Drumming with loops -- some methods (longish)

[Eric Cook <ecook@conch.aa.msen.com>]

Ok, this is an overview of some of the techniques/methods that I use as a
drummer to play with looping material. (And for the record, I use
some of these same kind of techniques in non-looping contexts as well,
and they also work there.)  Note, too, that these are
things that have worked for me, working in improv and improv/rock
settings -- YMMV in other contexts, It's been educational for me
to sit down and try to spell out some of these things; hopefully
they may be of some use for those of you that have had problems
with drummers/percussionists being uncertain of how to approach
playing with your loops.

I'm uncertain of how well some of this translates into English --
when I'm doing it, I'm thinking in terms of the sound, not in terms
of "Ok, so let's see, what next..hmm.."  They make sense to me, but
may be gibberish to someone else.  If so, let me know, and I'll try
to clear up those points (or provide audio examples).
Also, I'd love to hear other suggestions on things to try, so shout
'em out!

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Playing Drums/Percussion with loops (in-sync and out-sync):
***********************************************************

Basically, you can break it down into three general concepts;
You can either play: 1)With the loop, 2)Across the loop, or 3)Against
the loop.

1)With the loop:

  a)If the loop is the same rhythm as the theme/riff (say the guitarist
    locks in a loop of the riff, and then moves into a solo), this is
    a fairly trivial case -- you can keep playing to the theme as you
    have been. varying it as much or as little as you normally would.
  b)If the loop is different from what you had been playing, you have
    several options.
    --The first is to just keep playing what you have been playing.
      [see "2)Playing across the loop"]
    --Next is to just listen carefully, and as you hear the loop hit
      a repeat point (or a "functional downbeat"), truncate or extend
      the rhythm that you have been playing to match with the loop.
      This is somewhat easier said than done, but is not really all
      difficult.  Just listen to what is going on around you very
      carefully, and for truncation, be ready to start the beat over
      when the repeat point hits (be ready to do it at the drop of a
      hat, basically).
         You may not hit the loop the first time around, or even the
      2nd or 3rd.  No big deal -- just keep listening, and if you
      are making "mistakes" (in the sense that you are way off-time
      with the loop), make them very purposively and assertively.
      If the rhythm you are playing is saying to the audience and
      musicians around you "Yeah, I'm off-beat, so what?", it will
      blend much more smoothly, and no one will question it.
         For extending the rhythm to match a loop that is longer than
      what you had been playing, you can either do it all at once or
      transitionally.  All at once (in the sense that you are just going
      to jump to new, more or less different rhythm that fits the loop
      is harder -- you need to be really on the ball, and have a strong
      intuitive feel of where the loop is going to repeat.
         Transitionally extending the rhythm is easier, though it can
      be a little different from the standard "keep the beat, keep the
      beat" concepts of drumming that you are used to.  The two
      ways I approach this are to a)slowly increment the length of
      rhythm, playing the same basic thing, but adding another beat or
      two onto the end of it at each iteration of the measure (which,
      you'll notice, is slowly getting longer each time).  Again,
      listen carefully to the loop to see when you are in sync.
         Another related method is what I've thought of as "stretching"
      part of the rhythm out.  That is, you play the rhythm that you
      have been playing, and "stretch" the end of it out until the
      point where you hear the loop repeat.  The most straightforward
      ways I've found of doing this have been to do a fairly
      constant/simple snare fill, or cymbal swell.  Once again, listen
      carefully, and be ready to jump the instant you hear the loop
      point.  You can use this either as a new component of the rhythm,
      repeating it during each further iteration, or you can use it
      as a "resting spot", to stop and think about what you are going
      to do with this loop on further variations.

---
At this point, I can hear some of your drummer friends saying "Increment
the beat?  But I don't know how to play in 7/8 (or whatever)!".  Easy --
you don't necessarily need to know _how_ to do it to actually be _able_
to do it.  Don't count the beats -- if you aren't comfortable with the
time signature you wind up in, you are just making it more difficult
for yourself than it needs to be.  After all, who cares what signature
you are playing in? What counts is how it sounds -- "Listen carefully"
is the single biggest tip I can give you in trying to pull all this off,
right in front of "act very quickly".  I find that "singing" the drum
beat to myself in my head helps me do all this (and other things) that
I am completely unable to do if I'm actually trying to "left-brain" my
way through it.  Worry about how it _sounds_, not what notes are being
played.  If it sounds good, the notes will take care of themselves.

Also, despite all the "rules" of drumming, metronomic time is not always
appropriate -- don't be afraid to speed up or slow down to match the
loop if that's what sounds good.

Ok, onward...
---

2)Playing across loop

  a)if the loop is an "out-sync" one, another option is to play "across"
    it; that is, to keep doing what you are doing, and disregard the
    fact that the loop is now doing something different.  In essence,
    you are pretending that you the theme that you were playing with
    is still present.  This may sound strange, but it works surprisingly
    well, both conceptually and pragmatically.  Conceptually, you are
    providing a sense of continuity with a (potentially) disasociated
    loop and the rest of the piece prior to that disassociation.
    Pragmatically, this can be sometimes be easier than varying the beat
    to fit the loop, and it can make for some nice polyrhythmic effects.
    Also, you are providing a strong foundation for your "looper" to
    jump back onto the beat when they see fit (for instance, after a
    loop-heavy, "textural" solo of the guitar).
       This is also a somewhat problematic technique for some drummers,
    in that they are _all alone_ in keeping the beat.  Too bad; learn
    how to do it -- they _are_ the drummer after all; they shouldn't
    need to have someone else there "hand holding" their way through
    the beat.  Other drummers will have no problem whatsoever in doing
    this; again, "singing" the theme/riff to myself always helps me in
    not falling too far off.  So does just "tuning out" the loop, if
    needed (though not completely; you need to find the inbetween point
    of "listening while not listening".)
       This general technique is also useful to provide continuity
    between related loops that are cross-fading.  I do something
    like this on "If's it wrong to be right.." and "Why is it so hard?"
    on the 2nd Gravitar CD.

  b)Related to playing across the loop, as well as to the stretching
    technique mentioned above, is the technique of "fragmenting" the
    rhythm.  That is, taking a fragment of the rhythm, and repeating
    that.  For me, this generally boils down to turning a more complex
    pattern (say of 8 or 16 beats), and grabbing a hold of 2 or 3 beats
    of it, and repeating them.  In some ways, it can be thought of as
    an extended "fill", though it quickly sounds less like a fill than
    a seperate rhythm.  In some ways, it is a live way of "echoing"
    the looping that is going on around you -- it can sound very much
    like a drum loop that is suddenly caught in a lock-step.  Also, you
    use this as another transitional technique (as mentioned in the
    segment on stretching above), either to go into a new rhythm, or
    while waiting to jump back into the beat when your "looper" is ready.
    (The latter is a fairly easy way to build some dramatic tension, I've
     found, providing the looping section remains fairly short in overall
     duration.)

3)Last, playing against the loop:
  a)In some ways, this points out the arbitrary nature of the some
    of the distinctions that I've made here -- after all, when you
    are playing "across" the loop, as outlined above, aren't you playing
    "against" it in some ways?  The difference, I guess, is that playing
    against the loop would have no direct rhythmic connection with either
    the musical events in the loop, or the rhythm being playing prior to
    the loop.  In essense, this is the time where you say -- "Ok, the
    _loop_ is keeping the beat (or a beat, at least); I'm free to do
    whatever I choose."  Good time for a solo, or to slip into a more
    "free" oriented mode of drumming.

  b)Another potential approach (again, not all that different necessarily
    from some of the prior techniques), is to establish a rhythm that
    allow you to shift the accents in it around fairly freely, without
    a direct one-to-one relationship with the musical events in the loop.
       I also use this one on Gravitar's 2nd CD, on the song "Automaton".
    The basic guitar theme is a simple triplet-based group of 4 or so
    notes, repeating in a self-similar, but fairly constantly shifting 
pattern.
    When recording it, I knew that the guitar player would be going into
    a heavy textural section for most of the middle of the song, and would
    leave some part of the the triplet pattern looping in the background.
    Rather than worrying about what configuration of this pattern he would
    come up with this time in the loop, I instead made the whole rhythm of
    the drums a somewhat simple tripet-based pattern, allowing me to
    fairly freely shift accents back and forth at will -- this _suggested_
    the triplet pattern of the guitar riff, but didn't tie me directly
    to it, allowing me to play against whatever loop pattern would come
    up on this particular occasion.

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And that's the overview.  As stated in section 3, these distinctions are
fairly arbitrary, and more for the sake of clarity in the explanation
than anything.  In practice, any combination of techniques could be used,
in the same piece, or same loop.  Any of the connective devices could
be used by themselves entirely (to create a new rhythm), or to connect
any given technique to any other given technique.  None of this is
absolute either -- what it all boils down to is listening, reacting, and
choosing whatever is appropriate for the song and situation in question.
A lot of it is pretty self-evident, really, once you do it at least once.
Also note that when I do these things in the context of Gravitar, we don't
have a bass player; this frees me up considerably as a drummer, both in
terms of my freedom to react quickly without worrying so much about
bass player following what I'm doing, as well as, in essence, making
the drums the entirety of the "rhythm section".  I'm not necessarily
advocating kicking the bass player out...but it's helped me in some ways.

Hope this is of interest/use to somebody -- I'd love to hear any comments,
questions, etc.

--Eric Cook                 ecook@mail.msen.com
  Gravitar-Guy              http://www.msen.com/~ecook/gravitar.html