Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Watching Earthworks (Iain Ballamy, saxophones; Django Bates, keyboards and Eb horn; Tim Harries, bass) from decades ago makes me reflect on the changing shape of the drummer’s contribution. What were drummers for back then? What are they for now? To keep time? Yes, that’s important, but time can be kept very well by most competent musicians, and by machines.While drum teachers constantly remind students it’s all about time, I would suggest that’s only one quarter correct.
Any drummer has not one, but four levers of control: temporal, metrical, dynamical, and timbral. These parameters are manipulated to provide the player with a different-sounding voice and an identifiable style. Each deserves a close look, but today I want to look at the timbral.
Timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound that distinguishes it from others of the same pitch and loudness. A violin and clarinet have different timbres when they play the same pitch. It allows you to tell them apart as instruments. Manipulating the instrument’s timbre adds expression to the music, and makes it ‘musical’.
These days, timbral options and variables are increasingly available to the drummer. I can use different strikers (hands, sticks, mallets, reed-like Blasticks, brushes and shakers of all description, held butt-end or orthodox, matched or unmatched) and instruments struck (choice of drumheads, shells, dampening), the whole lot attenuated by the immediate audio environment (room reverberation, choice of mics and their placement) and subject to the whim of sonic fashion. I can use a hybrid electro-acoustic kit that emits all manner of shrieks, yelps and roars. This is the area we enjoyed in Earthworks, and not everyone liked it. Experimenting with boundaries of timbral colour may attract approbation. When is a drum no longer a drum? My efforts to extend the sonic possibilities of the drum kit in the mid-1990s led to a somewhat checkered intercourse with both technology and the commentariat.
Assuming a four limbed-drummer is playing a standard seven-piece drum set of bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat, high tom, low tom, ride, and crash cymbals, I can strike any combination of seven instruments with any combination of up to four limbs. These combinations of unpitched 'chords' are a bit like the 60-chord family of the jazz pianist, the five qualities of seventh chords available on each of the 12 degrees of the chromatic scale. For instance, the timbral implications of a drummer striking a chord of the three highest-pitched instruments (all metallophones: hi-hat, crash, and ride cymbals) are quite different from those arising when three lowest-pitched instruments (all membranophones: bass drum, low tom, and high tom) are played.
The ‘sforzando’ attack of the bass drum and crash cymbal in unison, a direct import from the symphony orchestra, is now so ingrained in popular music drum performance that most drummers avoid using a crash cymbal without a bass drum in support. Anybody looking for difference, though, may want to avoid that two-note chord altogether.
The drummer’s chord family comes to life with (a) the timbre (tone colour) originating from the position of the strike; (b) its volume (amplitude) caused by the velocity of the strike; (c) its placement in the measure; (d) its placement relative to the preceding and following “chords” or blocks of sound, and (e) the implements with which it is struck. Within those options the possible variables affecting timbre seem to be infinite.
I wanted what the synthesiser player had, only I wanted to do it with sticks. I mostly got it, too!
00:00:00 Up North
00:05:28 All Heaven Broke Loose
00:14:44 Stromboli Kicks
00:24:05 Bridge Of Inhibition
#drummer #yes #kingcrimson #drums #livemusic #musicimprovisation #jazz #drumming #percussion #tamadrums #paistecymbals #liveinstuttgart
Watching Earthworks (Iain Ballamy, saxophones; Django Bates, keyboards and Eb horn; Tim Harries, bass) from decades ago makes me reflect on the changing shape of the drummer’s contribution. What were drummers for back then? What are they for now? To keep time? Yes, that’s important, but time can be kept very well by most competent musicians, and by machines.While drum teachers constantly remind students it’s all about time, I would suggest that’s only one quarter correct.
Any drummer has not one, but four levers of control: temporal, metrical, dynamical, and timbral. These parameters are manipulated to provide the player with a different-sounding voice and an identifiable style. Each deserves a close look, but today I want to look at the timbral.
Timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound that distinguishes it from others of the same pitch and loudness. A violin and clarinet have different timbres when they play the same pitch. It allows you to tell them apart as instruments. Manipulating the instrument’s timbre adds expression to the music, and makes it ‘musical’.
These days, timbral options and variables are increasingly available to the drummer. I can use different strikers (hands, sticks, mallets, reed-like Blasticks, brushes and shakers of all description, held butt-end or orthodox, matched or unmatched) and instruments struck (choice of drumheads, shells, dampening), the whole lot attenuated by the immediate audio environment (room reverberation, choice of mics and their placement) and subject to the whim of sonic fashion. I can use a hybrid electro-acoustic kit that emits all manner of shrieks, yelps and roars. This is the area we enjoyed in Earthworks, and not everyone liked it. Experimenting with boundaries of timbral colour may attract approbation. When is a drum no longer a drum? My efforts to extend the sonic possibilities of the drum kit in the mid-1990s led to a somewhat checkered intercourse with both technology and the commentariat.
Assuming a four limbed-drummer is playing a standard seven-piece drum set of bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat, high tom, low tom, ride, and crash cymbals, I can strike any combination of seven instruments with any combination of up to four limbs. These combinations of unpitched 'chords' are a bit like the 60-chord family of the jazz pianist, the five qualities of seventh chords available on each of the 12 degrees of the chromatic scale. For instance, the timbral implications of a drummer striking a chord of the three highest-pitched instruments (all metallophones: hi-hat, crash, and ride cymbals) are quite different from those arising when three lowest-pitched instruments (all membranophones: bass drum, low tom, and high tom) are played.
The ‘sforzando’ attack of the bass drum and crash cymbal in unison, a direct import from the symphony orchestra, is now so ingrained in popular music drum performance that most drummers avoid using a crash cymbal without a bass drum in support. Anybody looking for difference, though, may want to avoid that two-note chord altogether.
The drummer’s chord family comes to life with (a) the timbre (tone colour) originating from the position of the strike; (b) its volume (amplitude) caused by the velocity of the strike; (c) its placement in the measure; (d) its placement relative to the preceding and following “chords” or blocks of sound, and (e) the implements with which it is struck. Within those options the possible variables affecting timbre seem to be infinite.
I wanted what the synthesiser player had, only I wanted to do it with sticks. I mostly got it, too!
00:00:00 Up North
00:05:28 All Heaven Broke Loose
00:14:44 Stromboli Kicks
00:24:05 Bridge Of Inhibition
#drummer #yes #kingcrimson #drums #livemusic #musicimprovisation #jazz #drumming #percussion #tamadrums #paistecymbals #liveinstuttgart
