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Boy, this was a blast to play. I love words anyway, and Adrian’s lexicon of alliterations – clichés , commentary, controversy, chatter, chit-chat, etc - always made me smile. I’m also all for action rather than words, so the reminder that ‘It’s all talk, only talk’, at the beginning an end of every letter, resonated strongly with me. Many people talk about doing; fewer people actually do.

It was also one of the quickest songs to come together in the origination stages, and that’s always a good omen. The guitar and stick parts, and the lyrical idea, seemed to appear from nowhere - really fast. I may have missed some long gestation in the back of Belew’s head, but I don’t think so. And we all knew very quickly it would work well on stage. All it needed was a backbeat from the drummer, but not on hi-hat or cymbals , of course. This was a model of collective collaboration. There was nothing to say about what any individual was doing. All the bits fitted together perfectly, like a jigsaw.

This version is performed by six men, (five of whom are invisible), but nothing significant is added to the Tokyo version of 1984, also on this channel, performed by four men. The sound is a bit thicker with six, but the song could be played by one man and a kazoo and it would still work. It’s sort of indestructible.

Regular subscribers here will have got my drift in respect of teaching. IMO the best teaching is absorbed by listening to and observing the teacher in action and context, in other words, playing live with others. That’s why this channel predominantly uploads performance footage. Here you can see it done (well, not on this video): the articulation, the choices made, possibilities missed, all for better or worse. You may miss detail because the camera is elsewhere or the action too fast, but many other questions are worth asking.

For example, why is the stage black throughout, save for the lead performer and his Day-Glo guitar? The younger drummer will want to know other things. Why are the drums and cymbals set up that way? How often does the drummer deviate from a given pattern and to what effect? How often are toms used? How often does the drummer exit from a fill on the downbeat (rock), or tend to avoid that (jazz)? How often is the internal balance of the percussion instruments varied, or does it stay the same? Does the player turn on the hi-hat like an unvarying click track, or is the hat used as a fourth voice, integral to the rhythmic phrasing? Or is the hat not pedalled at all? To what extent are genre norms being challenged, or is the drummer content to lay it down and keep out of the way? These are interesting questions being answered in front of you every time you go hear a drummer perform.

And those are just the drum ones.

#billbruford #drumsolos #improvisationmusic #kingcrimson #paistecymbals #jazzdrumming #yes #electronicdrumkit #tamadrums #billbrufordsearthworks #billbrufordsearthworks

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