Drum roll please!

“If everybody had just one drum, there would be no war”

I am a music lover, mostly drawn to well sung lyrics across many different genres.

One day, driving home from work, I was happily nodding my head to “Straight On” by Heart, when all of the sudden I heard the drum. It went straight to my uh, heart. It was a  strong fill on the snare expertly followed by one stronger note on a floor tom. (1:50 studio version)

Wow. Just wow. How come I never noticed that before? Well, John did mess with the eq on my radio, bring the bass up and the treble down. Maybe that was all it took, I don’t know. But the result has been me listening for interesting drum beats in music.

I’ve never done that before, isolating a particular instrument in a song. This was very interesting for me to do during my hour long commutes. Many of the songs I am drawn to have a lot of these deep sounding toms. Now, I know my examples of music here show my age, but I listen to current stuff too.

I think a lot of popular music uses drum synthesizers, or they mix them down to about nothing. Some music, the drums seem to perfunctorily just keep the beat. Sometimes they so closely match the bass, it’s hard for me to differentiate the two. Many of my favorite new songs have these strong tom beats. They sound much more bass to me than the bass drum.

If I ever was drawn to a particular instrument previously, I would have to say the bass. Is it because I had a huge crush on Tom Petersson? Every other girl in the US was crushing on Robin Zander, but I liked that mysterious dark haired bass player in Cheap Trick. But did I get the crush because I already dug the bass, or vice versa?

Who cares?

I’m noticing rhythms everywhere now. The other day there was a chipmunk conversation. Chip chipchip chip with a robin warbling on the last chip, then it ended in an argument just like that drum roll. Or so it seemed to me. I was looking for an item in a kitchen drawer, rattle rattle rattle rattle slam!

I worked with a gal many years ago who avowed that the best drummer in the world is Neil Peart. Listening to “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, I can say he has a lot of cool rhythms and works those cymbals where a layman like me can tell the difference between crash and slide. I watched an eight and a half minute drum solo by him. He has a very large kit, and can play all of it super fast. But I can’t say I enjoyed it.

I liked watching Mic Fleetwood’s solo more. It seemed he wasn’t doing anything fancy, just putting a lot of energy into some basic combinations.

I can’t say I like listening to drum circles, either. Maybe it’s more fun to be playing in one. I have my doubts that would be the case for me. I think I just need to hear some kind of stick hitting a drum.

Once, there was this eclectic store in a mall and I found a drum that was shaped like a loaf of bread. It came with sticks that had round balls at the end, the size of a ping pong ball. I plunked around on that for a bit and loved the sound. It was over a hundred bucks and to my regret, I was too much of a cheapskate to buy it.

That’s not to say I think I should take up drumming. I have learned a basic paradiddle researching this blog though…