My fellow adventurers and I saw some stuff! And mostly by accident. I remember hearing a young Cindy Blackman-Santana with Pharaoh Sanders and even more I recall Charles Gayle's cacophonous opening set; I had simply never heard anything of the sort. I saw John Zorn several times in various configurations, and Sex Mob with John Medeski guesting performing on the tiny stage in the bar, long before I knew who any of them were. I was just an excited teenager with big ears and a beer (gotta fulfill that drink minimum, this was pre-Giuliani lockdown!) who stumbled into an artistic renaissance.
I was particularly moved by William Parker however. I felt then, as I do now, that he musics without walls; he plays truly "free" in the sense that anything is possible. Anything I've ever seen or heard of his lacks all pretense, he just connects to the master vibration and rides. If he departs this earth by becoming a ball of light on stage one day, I will not be surprised.
In tandem, Parker and Drake are among the great dynamic duos such as Dannie Richmond/Charles Mingus or Sly & Robbie. From moments of unison to times in which they seem to pull at opposite ends of the universe's fabric, they are complimenting one another. Love and joy radiate from everything they do. Their output is massive. A couple of recordings that have moved me are Scrapbook, a violin trio with Billy Bang and O'neal's Porch.
- Time! In this setting Drake is playing what many people would refer to as "free," but there is a deep pulse embedded in the performance. It's malleable, but he and Parker are on a shared wavelength.
- Try setting a metronome to any tempo you choose but only put a sound on beat one. How many ways can you get from 1 to 1 (or over a few bars and to one again)?
- Think of a time table, i.e. whole notes, dotted half notes, half notes, quarters, quarter note triplets, etc
- try playing these note groupings with this slow pulse, then try orchestrating them around the drums
- Once you're comfortable with the individual note groupings, begin to mix them
- Non-idiomatic drumming
- Drake plays "pocket" for much of this set, but he doesn't do it with the hi-hat/ride and snare or a "beat." How can you articulate time without falling into expected orchestrations and patterns?
- Space!
- If you're playing with strong musicians, you needn't hold them up by enforcing time. Notice in this performance how much space Drake leaves between phrases and how much he trusts Bluiett and Parker.
- Phrasing / Melodies
- This is a combination of all of the above, but if you wish to play time with non-idiomatic beats and to include space, you arrive at melodies. Have you ever attempted to learn the melody to a song on the drum set? In drumming "linear" tends to be used in reference to fusion beats, but a single-note melody is also a linear approach to drumming. Give it a whirl. Trying breathing in between phrases like a sax player would. It's rewarding.
- Colors
- Different sticks, bare hands, the sides and tops of the drums; with Drake seated behind it this 4-piece kit with 2 cymbals is a source of infinite sound. You don't really need that new splash with holes in it from Guitar Center, you just need to find more sounds in the gear you already have.
