are of guys in ultra masculine pose. Inside these magazines you can be guaranteed to see at least one drummer (usually a pro) flipping the middle finger. What does this say, ‘I’m a drummer so f-you?’ Is that supposed to be cool? I find it tiresome and uninspiring. One gets the overwhelming impression that these magazines are geared to teenage boys.

I’ll never forget a certain issue that put me off buying a particular magazine ever again. The featured article was about ‘wild drummers’ and their off stage antics. It was crude and loutish and had nothing to do with music or drumming. It only served to encourage the myth of rock star prowess. The interviewee made some horrendous comments about even sleeping with ugly women because they may have had a certain physical proclivity. Boorish twaddle.

I wrote to the editor of the magazine and received no reply. I haven’t bought it in two years.

At least 50% of my students are female. How can I suggest they buy one of these magazines with that kind of content? How does that encourage their participation in music and drumming? These magazines barely represent drummers who happen to be female. You might see a woman on the cover every several years. More often than not, these magazines do not speak to women and in the case of this particular issue, it also denigrated them. It promoted age old stereotypes for both men and women.

It is true that the big magazines are having more female contributors and features about female players -- there is a shift in the tide, though it continues to be a predominately male sphere.

 Honey Lantree of The Honeycombs

This was a featured article in Tom Tom Magazine / November 2011

Drumming The Weight Off

It seems you can’t take an exercise class these days without your sticks. From core strengthening while playing single strokes, to drumming on an exercise ball doing aerobics, the trend in fitness appears to be through drumming. Workouts like these are on YouTube under names like Pound, Drum Fit and Cardio Drumming.

But those of us who play know the decent workout drumming provides (though I find that's mostly from loading in and out and hot lights). I've been using smaller muscle groups lately too (wrists and fingers) making calorie burning more elusive. But Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke recently received a doctorate for his pioneering studies comparing the similarities of big motion, fast drumming to an elite athlete. 

It’s great to see folks incorporate drumming into their lives via exercise. Understandably, the drumming is fairly rudimentary to appeal to a large base with perhaps little rhythmic experience. It would be great however to see a niche class geared to seasoned drummers. Imagine practising your paradiddle-diddles whilst working on those abs!  

 Clem Burke and Athletic Drumming

This article appeared in Tom Tom Magazine / August 2011

Gavin Harrison Saying It Best

Terrific advice:

Endorsement

I'm very pleased to be endorsed by the District Drum Company! 

District Drum Company

Tapping into Drums

In the film Small Town Girl Ann Miller sings the opening line, ‘I like the sound of a tom tom’ from the song “I Gotta Hear That Beat.” If you’ve never seen this production number, you’re in for a treat.  It’s percussion heavy with bizarrely disembodied musicians – no gender here, just great music!

Miller was famed for her ultra speedy tap dancing. I see lots of young drum students who are double bass pedal crazy before learning the basics on a single pedal. I’ve been known to suggest tap dancing lessons whilst embarking on pedal studies. If you really want fast feet, this is a great route to getting there. Many of the old jazz drummers were also hoofers – it makes perfect rhythmic sense. I’m hard-pressed to think of anything else requiring that much dexterity between the heel and toe.

Yet Jojo Mayer says it’s not how fast you can play, but rather how fast you can hear. A constant barrage of bass drum notes begins to sound like one long note, with nothing in between or left to say. Musicians I find interesting tell a story and engage the listener. Not everything on the drum set has to be hard, fast and loud. It’s quite easy to play aggressively. How do you convey other emotions besides excitement? Joy, humour, melancholy? I often tell my students anyone can make noise, let’s try to make music.

I can tell I’m playing well when I start a tune with just a drum beat and people get up to dance. It’s one of the benefits of being a drummer – doing something that makes peoples’ bodies move. And in that bodily movement is the space between the notes. This is why swing, funk and hip hop are great to dance to: syncopation creates the space for the body to move.

To paraphrase Gavin Harrison (among others), use the muscle in your head as much as the ones in your hands and feet because that's where ideas come from. A reliance on speed is a reliance on technique. And technique is not expression. Play not only as a drummer, but as a musician. Beauty is in the nuance and detail. Play like a dancer. Kick ball change.  

Check out Fred Astaire's momentous tapping with drums from both A Damsel In Distress and Easter Parade

This article appeared in Tom Tom Magazine / September 2011 

Blush-Da?

Don't Make Me Vibra Slap You!

I'm very pleased to announce that I've been asked to be a regular contributor to Tom Tom Magazine.

Tom Tom Magazine

Tom Tom on Wikipedia

Biography

I’m an ex-pat who grew up in Los Angeles and went to university in New York. I now run a drum kit teaching studio in Belfast and have heaps of experience as a player. I’ve been playing for about 30 years and teaching for 13.  

My dad was a jazz drummer and I grew up learning the kit like a second language, a sort of bilingualism if you like. No formal lessons, but rather through observation and a total immersion in music. Dad passed on his love of big band swing music and took me to see both Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson when I was a little girl. 

My folks split up when I was seven but my dad had a double Ludwig set up and left one whole kit behind. He left me with some grammar and syntax on the kit, but not how to conjugate all the rhythmic verbs.

I remember being nine years old and figuring out how to play Todd Rundgren’s ‘I Saw the Light’ off the radio (with that mambo-like double tom tom hit). Well, that was it for me. I knew right there and then that not only did I know what I was doing, but that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. In a way, I saw the light.

In high school I majored in music and all available electives were filled with music classes. From theory to orchestra, jazz band to choir. I even took marching band instead of PE. Marching band was very 'sociable' -- kids used to smuggle cans of beer in the fuzzy hats to football games. I soon learned that musicians were cool. The Venice High Gondoliers were funky (not as funky as Compton High, hell, nobody was), but we did win some competitions.

I played in lots of bands in and out of school. Not always drums, sometimes keys and occasionally the clarinet. I moved to New York and got a degree in Comparative Literature. I have a love of words and am a bit of a linguaphile.