Philosophical Rudiments #1-33
Hieranarchy: The Rudimental Philosopher
and the double drag tap
by jane boxall
“Furthermore, a Councell of many men, consists either of all the Citizens, (insomuch as every man of them hath a Right to Vote, and an interest in the ordering of the greatest affaires, if he will himselfe) or of a part onely; from whence there arise three sorts of Government: The one, when the Power is in a Councell, where every Citizen hath a right to Vote, and it is call’d a DEMOCRATY. The other, when it is in a Councell, where not all, but some part onely have their suffrages, and we call it an ARISTOCRATY. The third is that, when the Supreme Authority rests onely in one, and it is stiled a MONARCHY."
--Thomas Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, published 1642, p. 60.
When my sister and I were young, we mutually eschewed leadership and decision-making. Both painfully shy, we’d argue at length outside shops about who was going to do the oh-so-embarrassing asking or purchasing. “But I did it last time!” became the catchphrase as we prevaricated, marinating in indecision and inhibition. A couple of years ago, now grown-ups, we hiked across England together. Sometimes I followed my sister; sometimes I led the steady westwards trek. I carried the woefully vague guidebook; my sister carried our daily sandwiches. Still, we took it in turns to ask strangers for help, advice or directions. We made it from one coast to the other.
What Hath This To Do With Music?
Yesterday, my Mum posted this BBC article on Facebook – it’s an interesting look at the “hidden hierarchy” within string quartets. Quartets playing Haydn were recorded, and the relative rhythmic timing of each player was measured very accurately. In one, rhythmically “democratic” quartet, all the players constantly made minor adjustments to timing and tempo, so that they remained together. In another, “hierarchical” quartet, the first violinist was calling all the shots – she did not adjust her timing to the other players, who constantly corrected themselves to align with the leader.
Certain types of music are inherently more hierarchical than others. I would imagine that Haydn’s string quartets, written in a stratified 18th-century society, have an inbuilt hierarchy. If nothing else, the first violin part is literally higher (in pitch), carrying the majority of audible melodic lines above the harmonic foundation laid down by the other instruments. In this kind of music – at least, in my metaphor-mixing mind -- the first violin is the flower atop the stalk and leaves of the second violin and viola, rooted in the cello-soil. However, the “hidden hierarchy” unearthed in Haydn’s quartets is most likely absent from, say, this electroacoustic piece for quartet, flute and playback. When inflexible, rhythmic electronic playback is involved, the track is the master and everyone in the ensemble has to lash themselves to the tempo and timing of the track.
In other kinds of music, the hierarchy is not hidden. In rock bands I play drumkit, not least because I always wanted to be at the back of the stage, out of the spotlight, camouflaged behind hardware. The front-person, the band-leader, is upfront, centre-stage. They’re the boss, right? Yes and no. Usually, I start the song – I control the tempo. But I’m always feeling out each player’s tendency to propel forwards or pull back the beat; I’m watching hands and feet, the sound monitor near (or ideally in) my ear. I align my breath to the downbeat with singers and horns. Power’s shared through eye contact, ear contact, and a kind of panoramic awareness of the whole ensemble. The worst live performances, in my experience, are those in which there is no balance of leading and listening, no power-sharing. Yet, some of the best performances require someone to step up and run the show. Look at James Brown playing live – even when he’s way out in the audience, he’s physically connecting with the band. He’s conducting.
There are times when I find myself at the front of the stage, seemingly the boss. Yet, I’m often not purely the leader. When I play a marimba solo, the sound produced by my instrument is extraordinarily altered by the shape of the performance space, the ceiling height, the number of bodies in the audience. I have to adjust almost all elements – articulation, tempo, phrasing, mallet choice – to the “leadership” of the physical space. As a concerto soloist, the conductor told me: “Play it whatever tempo you like – it’s your concerto”. Although I did set my own speed, I was also fully reliant on the conductor’s silent timekeeping, the unseen downward motion of elbows and bows behind me. Between the relatively “hard” (nutty) articulation of the marimba and the “soft” (marshmallowy) articulation of the bowed strings, there was a sweet spot to be found. In music, my favourite repertoire and performances strike that sweet balance between soloist-leader and accompanist-follower. In a true collaboration, there’s creative balance and mutual empowerment. I love contemporary chamber music with no conductor, probably because this kind of challenging new music simply falls apart unless there’s collaborative power-sharing between the players. I suppose another word for this is “trust”.
What On Earth Hath This To Do With Ye Drum Rudiments? Prithee consider, ladies and gents, the double drag tap, number 33 of 40 in the Percussive Arts Society International Drum Rudiments:
What Hath This To Do With Music?
Yesterday, my Mum posted this BBC article on Facebook – it’s an interesting look at the “hidden hierarchy” within string quartets. Quartets playing Haydn were recorded, and the relative rhythmic timing of each player was measured very accurately. In one, rhythmically “democratic” quartet, all the players constantly made minor adjustments to timing and tempo, so that they remained together. In another, “hierarchical” quartet, the first violinist was calling all the shots – she did not adjust her timing to the other players, who constantly corrected themselves to align with the leader.
Certain types of music are inherently more hierarchical than others. I would imagine that Haydn’s string quartets, written in a stratified 18th-century society, have an inbuilt hierarchy. If nothing else, the first violin part is literally higher (in pitch), carrying the majority of audible melodic lines above the harmonic foundation laid down by the other instruments. In this kind of music – at least, in my metaphor-mixing mind -- the first violin is the flower atop the stalk and leaves of the second violin and viola, rooted in the cello-soil. However, the “hidden hierarchy” unearthed in Haydn’s quartets is most likely absent from, say, this electroacoustic piece for quartet, flute and playback. When inflexible, rhythmic electronic playback is involved, the track is the master and everyone in the ensemble has to lash themselves to the tempo and timing of the track.
In other kinds of music, the hierarchy is not hidden. In rock bands I play drumkit, not least because I always wanted to be at the back of the stage, out of the spotlight, camouflaged behind hardware. The front-person, the band-leader, is upfront, centre-stage. They’re the boss, right? Yes and no. Usually, I start the song – I control the tempo. But I’m always feeling out each player’s tendency to propel forwards or pull back the beat; I’m watching hands and feet, the sound monitor near (or ideally in) my ear. I align my breath to the downbeat with singers and horns. Power’s shared through eye contact, ear contact, and a kind of panoramic awareness of the whole ensemble. The worst live performances, in my experience, are those in which there is no balance of leading and listening, no power-sharing. Yet, some of the best performances require someone to step up and run the show. Look at James Brown playing live – even when he’s way out in the audience, he’s physically connecting with the band. He’s conducting.
There are times when I find myself at the front of the stage, seemingly the boss. Yet, I’m often not purely the leader. When I play a marimba solo, the sound produced by my instrument is extraordinarily altered by the shape of the performance space, the ceiling height, the number of bodies in the audience. I have to adjust almost all elements – articulation, tempo, phrasing, mallet choice – to the “leadership” of the physical space. As a concerto soloist, the conductor told me: “Play it whatever tempo you like – it’s your concerto”. Although I did set my own speed, I was also fully reliant on the conductor’s silent timekeeping, the unseen downward motion of elbows and bows behind me. Between the relatively “hard” (nutty) articulation of the marimba and the “soft” (marshmallowy) articulation of the bowed strings, there was a sweet spot to be found. In music, my favourite repertoire and performances strike that sweet balance between soloist-leader and accompanist-follower. In a true collaboration, there’s creative balance and mutual empowerment. I love contemporary chamber music with no conductor, probably because this kind of challenging new music simply falls apart unless there’s collaborative power-sharing between the players. I suppose another word for this is “trust”.
What On Earth Hath This To Do With Ye Drum Rudiments? Prithee consider, ladies and gents, the double drag tap, number 33 of 40 in the Percussive Arts Society International Drum Rudiments:
This is one of the few rudiments that has two possible forms – in the first, the drag is unmeasured, two “small” left-hand strokes crushed into the rhythmic space of each “main” right-hand stroke. Although the left-hand strokes have no rhythm or time assigned to them – they are played as quickly as possible before landing the right-hand stick on the written beat – they matter. I think of them as the chives in the cottage cheese, changing the flavour without really contributing to the volume or weight. The left-hand strokes are lower-case; the right-hand strokes capitalized. The softer double-left stroke happens before each stronger right – although the left-hand drag leads the right in terms of time, the right is heard, highlighted and heightened by its placement on the beat.
In the second version, the left-hand double stroke is not rhythmically crushed – it’s played as a rhythmically-measured “diddle”. Each of the left-hand strokes in the slashed notation has a value, a rhythmic space and weight, of a 32nd note (or a demisemiquaver, Commonwealth friends). The left-hand strokes aren’t chives any more – they’re the kidney beans to the right hand’s butterbeans. The italicized text to the right-hand’s regular.
And let’s talk about those accents – they’re the equivalent of bolding the text. The little accent-arrow hovers above one note to be played roughly twice as loud as the surrounding notes. An accent is a musical highlighter, elevating certain notes in the hierarchy of sound. The double drag tap, rather democratically, gives an accent to each hand in turn as the pattern cycles. I’d suggest each accent is heard as something special, though, because of what has come before. The unaccented, seemingly less-important double drag preceding each accent shapes the rudiment, setting up the accented “tap” stroke to sound interesting. If the tap-stroke is the metaphorical flower, the drags form the stem and the firmament.
There’s also an inherent hierarchy in metered rhythmic patterns like this one. In both versions, the cycle fills a rhythmic space of three eighth notes (quavers). The notation (and the beaming of the notes in groups of three eighths) instructs drummers to play this pattern so that it will be felt, and heard, in groups of three -- triple meter. How do we do this? We slightly accent every first note in the group of three (an unwritten, “agogic” accent). We exhale on that first note of the three. We start a word, a phrase, a sentence. It’s a “downbeat” partly because our sticks, heads, batons and feet slam down with it. We make that first note of the group the boss, the leader. In the second version of the double drag tap, the written accent aligns with the downbeat, reaffirming its boss-status. In the first version, the written accent is on the third partial – it’s leading from the rear, just like every drummer who musically “drives the bus” from the back of the stage.
The beauty of the drum rudiments is in their balance. Most of these sticking patterns can be flipped, to their mirror image. As drummers, we spend untold practice hours trying to balance the strength and dexterity of our hands. Yet, we play patterns, and music, that is variously hierarchical, democratic, perhaps even anarchic. Some music would fall apart without a clear leader; other music requires constant mutual adjustment to each other’s timing and tempo. Some musicians refuse to adjust or to follow. In some repertoire, players need to surrender their rhythmic power to an external mechanical “click” track (heard or built in as an invisible skeleton through hours of practice). In rudiments, in music and in society, the apparent physical, visible and audible power structures are not necessarily as they seem. The flower can’t last long without a stem or soil.
In the second version, the left-hand double stroke is not rhythmically crushed – it’s played as a rhythmically-measured “diddle”. Each of the left-hand strokes in the slashed notation has a value, a rhythmic space and weight, of a 32nd note (or a demisemiquaver, Commonwealth friends). The left-hand strokes aren’t chives any more – they’re the kidney beans to the right hand’s butterbeans. The italicized text to the right-hand’s regular.
And let’s talk about those accents – they’re the equivalent of bolding the text. The little accent-arrow hovers above one note to be played roughly twice as loud as the surrounding notes. An accent is a musical highlighter, elevating certain notes in the hierarchy of sound. The double drag tap, rather democratically, gives an accent to each hand in turn as the pattern cycles. I’d suggest each accent is heard as something special, though, because of what has come before. The unaccented, seemingly less-important double drag preceding each accent shapes the rudiment, setting up the accented “tap” stroke to sound interesting. If the tap-stroke is the metaphorical flower, the drags form the stem and the firmament.
There’s also an inherent hierarchy in metered rhythmic patterns like this one. In both versions, the cycle fills a rhythmic space of three eighth notes (quavers). The notation (and the beaming of the notes in groups of three eighths) instructs drummers to play this pattern so that it will be felt, and heard, in groups of three -- triple meter. How do we do this? We slightly accent every first note in the group of three (an unwritten, “agogic” accent). We exhale on that first note of the three. We start a word, a phrase, a sentence. It’s a “downbeat” partly because our sticks, heads, batons and feet slam down with it. We make that first note of the group the boss, the leader. In the second version of the double drag tap, the written accent aligns with the downbeat, reaffirming its boss-status. In the first version, the written accent is on the third partial – it’s leading from the rear, just like every drummer who musically “drives the bus” from the back of the stage.
The beauty of the drum rudiments is in their balance. Most of these sticking patterns can be flipped, to their mirror image. As drummers, we spend untold practice hours trying to balance the strength and dexterity of our hands. Yet, we play patterns, and music, that is variously hierarchical, democratic, perhaps even anarchic. Some music would fall apart without a clear leader; other music requires constant mutual adjustment to each other’s timing and tempo. Some musicians refuse to adjust or to follow. In some repertoire, players need to surrender their rhythmic power to an external mechanical “click” track (heard or built in as an invisible skeleton through hours of practice). In rudiments, in music and in society, the apparent physical, visible and audible power structures are not necessarily as they seem. The flower can’t last long without a stem or soil.