Adventures in the Drum Trade

The recent arrival on the web of musical collaboration sites is heartening for an old amateur musician. I have played Solitaire on the piano lo these many decades—and I don’t mean the Carpenters’ tune of that name. An able musician has the luxury of joining groups of equally talented people, gaining their input and feedback, playing the Poker game of music. Lackluster pianists like myself must reconcile themselves to performing music that isn’t expecting an audience, usually alone in an empty room. It sounds gloomier than it is—music makes a wonderfully vivacious companion and the visceral experience of creating the sounds on one’s own keyboard helps make up for the lack of rhythm and technique.

As I stumble through a Bach prelude I can hear, inside the mangled mess, the ghost of Glenn Gould’s performance of the same piece. I don’t play the piece so much as imagine it. Another person in the room would likely hear the mangled mess that actually issues from the piano. So, in a literal sense, I’m playing for myself. Not that I choose to—it’s simply what I’m left with once the wishful thinking is swept away.

But now, fellow wishful thinkers on the web have a gathering spot, actually several—if you’re an NPR listener, you’ve heard all about it lately: drumsnpercussion.com, e-drummer.com, indaba music sessions, and so on. Some sites even allow for virtual jam sessions, such as ejamming or jamglue, but I avoid those—even on my shaky new ‘collaboration’ legs I prefer to record while alone in the room, virtually or otherwise.

The hardest part of collaboration is the click track or metronome. Obviously, other musicians can’t be expected to handle an arrhythmic piece; there has to be a steady beat and this is something a solitaire player never has to worry about. Indeed, it was a major reason for exclusion from ensemble playing from the beginning. But adjustments must be made, for it is the sine qua non of working together: to stay in time.

My very first attempt at creating a non-solo recording met with mixed success. Some drum-track suppliers refused my improvisation, entitled Bombastico, on the quite justified grounds of unsteady rhythm. Fortunately, the undaunted Mike at Drums n’Percussion.com took on the task of drumming to my meandering piano track and the result was a beautiful enhancement.
Here’s “Bombastico” by me (Xper Dunn) with synth-strings, drums and percussion by the very talented Mike: