The following is a video from New York City's Birdland Jazz Club:
You might be thinking, great, a drum solo. What could possibly be artistic or meaningful about slamming wooden sticks into plastic heads and making loud noises?
The simple answer is that, if you find any other instrument artistic, then you can say the same about drums. A drum head is simply a string stretched out, in a way. So, melodies, harmonies, rhythm, soloing- they can all be done on drums.
I picked this specific solo mostly because of the man behind the kit. He Tommy Igoe, son of famous drummer Sonny Igoe, plays weekly at the Birdland club and also plays sessions for countless jazz musicians around the NYC area. Most importantly, though, he is perhaps the best professional teacher. It seems many professionals can't teach at all, but he can do it all.
So, before going off completely on a drum-related rant, it's important to actually relate this to something. A drum solo, in a way, is like language. It must still contain rhythm and a sort of structure, but creativity is allowed within that structure. Look at the end of the solo, when Igoe finishes and the entire band comes in perfectly. The root of the song is never lost, and that's a cool thing. Not only is he drumming fluidly and quickly, but the whole time he is counting and making sure to be ready.
This perfect drumming combination is just like a great author- on a simple layer is their basic structure, the form of paragraphing of their work. More complex is the fluid manner with which they use language. Music is just like writing, and really like any art form. People too often divide up art forms into different forms, but it's pretty obvious that all art is art. Sure, there is a technical difference between typing words and playing drums, but it's all in the ultimate search for artistic beauty.
Drums are the perfect example of an instrument in terms of structure, often being called the backbone of music or the driving force behind all of it. I'm not arguing that they're most important (but certainly the most fun to play), but they relate to language in many different ways.
What I'm ultimately getting at is that art is basically a simple structure, stacked on with creativity and improvisation of sorts. Professionals- writers, musicians, painters, photographers, etc.- always pay attention to that structure but never accept sticking to it completely. This is why we read classic works: to learn history and get a feel for the structure. Now, in our own writing, it is our job to push the boundaries of writing and think of new thoughts.
So, for our next unit, we should take a field trip to New York and see some music.
You are absolutely right. For music, it would be keeping in time, for piano in particular (which is what I play), there would also be sticking to a chord progression as well. In art, there are the principles and elements of design (unity and movement, to name a few). Writing has the rules of language. All of these are languages though. All art forms have three qualities that are expressed to the receiving end: form, emotion, and thought. Music appeals first and foremost to emotion, visual arts to form, and writing to thought. But the rules that are made for each of these languages, are made to be broken. Once you know the rules, (and you do HAVE to know the rules first) you can experiment and create the bold and the avant garde. Oh, and that's a great drum solo by the way.
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