Caixa flowing to the sea

Lions rehearsal today... Sunday rehearsal on a freakishly cold mid-April day. It's been snowing and hailing, very bizarre this late in the spring. But I hopped on my bike anyway (don't have money to fill the gas tank and the car was near empty!), rigged a way to strap my caixa to my backpack and off to rehearsal I went. I couldn't figure out a way to also strap on the timbal... W

We've recovered from the blitz of the PSU Carnaval, and now, mid-April, back to normal. Full contingent at rehearsal and we're starting to focus on the summer parade season, which is shaping up to be tremendous. Brian's doing his usual canny and brilliant job landing us some killer gigs, including a brand-new Brazil day extravaganza on August 5th, at which, to judge from Brian's description of the line-up, I'll be playing in every single band all day.

The last month I've been mostly on primeira and segunda, filling some surdo holes the Lions have had for some recent shows. And I'd been drilling the hell out of timbal (Pat and I are determined to prove to Brian that a girl timbal section CAN SO kick ass, can SO, can SO! ). But today, a pause on all that, because I want to get back to... CAIXA.

My endless battle with caixa is like the tide flowing in and out of the Bay of Fundy. Sometimes it goes so well and sometimes I feel like such an idiot. But today is a full moon, and the massive Bay of Fundy tide came flowing in.

On caixa I've been really trying, this last month, to lock in the swing and to iron out a glitch I discovered last year in Rio. Here's the problem. Lions play this Viradouro pattern as their basic:
RllX RlXl RlXl RllX (rimshots are X's)

So, the problem is, THAT'S NOT WHAT I HEAR IN RIO. What I hear in most street blocos, and in Sao Clemente, and Portela, and, uh, VIRADOURO in fact, and also when Jorge Alabe plays, is:
RllX RlXl Rlrl RllX

Spot the difference! One rimshot that I need to change to an unaccented hit. ONE TINY LITTLE CHANGE. But I just can't do that change! It turns out I can swing this:
RlrL
And I can swing this:
RllX

But it turns out I completely suck at swinging this:
Rlrl
Which is the 3rd quarter note of that Rio-style pattern.

I also turn out to suck at swinging this:
RlXl
Which is the 2nd quarter note.

So making this apparently tiny little change, removing one rimshot from Viradouro, has been completely kicking my ass.

What it's really done is exposed a deep hole in my playing: I can't keep the swing going consistently through all possible caixa stickings. I only swing on certain patterns that I've carefully learned to swing:
Viradouro-with-the-extra-rimshot (but not without),
Mangueira-with-the-double-rights (but not with single rights),
Mocidade-with-the-drum-slanted (but not if it's level),
Chatter-if-it's-loud (but not soft).

It turns out I have all these black holes. Ask me to change anything, push me out of my zone of habit, and, no swing. I'm like a horse that can only canter on one lead and never on the other, only can trot clockwise and never counterclockwise. That's what horsemen would call a lack of suppleness. I'm lacking suppleness on caixa.

So I've been drilling every caixa motif I can think off, trying to get these all to swing, doing endless loops like:
RllX llRl
and
RllR RlXl
and
Rlrl RllX
and
XlRX lRXl
and.... you get the idea. Hours in slow motion.

Then I tried to put together the Viradouro pattern as it should be, without that extra rimshot. Man, that sucker is slippery. That damn rimshot keeps jumping back in there. I'm just so used to putting it in. And then the most infuriating thing started happening - after all those drills of strange combinations, my hands started getting COMPLETELY confused about what pattern they were supposed to be doing. They'd jump from Viradouro to Mocidade, from Viradouro to Mangueira, from Viradouro to timbal, and more and more often, Viradouro to complete random meltdown - all kinds of glitchy freakouts. I had to slow down to probably 20bpm, I'm not joking, GLACIALLY SLOW, to get the pattern right.

Then I gradually sped it up again. It would go okay for while, but took intense concentration. And if my concentration slipped for the tiniest split second, POW, off my hands would fly on some totally random sticking. The most I could go was maybe 90bpm. I could not, could not, could not play the new pattern at high tempo. Forget whether it was swinging or not. I just couldn't even PLAY it.

I've been working this now for a couple months.

About two weeks ago something new happened. I was plowing through my drills, and as usual my hands got into glitchy randomness at high tempo. But this time, EVEN WHEN I MESSED UP, IT STILL KEPT SWINGING.

I knew I was onto something. Because it meant I'd got to the point where any possible combination of rights and lefts still had the swing in it, and it meant I'd learned to chain them all together in all possible combinations.

So today.... for the first time...
The full Viradouro pattern leapt into my drum.
It is like a spirit has possessed your hands, when this sort of thing happens.
I was actually playing the pattern that I was intending to play! The one I heard in Rio!
And it was SWINGING all the way through, every quarter note.
That sticky rimshot had just vanished. In its place, a flowing, swinging Rlrl, smooth as silk, soft as velvet, flowing right out of the RlXl before, flowing right into the RllX after. Measure after measure after measure. A seamless river flowing to the sea.

Near the end of rehearsal, Randy asked the whole band to quiet down; then asked specific sections to play as loud as possible while the rest of the band stayed quiet. When the caixas' turn came, I seemed to be the only one who had picked up on what Randy was trying to do. Which meant I was the ONLY caixa who played loud. In the past this would have been scary. But it was not scary, it was fun. HERE I AM! said my drum. HERE I AM! HERE'S MY SAMBA!

It sounded alright! It sounded almost like a real caixa player was playing.