Just a brief one this morning but here's a clip of the great Jack DeJohnette from a 2018 performance at SFJAZZ with tap dancer Savion Glover.
I find it interesting (in this excerpt anyways...) that DeJohnette chose to focus mainly on the snare drum combined with accents on his bass drum and different cymbals, very occasionally extending to the tom toms. It is quite snare drum centric, but that's not a bad thing in my opinion. It's incredible how many different and exciting rhythmic colours, sounds and textures he is able to get out of his sonic choices (and in a limited amount of time, I may add!) His intention and musical ideas are intact and, in my opinion, sounds complete. And of course the sense of flow, phrasing, energy and momentum that he expresses speaks for itself. I'd love to hear this solo and this concert in its entirety and hear how he further develops his ideas in terms of the overall orchestration around the drum set (or maybe he doesn't!)
Anyways, I am going to blog more about this soon but this certainly lends itself to a conversation about how to get more from less, starting with your snare drum. Just because you have a lot of drums and cymbals in front of you, it doesn't mean you have to hit them all the time!
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