Don't-cha Wanna Dance?
No, actually, I don't. This came into focus for me some years ago. It was one of those wonderful, serendipitous, off-the-cuff remarks that ended up being a defining moment. I was at the wedding of a close relative and one of the bridesmaids came over to me and tried to get me to dance. I politely declined (I’m even less into dancing than I am into singing). Her comeback was rather convincing: “When you hear the music, don’t you just want to get up and dance?” My response was even better: “No, I want to sit down and hit things!”
It’s true. When I dance, I do it sitting down. When I hear music, I want to bet a part of it. I want to be right inside of it. I want to ‘dance’ along with the rest of the band by being one of the creators of the music. And to do that, I have to sit down and hit stuff.
Keep On Dancing
There are a few ways I apply dancing to the drums. The first, obviously, is just playing -- I create music and express myself by movement on a drums set. That’s my dance. My teacher always talked about how playing the ride cymbal was like a dance.
The Joint Was Rockin'
If it’s a dancing situation and the dance floor is jumping, I'm a success! I like to focus on the dancers. I try to be their partner in keeping the energy and the mood happening. And so I play with and for the dancers.
Spirit Hands
I too love to ‘dance’ on my ride cymbal. In mainstream jazz, the cymbal is the drummer’s lead voice, and it can do wondrous things in service to the music. And it can be quite addictive.
Step by Step
Dancers have a very different relationship with music than do musicians. While we’re busy creating phrases and establishing the groove, dancers are trying to coordinate all manner of different steps and groupings. They must know which foot and which beat to start on, which foot and beat to land on, and all the moves in between. The easiest way to manage this is to count. Let’s say a dance figure begins on the second beat of the bar, ends on the down beat of the next bar and consists of 7 steps. Well, dancers will understand this move in exactly those terms. They might even call the figure “The 7”.
I sometimes analyze tricky phrases using the dance step technique splitting them up according to their rhythmic meaning rather than as ‘notes on a page’, a technique called asymmetrical phrasing. Cross rhythms can be approached this way as well. In fact, almost any phrasing can be unpacked by analyzing the inner groupings and then counting the ‘steps’.
So the next time someone asks you to dance, just say yes … and then go play some drums.