Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam-Y
^ Thats the reason I love what I do, and you put it very nicely. At the same time however, as a drummer, I always felt the need to have the "power" to produce melodies also. I felt limited in another sense since you can only produce beats with percussion while most musicians can produce everything else. I love drumming, but I guess this had more to do with me than with drumming only.
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Hi, Sam-Y,
You wrote about the limited power of drums to produce melodies. As a novice drummer I haven't had a lot of experience playing, but for the few songs I've played (during home recording) I've tuned the drums so that they make the notes that match certain parts of the song. For example, right now my high tom is D, my mid tom is B, and my floor tom is G. So, when I play with the melody I do feel very much part of it and I am helping to create it (beyond just the rhythm, which is of course important). I am going to try to adjust the tuning to match additional songs and see how that works. I wondered if you do this with your drumming, too?
I am envious that you get to play with a band at all! Since I'm doing home recording, my band usually consists of Me Me Me and occasionally one other person. The advantage of this is I get to play a lot of instruments, and so can compare how I feel about them (violin vs. electric guitar vs. drums vs. electric piano, for example). I do like the electric guitar because of the versality others mention, and the feeling of power combined with sensitivity, but in actuality when I play the drums (with earplugs in), it feels very cathartic and I can understand drums being your passion. I like the fact that you interact with the drums with your whole body (feet and arms).
I also agree with others that the drums are the backbone and they provide the basis of a lot of the drive in rock music: the sense of the heartbeat, which can be subtle or intense, but always is very much of the primal draw of beat-based music. The drums are cumbersome to move them around, I agree. Piccolo players have it a lot easier.
--Erica