Trill drill

This is a sickeningly busy time for me (semester just started again..dammit...). But I've been trying really hard to squeeze in some snippets of timbal practice here and there this week. Lamson's workshop got me going, as did Brian's addition to the 6/8, as did Zach's new twist the other day and Jake's killer rolls.

The workshop actually beat my hands up pretty severely; both palms were badly bruised all week. I couldn't even hold my hairbrush or turn a doorknob for about a week. (The way I described it to a friend is that I felt like I was "limping with my hands" for a week). My left palm is still acting weird and I have a bizarre callus on my left thumb that I think is actually a bone bruise, but I'm slowly getting back online again.

So anyway. Finally I can play a bit again, and I am doing trill drills. There seem to be a lot of timbal patterns recently that have a chain of RLR-L- units. (with the first "RL" being two thirty-seconds that subdivide a single sixteenth.) There's probably some formal name for those things, but I don't know it, so I've just been calling them "trills".

The thing about the trills is - well - take a look at a timbal trill again - notated in 32nd's:
RLR-L-

The first "RL" fits into one sixteenth, right? So here's my notation for how to show it in sixteenths:
2RL
(the idea of notating it with a "2" being "there's two hits here" - RL.)

OK. Thing is, it only takes up THREE sixteenths, right? That means, if you start playing a bunch of those in a row, in a typical even-count meter, they start to loop around. The starting point of the next one starts moving forward, constantly sliding earlier and earlier in relation to the main beat. Like, here's a chain of them:

2RL2RL2RL2RL2RL2

now break 'em into groups of four and see how they slide around against the main beat:
2RL2 RL2R L2RL 2RL2

The formal term for this sort of 3-against-2 thing is a "hemiola". (which until today I thought was spelled "remiola" - I've gotten that used to hearing Portuguese!) And, OK, according to this Wikipedia entry here, "hemiola" in classical music is supposed to be the brief occurrence of 2's in a piece that is really written in 3; but the musicians that I know seem always to use it exactly the opposite way: the brief occurrence of groups of 3's in a piece that is really in 2. Whatever. Anyway... this used to be the single fastest way that Jorge Alabe could trip me up in a repique lesson. He'd start playing little chains of 3's and within about four cycles, I'd completely lost my sense of the beat. I mean, completely. I would have to stay "Jorge, 'tou perdida" (Jorge, I'm lost) and he'd have to stop completely and start all over.

I still have a vivid memory of the painstaking process I had to go through to retain my sense of the beat through those maddening groups of 3's. Standing in my kitchen tapping out combinations while making nachos, and the nachos catching on fire because I got so into my tapping drills that I forgot to watch the timer. (ON FIRE. Big flames and everything. I threw the whole flaming mess out into the rain in the yard.) Walking down the street trying to hum hemiolas to myself, and almost falling over when my legs suddenly stopped working. And the revelation I suddenly had - OH!! every 3 quarter notes they suddenly line back up with the main beat!! And all of a sudden I could hear what Jorge was doing.

Hemiolas are sort of a secret-handshake thing among drummers. Amateurs tend to get bewildered by a chain of hemiolas; while the pros immediately recognize what is going on, and they also notice which other people have also recognized what is going on. That means you'll hear these sorts of exchange among pros (this is almost verbatim from an Axe Dide rehearsal and also a Lions rehearsal):

"What if we did, like, you know, one of these things for that break?" (plays a chain of 3's)
"Oh, right, for three counts?"
"No, longer."
"A measure and a half?"
"No, you know, longer."
"Oh you mean like, 3 bars long exactly, because it's, its', it's one of those 3-count guys who, a chain of 'em wraps around every three quarter notes and because 3 times 4 is 12 and so they add up to 12 and so they take 3 counts and after you've done 4 of those sets it's added up to 12 counts and so you're on the downbeat again after 3 bars."
"Yeah."

Which would be completely bewildering if both those people hadn't, at some point in their lives, put themselves through the grueling process of figuring those puppies out. Slapping the 3's with one hand and forcing yourself to tap the main beat with your foot, and count it out loud, and vice versa... trying to emphasize different parts of the 3's... and every combination you could think of to inflict on yourself.

In the end you no longer have to count it, mathematically. It's more like ... like when you learn to hear melody and harmony at the same time. Your conscious brain is playing the 3's, but some back part of your brain is also - silently, mutely, distantly - humming the main beat too. They're dancing against each other. And at the moment when the beats coincide again, those two parts of your brain do sort of a mental handshake, sort of a quiet "Hey!" (That's what it feel like to me, anyway.)

So anyway: Zach's idea for the second timbal intro in our new reggae is 9 1/3 of those suckers and then a quarter note of tones to wrap it up:

2RL2 RL2R L2RL 2RL2

RL2R L2RL 2RL2 TTTT

And just when I almost had it, Zach immediately said "No wait! Let's do this!"

2RL2 RL2R L2RL 2RL2

RL2R L2RL 2RL2 6! ... yeah, a 2 right into a fancy sestuplet roll to finish it off!

OK, so that kept me busy. That was for the reggae. (Which also has now developed, elsewhere in the piece, a showy timbal entrance of a full SIXTEEN counts of SESTUPLET rolls. That's, what, 96 of those lactic-acid devils in a row.)

MEANWHILE, we also have this other piece, a 6/8, that has a break in it where the band drops out and the timbals alone do four, clear, simple, flams. Right on the downbeats:
X-- X-- X-- X--

Perfectly do-able but a bit dull. So, Brian suddenly had a brainwave to do this instead:
2RL 2RL 2RL R--

which OUGHT to be doable, except when you're playing at 160 and you are not Zach or Brian or David or Jake, i.e.. if you are me. Those little trills are blistering at 160. For the safety of the band I am going to have to remove myself from this one. But I am drilling it every night. Trill drill, trill drill, trill drill....