40

In the world of drumming, although there exists no scales or arpeggios like melodic instruments, there are the rudiments, which are often considered the percussionist’s counterpart. There are forty standard rudiments, of which I probably know about twenty, I tried learning them all when I was younger but could never really master them. Rudiments are basically just hand patterns, the kind of patterns you’re doing all of the time on the drums, yet I resisted rudiments. Maybe because I took the loser’s defense which says “if I can’t win at the game, it’s because the game is flawed” or because I bought into the idea of actually knowing what I’m doing would take away some of the “magic” of music (which is also flawed).

Yes, I find there are two kinds of drummers, or two kinds of drum students I’ve noticed in my years of teaching: the students who can absolutely nail playing something from a page, who tends to be more mathematically minded, more analytical, they tend to perform whatever is front of them very well, but if you ask them to create something new, they will be dumbfounded. And then theres the other group, the one that has creativity out the ying-yang, but can barely just stick to the script if their lives depended on it. They tend to me more intuitive and spontaneous. Neither tendency is better and if I find a student of mine to be in one camp more than the other I try to challenge them to operate outside of their comfort zones.

I am in that second group, the kind of person that resists playing from the page, but guess what? I’m working on learning all forty of the rudiments, and you something? it’s awesome. I think and play much more clearly because the rudiments are standard patterns which I can combine and pull from in order to communicate on the drums. A similar thing is happening on piano and I’m beginning to see that the folks who can’t improvise usually aren’t that way because they learned formal methods such as rudiments and sight reading, but rather, if you’re creative, committing to the form is not going to ruin it. If you do, you’re find yourself better understood because you can arrange your ideas in a vernacular, so to speak.

So yes creativity cannot be beating out of you with formal training unless you let it. I think a better way of going about it is to think of the formal, the reproducible and specific as starting points, then the fun begins.