Originally posted by Whippet
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Originally posted by Whippet
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I'm not sure what you're getting at.
In my youth I played drums constantly, marching band, drum corp and our local pep band / garage stuff, but never pursued it after college. I can tell you that the perception of rhythm never goes away, but the exact skills to reproduce it will over time. I could pretty well separate and syncopate my hands and feet against each other back then, but I would have to relearn the feet control. Without practice, your hands or feet will dominate the other. That will not be a problem for an experienced set drummer.
As far as perception of the rhythm, I think I actually honed it to bag sounds. A drummer has much more rhythmic freedom on drums than on a speed bag, for the rules of bag rhythm and the sounds made by the bag cannot be changed. For instance, a drummer can do a single stroke roll of say 9 strokes, and he can accent that roll in hundreds of different ways, placing emphasis on almost any of the nine beats or comination of beats, while keeping the speed of the roll constant. For the drummer, stick force (accents) and stick speed can be separately controlled.
But on a speed bag, a nine punch Front Fist Roll (F-Roll) can not easily be accented because to accent any punch, you will hit harder, and that will change the speed of the bag. Punch force directly effects bag speed and you cannot change that. If you hit harder, the bag WILL go faster. If you need the bag to stay at a constant speed, you cannot punch harder. If you do, the extra punch force can easily throw you "off time" to a song you are punching to. So, the nine Punch Fist Roll will almost always sound like nine equally accented beats. An Outward Triple Elbow Strike (O-TES) will always have the last sound (second fist) accently a bit louder than the other parts. It is almost impossible to change the accent pattern of that technique, or any other technique, and that makes the accent patterns of the speed bag combinations fairly predictable. The sound of a single fist pass through (FCP) ' ' (RSP) always sounds the same. The sound of a double fist pass through (FDP) ' ' (RDP) or (SDP) ' ' (SDP) always sounds the same. You can't change the accented sound pattern they make.
To change the accent pattern, you have to change the techniques used in the combination. The trick is having the skill to change those techniques, and the accent patterns they make, with the hands from any position around the bag. Actually chapter 11 "echo rhythms and hitting to music" was my attempt to help you learn that abililty. The exercises will teach you to establish a 4-9 punch bag beat, and reproduce it constantly from anywhere around the bag. As you do this, voice out the rhythm. Learn to sing the bag beat. (that is why I put the sounds "d, D, dD, etc. underneath)
As a drummer, I quickly recognized the rhythmic potentials of the bag. Over the years I finally understood the limitations, as well as internalized the rhythmic patterns. I can hear any speed bag combination (that I know how to do) in my head. I can hit to any song "in my head" and move my hands to reproduce the sounds, (air punching). When I was first learning to control the bag to music, I would hear a song, hear a bag beat in my head and voice it out, then go to the bag and try it to see if it worked. I don't really have to do that anymore. When I hear it in my head, I pretty much know it will work. And there are limitless ways to punch drum to a song. At any time, two or three different accented combinations will work by adjusting your punching speed to make the accents match.
As a professional drummer with advanced percussion training, BT (Brian Tichy) will quickly learn the rhythmic limitations and applications of using the speed bag as a punch drum. He will "feel it", with out needing to contemplate how and why. With each new technique, he will internalize the "sound" each makes, just like the rudiments on the drums. Since he already has master control of reproducing those sounds with hands and feet his only limitation will be how many techniques he can do. When he can easily do the main 18 or so used in punch drumming from around the bag, than I expect he will be rippin' it "on the beat" to any song.
I am using BT as an example due to his professional percussion training and ability, but the above will also work for Anybody who is willing to learn the techniques, focus on the sounds each makes, and start to reproduce specific rhythmic patterns from around the bag. I have noticed through the years that percussionists seem to understand this a bit faster, and learn to control the sounds faster, because that is what "we" are trained to do.
Do I think about any of this when I'm punching to music? NO. I punch by feel. I feel the flow of the music beat and melody pattern, and improvise a bag beat to it automatically. I'm normally sensing the flow of the bag beat for a couple of measures ahead in a song. Depending on the song speed, I can change to half-time or double-time punching, which is a bit of an advanced concept if you're not musically trained, but once you hear it, most people "feel" how the bag beat fits at these speeds.
Oops. Sorry about going off on a little "speed bag rant", but maybe it will help someone.
Anyway, here is a good clip of BT from the front on a normally work day. (* He's playing drums behind Billy.... I'm thinking two or three hours at that pace is an incredible workout!)
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