When I was thirteen years old I received the holy sacrament of Confirmation in the Catholic Church. This was also the age that I become enamored with banging on drums. Most importantly, it was the age I would begin to make decisions for myself.
For those who have not been through the sacrament of receiving Confirmation:
Step One) Convince young, hormone riddled homo-sapiens that this is their opportunity to come into adulthood in the eyes of the Church.
Step Two) Schedule a mandatory meeting in the moist basement of a remote, rural church at the same time as all the parties for all the birthdays on the most beautiful of spring weekends.
Step Three) Book the oldest Nun with the best record for blasting these little bastards (us) through the system.
Step Four) Lie/Fabricate/Fib/Exaggerate/Draw illogical conclusions
Step Five) Reward children (us) with chocolates for correct responses to afore mentioned fabrications.
For those who have never formally studied the craft of playing drums:
Step One) Have as much fun as humanly possible.
Step Two) Stop at “step one” because…what else could you possibly want?
Although the idea of participating in a holy sacrament greatly enticed my inner curiosity monkey, my tiny little brain could see the holes in the fantastical story. The most obvious being that of TIME. Time is to a drummer what an empty page is to an author. It is our blank canvas. Time IS the drummer and the drummer IS time. The term “Russian Dragon” is in reference to a drummer who is either rushing time or dragging it. Russian Dragons NEVER get called back for a gig. So you can imagine the dissonance I felt when "God's Servent" was pounding into our little heads that in heaven there was no time. It was on this day that I went home and confessed to my mother “If there is no such thing as time in heaven then I am not going.”
Strong words for such a confused, manipulated mind, but words I still feel passionate about. The more I contemplate the idea and concept of time, the more I see the truth in my 13-year-old desires. Time is beautiful. Time is ever present. Everyone on this planet must deal with time and for some it can be an overwhelmingly difficult task. Yet there is a common understanding among drummers that the element of time can be manipulated.
The first thing on any musical composition ever written is what is referred to as the time signature. It is, next to the key signature, the most important piece of information on any piece of music. Without the general agreement by the performers as to what number to count to, all music would literally fall apart. In most settings, it is the duty of the drummer to set this version of time for the entire band, whether it be a 4/4 rock groove with beats 1 and 3 on the kick and 2 and 4 on the snare, a waltz in ¾ time, a progressive metal balad written in 15/16 or the random bars of 7/8 littered throughout a Beethoven symphony, drummers become the human incarnation of time. We learn to flow with time. We cut it up into lots of little pieces in our heads and spit out whatever version is required. Or, in most cases, whatever adaptation we see fit in that exact moment. Each drummer has a style, a pulse, a version of time they feel comfortable in. We study the players who would push and pull time all the while remaining in the pocket, the ones who juggled time in the moment and produced recorded pieces of percussive perfection, but most importantly, we pay extremely close attention to time.
Awareness to the moment itself is a trait that can be difficult for anyone to master. Life itself is, in my opinion, a task of mastering a simple 24-hour period of time and it can take centuries of trial and error to simply achieve that. We make small adjustments each day in an attempt to find a lifetime of happiness-not realizing that all the while this possibility lies in every moment. Drummers, although extremely talented, handsome, suave, intelligent and daring, are no more God-like then the mom breaking it down on the dance floor or the teacher truly engaging their classroom with the studies, or your attention as you read this now. Being God-like is attention to the beauty that is now.
