I’ll Probably Be Writing More About Music
You may or may not know that, before I was lucky enough to join Riskalyze, I was lucky enough to play drums professionally for about ten years. As you can imagine, music (particularly live music) is something that remains very important to me.
As it is with anything I care about, I think about music deeply and often.
As it is with anything I care about, I think about music deeply and often. I realize that there are probably some people that would like to know what ideas come of this thinking. So, I’ll be sharing some more things that I feel are useful or interesting — particularly about music with other people, and playing drums — than I have in the past on the topic. Here’s one such thought.
I had a blast playing drums this weekend with the team at my church, Bayside (the Granite Bay campus, to be specific). During one song in particular, a midtempo Thrive Worship original called ‘No One Like Our God,’ there was a particular perfect storm of good things that created a pretty cool musical moment.
The second verse is my favorite section in music. The reasons for that opinion are very specific and likely topics for another post. But during the second verse of this song, a few of us adapted to each other, did things that are typically not ideal choices in the setting, and created a great moment. We broke rules, and it turned out great. First, the people involved:
- Primary male worship leader for the song, happens to be a world-class guitar player
- Male worship leader, also playing guitar
- Female worship leader, without another instrument at the time
- Me, currently wielding the majority of two sticks
Together, we did several things that are individually not advisable:
- I stepped down complexity (not just dynamics) in a more-drastically-than-typical way
- The three vocalists split into legitimate three-part harmony (we’re typically a third-up shop)
- The band cumulatively took a bigger dynamic step up in the middle of the second verse than we did going into the second chorus
- During said transition, I removed the snare from my building-int0-the-chorus fill
To get very drum-wonky here, typically, not hitting a kick drum on at least beat one and a snare on both beat two and beat four is strict verboten! Why? Because neurology. People listen to simple pop music (any Top 40 since Toto) because you get a hit of dopamine for accurately predicting an upcoming section. Most people subconsciously expect certain sounds in certain places, especially when the sounds take up a substantial portion of the mix (like snare drum in a KSV rock mix). During this transition fill I was playing something, so it was eventually clear that what I played was on purpose. It just wasn’t what was subconsciously expected by most people, so it created tension. I broke a pretty major rule to create tension, on purpose, because of the harmony choices the vocalists made, and the fact that guitar parts hadn’t meaningfully escalated in complexity. I read from my fellow musicians that:
- This section should be more energetic (the song drops after the second chorus, so there was nowhere to go for a while; also, body language)
- Instruments shouldn’t fill up the space (three-part harmony; basic guitars)
- We, together, were going to introduce tension before creating a release going into the next chorus
So we read each other, adapted, and tweaked our parts. It was freaking perfect. The moment lead me to realize that the best thing about chops is that you get to break rules.
Of course, you pay the immediate consequences for such rule-breaking if your calculation is wrong. I know all too well the weight of having ripped a couple thousand people out of a meaningful spiritual and/or emotional moment. And nobody will EVER pay you for chops without experience. They’re meaningless without each other.
But when you’ve taken the time to fail, practice, grow, and rip off ideas — and you’re lucky enough to be playing music with people who have done the same — then break some freaking rules.
I’ll probably be writing more about music.
