I’ve switched drums – from the djembe to a small panlogo which I play with mallets. My sound is now mid-level and it sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the djembes.

As such, my role in the circle is to fill in notes between the high frequencies of the bell and the low notes of the bass drum to help maintain the pace.

I’m finding playing this drum puts me into a deep-level trance. As I play the same pattern over and over (for 2 hours or so) I feel my consciousness being pulled into the sound I am making and my arms fall instinctively into synchronicity with the pulse. Although I find it hard to write about such an internal experience it is a head-space worth examining.

In the trance state it feels like my body is on automatic pilot. There is a lot less energy going into counting, calculating, executing. It all seems to happen naturally, like someone else has a hold on my mind and body.  And this sometimes feels scary, like I’m out of control.

A strong drummer is able to enter and exit this trance state at will  – to strengthen the beat when it needs strengthening, to resume the trance once the beat is established and to maintain the trance when all other forces are against you – very difficult things to do.

As a relative newcomer to drumming, my untrained mind flits out of the trance only too often to worry about whether or not I’m on the beat.   My goal is to practice being in this trance state as much as possible so once I enter it I am not so easily dislodged.

I would love to have a brain scan done on me while in this trance. I would love to see what aspects of my brain I am accessing and how it changes when I go in and out of trance.  Anyone out there have a spare set of electrodes?

I have always been curious about what makes a dancer a “good” dancer and awhile back found myself on the dance floor with what I consider to be two of Vancouver’s best musicians. I was amazed at how differently the two interpreted the beat. I tried copying their moves and found that in order to dance like the first, I had to conceptualize the beat in my hip region. To dance like the second, I had to conceptualize the beat at the base of my neck.

As I recover from my back injuries I beginning to realize what a huge role my neck plays in correctly interpreting the beat while drumming. If I sense the beat from any other region (hip, toe tapping etc.) I have to mentally calculate the strokes my arms have to make to accurately render the rhythm. However, if I let the back of my neck sense the pulse (whereby my chin and head fall down in time with the beat) my arms correctly fall into place without any conscious calculation – a side product of which is a deep trance.

The study raises a whole bunch of questions for me: Did the less attractive dancers limit their movements due to social conditioning? Physical ailments? Would the researchers find the same conclusions if they had men rate women dancing?

In any case, its well worth checking out the study and making your own conclusions from the video – but next time you are dancing/drumming, try feeling the pulse from the back of your neck and let me know what you find.

Listening back to all of the song’s versions its surprising how little the current version resembles its original form. When I’ve listened to various evolutions of whale song, the changes seem much more constrained. So why did I make the changes I made? What was the impetus?

First of all, there was dissatisfaction with the original piece. It worked as a piece of music – but only just – and I wasn’t satisfied with its flow and progressions. The mutation from 4/4 to 6/8 happened by accident. I had been playing around with a 6/8 beat and opened up the wrong file to paste it in. By pure happenstance it worked beautifully with the original violin trax I had laid down. I deleted the original rhythmic parts and began adding new ones which fit with the new time signature.

Now that I had a basic structure I could invite others to play on it. Over the course of the summer Kirk added his sonic styling through his bass, Alcvin on his various flutes and Haagen with his electronics. What’s curious to note is that each time we jammed on the song, it was never the same twice.

My current job is to now pick the best trax that we laid down, massage them into a cohesive whole and release the resulting entity to the world to begin its life as a song.  Where it goes, how long it will live, what it might spawn, we’ll have to wait and see….

“Cholewiak noticed two changes in song when humpbacks sang together. Overall, the first singers switched more often among various musical themes when a second singer hung around. Also, the first males adjusted their songs so that the pair was more likely to sing the same theme simultaneously.”

From a musical perspective, does this makes sense to me? Would my musical behavior take the same approach if I was joined by another player?

The first observation, that the initial singer switched more often among musical themes when joined by a second singer, certainly makes sense. You are no longer holding down the themes by yourself – you are now joined by another player and variation becomes more compelling. The challenge of switching, the finesse and skill by which it takes to switch, means that each player’s ability comes to the forefront. Can he catch me? Can he keep up? Can I keep up?

The second observation, that the first singer adjusted his song so the pair was more likely to sing the same theme simultaneously is interesting. My first impulse would be to think that the second singer would adjust his song to fit the first, but upon further thot, I can see that it is more important for the first singer to “rate” the joiner – is he a threat or just a pipsqueak? So the first singer, by adjusting his song to match the second singer, is laying the groundwork to compare apples to apples.

While Cholewiak does not use the term duet – only the author of the article – there are differences to note between this behavior and human musical duets. In a duet, the musical piece is realized by two voices, whereas in the case of the humpbacks, they synchronize their singing. There is no mixing and matching of parts to create the whole.

Is this synchronized singing evidence of musical behavior? More thots on this in a later post

Sez Wikipedia: The handicap principle is a hypothesis originally proposed in 1975 by biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to “honest” or reliable signaling between animals who have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. The handicap principle suggests that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler, costing the signaler something that could not be afforded by an individual with less of a particular trait.

First off, not only have I found concepts in Zahavi’s book “The Handicap Principle A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle” fun to apply to all things music but I love the way Zahavi and his co-authors write – as if they tried all the experiments on themselves and then wrote about their observations. For instance, consider Zahavi’s musings on the finding that great tits, whose songs were more rhythmic and contained more syllables, were more successful breeders.

“There is an inherent conflict between collecting information and precise execution of vocalization. Both activities demand concentration, but to collect information one must concentrate on listening, looking, discerning, and correlating, while precise vocalization demands that one concentrate on execution….One who tries both to listen and to vocalize is likely to falter a bit in the rhythm- a stumble that will display divided concentration.”

Maybe he tried talking and listening to someone talk at the same time – or is he also a drummer?

Based on my own observations “in the field” of the drum circle his ideas re: faltering are valid. Playing the drum (vocal execution) while listening for the beat (collecting info) is very hard. As one trains as a musician, the skill of listening while playing/playing while listening becomes so enforced that it becomes second nature, allowing the player to easily enter what I call a “musical state of mind”.

While this is probably not the goal of the great tits, I find studies such as these great fodder for understanding my own musical nature – insights which I’m getting excited about sharing as I prepare for the upcoming 2010 Annual Conference of the Canadian Acoustical Association in Victoria this October. This will be my first foray into the world of science and am looking forwards to meeting others who are intrigued as I am about the chirps, squeaks, hums, thrums, moans, calls and songs us humans and other animals make.

I know scientists are concerned about this effect wrt marine species such as orcas and bird populations that live next to the highway. What happens when you can’t properly communicate your message? Interesting to think about now that I’ve experienced the effect first-hand.

In the land of the laptop things are progressing. I managed to make my first beat and then added an audio track to the mix – which I then proceeded to mangle with a host of plug-ins. Kinda fun I have to admit. Still hate the mouse interface tho. Anyways, here’s a little snippet for your listening pleasure – nothing complete – just a rough mix of an experiment.
[See post to listen to audio]

So…thots? Well I like that everything is perfectly lined up. I like that I can see the pattern clearly. I find it challenging however to create – but that’s probably because my interface at the moment is my mouse (yuck). I’m thinking of hooking up my electribe to my computer so I can program on it and have the data sent directly to my computer. I’ve not been feeling love for my pink machine lately as its sounds aren’t phat out of the box. By using it just as a trigger I can get past that limitation and assign any sound I want. I can also program/play with velocities, accents etc. and then use the onboard computer effects to further morph the sound – all in all pretty cool.

I have to be careful tho how much time I spend learning this new stuff. Even after an hour today my back is hurting (and brain is hurting!!). Sitting at the computer just isn’t my thing. Where’s my balafon?

I also really enjoyed listening to the mayhem late Saturday nite – but from a distance, far away from the source as the sound hit the surrounding mountains. There’s something about the geography of Shambles that takes the sound and lofts it into seeming ancestral voices that swirl around the valley. Pretty cool stuff.

What my body really needed on Saturday nite I was actually able to experience last night at Vieux Farka Toure’s concert – an amazing show of Malian musicians. But place these guys in the forest, would they have been able to compete with the volumes of the other DJ’s? Probably not. So I realize (upon further reflection) that to be in control of a massive beat, playing in front of massive crowds at high volumes, you probably don’t want to open yourself up to that much risk and a laptop pretty much makes sense.

So should I limit myself to other festivals? Nah…The adventurer in me likes going to a variety and seeing what they offer. Komasket was beautiful, peaceful and pleasurable. Entheos was brave and intimate. The Vancouver Folk Festival cozy, like being at home with your best friends (and their drums). Its just time for me to embrace my inner laptop/midi musician and see where it takes me.

The gig went as well as could be expected and I am thankful for the efforts and dedication of Isshin Denshin and Haagen and grateful for the opportunity to play. We played in the Inner Sanctum with no monitors and a wall of sound flooding the dome from other stages. It was challenging to hear each other but we pulled through. The scenario made me think of the studies being done on bird song near highways and other sources of loud noise – and how the birds alter their song in response. Did we alter our song? From my perspective, I certainly did.

Why the shift to omni-present thundering machine-made music at this and other festivals? I’m sure the organizers would tell me its what brings in the crowd and makes them dance. Did it make me dance? No, but I’m probably in the wrong demographic. I do like dub-step and drum and bass. I like it when the beat alters and I know/feel there’s a human in control somewhere along the line. I don’t like it when there is limited interaction between the crowd and the one in control of the sound – makes me feel duped somehow – tho I’m sure the other 9,999 other people who attended will disagree with me.

As a musician, I see the appeal of having everything controlled on a laptop. First of all, gear transport is easy. Throw the computer in a bag and off you go. Breaks are easy – no need to learn timing or risk a sloppy entrance, just program everything beforehand and hit the play button.  Set-up time is minimal, unpack your computer, plug-in and off you go. No setting up 8 pieces of gear, tweaking individual knobs, risking midi lag or playing the wrong note.

All of this being said, I am curious now to try being a laptop musician. My back will thank me and probably my pocketbook too. However I am too addicted the risk/reward of live playing to rely solely on my computer so I’ll have to establish a balance. We’ll see how it all works out.