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clachnaben) wrote2011-12-15 01:59 am
(Sit Tight) I'm Gonna Need You To Keep Time
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girlmarauders
(credit:annie-is-unicorn.tumblr)
So, hi, I’m girlmarauders and, at starafar’s lovely invitation (and late, I’m sorry!), I’m writing a little lot about what Spencer is like as a drummer! This isn’t actually going to be about his skill as a drummer as such but more an overview of how Spencer plays, why he plays like that and how he’s changed. If you’d like to read opinions of what Spencer’s skill level is like there’s some great posts here, here and here about Spencer and other bandom musicians. Also, go read starafar's drum picspam/primer because it is all about Spencer's drums and I love it and I can only worship at the feet of her research skills.
A Quick Disclaimer/Why I Feel Like I Can Talk About This: I'm an amateur. I do play drums. However, my education as a drummer has been largely informal and at least partially self-taught. If you notice mistakes or implausibilites, please do tell me! I've been learning a lot just making this and I'm always keen to learn more. So you know about my background, I was originally classically trained as a percussionist at school and I learned rock drumming later. I was in a band but I have no experience playing professionally.
Additionally, be aware that I’m making broad generalizations based on my own drumming experience and looking at a lot of pictures! There's a lot of speculation going on, especially when I get out of the technical side of things and into the practical, so please feel free to jump in with your own speculation/analysis, I'd love to hear it!
Table of Contents:
I. Introduction
II. A Note On Vocab
Part One: Grip
Part Two: Open Vs. Cross
Part Three: A Kit and Its Pieces, What Do They Do?
Part Four: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
Part Five: Pretty. Odd.
Part Six: Vices & Virtues
Part Seven: Bits & Bobs
III. Conclusion
IV. Thank You and Credit
A Note On Vocab:
If I use a word you don't know or don't recognise because it happens to be a word I have made up because I don't know the real word, please comment and tell me! I'll explain it and add it to the list here, so that I won't confuse anyone else!
I used 'bass drum', 'kick drum' and 'kick' interchangeably.
A 'fill' refers to a short change in rhythm that fills(or replaces) the place between phrases. It's a little like a mini-solo, only usually the other music continues to play over it. Fills can change between songs, moods and drummers but they're usually short, used to maintain listener interest and to break up the monotony of a drum beat. The tempo doesn't change during a fill and normal time-keeping either resumes just following or is maintained throughout.
A 'beat' is the commonly maintained pattern of hits throughout a song or verse. It is usually interspersed with fills but maintains the original integrity of the pattern.
I refer to a 'tom-tom' as, simply, a 'tom'.
Part One: Grip
There are two main ways to grip your drum sticks: Traditional (Also called orthodox or French) and matched.
Spencer plays with matched grip, which is unsurprising really. It’s the normal grip for a rock drummer and the most common grip to use on a full kit. (The only example of a bandom drummer who plays traditional that I know of is Adam Coldhouse from Gold Motel, which you can see here.) The main note of matched grip is the way that the thumb and forefinger curl around the drumstick. They are the main hold and the other three fingers are support that control the amount the stick can move or vibrate. A tight grip gives no movement or vibration, a loose grip allows the stick to roll and produce a longer sound. Allowing a drum stick in a loose grip to bounce quickly along the drum head is how a drum roll is produced.
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| We've only got one hand to work with here but you can see the curl of his forefinger pretty obviously, above the other fingers. | Here his grip is tight and you can see the way his fingers curl tightly around the stick, holding it in place. This one's nice because we can see his grip from about three different angles. |
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| Drumline! Here, his left hand (our right) has loose fingers and you can see his thumb and forefinger curling around the stick to hold it while the loose fingers allow it to bounce. |
However, it is interesting to note that Spencer used traditional grip in the Video for It's Better If You Do.
I’m surmising that this is mainly for aesthetics. Traditional grip was not designed for use on a rock kit and can limit the angles at which you can play. Traditional also gets a lot of flack because it’s less convenient and efficient than matched. Traditional is the ‘pretty’ grip.
(Traditional grip, for those who want to know, was designed for marching bands, typically army ones. Marching drummers wore their drums in slings across their body, meaning that the drum hung at an angle. This necessitated traditional grip in which each hand holds the stick differently so that the sticks could be held over the angled drum. You can check out the lamentably short Wikipedia article here)
Spencer does appear to be using traditional grip here, in the I Write Sins Not Tragedies video, but given the way that Brent is dancing with that accordian, I don't know whether they're playing or just emphatically miming.
I have been asked how much Spencer would have known about traditional grip, especially around the time of the shooting of It’s Better If You Do. Even trained classically, I didn’t encounter traditional grip till later in my drumming career, probably because I was never in marching band. It would not be without the realm of possibility that Spencer encountered traditional grip at school. He played in his school’s Jazz band and Jazz is one of the few drum kit styles in which traditional grip enjoys popularity. However, since we never see this grip again, I assume it was a stylistic thing.
Part Two: Open vs. Cross
Spencer plays, largely, open-handed. What does this mean? Roughly, open-handed means that your right hand plays on the right side of the kit (eg. toms, snare, ride cymbal) and your left hand plays the left side of the kit (eg. hit-hat, cymbals, and/or snare). This might sound highly intuitive to you but actually many drummers learn to play cross, meaning that your arms cross over, with your right hand playing the hihat and your land hand crossing under this arm and playing the snare. This sounds crazy right? Here’s some pictures. (Keep in mind, with these pictures, that your hands would move depending on what you were needed to play. There's no rule saying your hands have to stay in these places.)
You can see in these pictures how his hands don't cross over, allowing him to play both sides of the drum simultaneously.
However, looking at this picture of him as a bb, it looks like he might have originally learned to play cross.
His right hand (our left) is playing the hi-hat and, while there's some stuff in the way, it looks like his other hand is playing his snare.
Cross is mainly used because of the high reliance on the snare and hihat in most rhythms, especially when you're first learning. If a drummer concentrates on the snare and hihat, they will probably play cross. However, Spencer is not a snare and hihat focused drummer. As you can see from the pictures, he does love using the entirety of the drum kit which means that open is a smarter decision for him.
Part Three: A Kit and Its Pieces, What Do They Do?
Musicians who haven’t had much chance to interact with a drum kit are often surprised by the sheer number of different things drummers get to hit in different ways. This section is a bit of simple education about drum kits but I’ve tried to include everything I can about how Spencer uses them.
This is a basic diagram of a drum kit as if you were standing in front of it:
However, that's not normally the angle I see a drum kit from. I use the picture below a lot in this post because it's really useful to see a drum kit from the perspective of the drummer even if it only helps orient left and right.
This is how a very basic drum kit looks like from the drummer’s perspective. A kit is an incredibly variable instrument, meaning that different drummers will change their kits as they see fit. The kit pictured is the most basic and, honestly, the cheapest (It’s basically the same one I have.) because it combines the crash and ride cymbals, which would often be two separate cymbals.
Although the pieces in the picture above are largely essential, they can be moved, changed, added to, removed and multiplied as one desires. A great place to look at pretty drum sets see how different artists modify their kits is the SJC website. (Spencer, Brendon, The Butcher, Spencer Peterson of Black Cards, Nate Novarro, and lots of other bandom drummers are listed under artists.)
Here's a quick example of what each of the pieces of a drum kit sound like in isolation. (The snare drum example is of a military drum cadance, so it's a bit longer than the rest.)
This is an example of one of Spencer's SJC custom kits that he was using around the time P!atD was playing a lot of Pretty. Odd. (It's a small picture, sorry!)
You can kind of see it here but Spencer tends to use two floor toms and only one mounted tom. He also mounts his tom on a separate stand, not on his kick drum.
This is a short clip of the beginning of There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered, Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet. There's a couple seconds at the beginning where Spencer plays without any other instruments or vocals and it's a good chance to hear some of the parts of the kit in action.
This is a basic (but very quick) rhythm including a hi-hat (the cymbal sound) and a kick drum(the deeper bass drum). The sound of the hi-hat is produced by not pressing down on the pedal, which allows both halfs of the hi-hat to vibrate freely and crash against each other. A closed hi-hat (the pedal pressed down) makes a simpler sound as the hi-hat cymbals are pressed together. The hi-hat is a wonderfully variable piece of equipment because the distance between the cybals can be changed by pressing the pedal to varying degrees, which moves the top cymbal.
A kick drum is the backbone of the drum kit. It is the deepest of the drums, operated by a foot pedal. Some drummers will use double pedals, which mean that incredibly complicated rhythms can be produced using only the feet. Spencer, however, has not used a double pedal as far as I know.
A hi-hat and a kick drum look like this:
Here's a track of Spencer (and guitars) playing at about the 2:23 mark of It's Better If You Do.
This rhythm comes from the song's chorus, so it's a pretty steady beat but at the 5 second and 10 second mark there are brief tom fills. Spencer likes his toms and uses them nearly as much as he uses his snare. A good example of this is the beginning section (from about 28 seconds in) of The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage, when the beat actually incorporates the use of a tom.
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These are gifs from when Panic! (and Ian and Dallon) appeared on Conan. I'll admit that writing this section was difficult because I kept getting distracted by the gifs but this is a really good opportunity to talk about Spencer and his cymbals. Spencer usually has two crash cymbals, one on either side of his drum kit, and one ride cymbal. The first gif shows the kind of cymbal use common to a fill, meaning that we see Spencer moving across the drum kit, using his toms and then his right hand crash cymbal.
In the second gif, Spencer uses his right hand to hit his ride, then the crash then back to his ride for the beat, while also using his hi-hat and his one rack tom. (He's moving pretty fast and the angle makes it difficult but I'm pretty sure that's what's going on.)
One thing I will say about Spencer's use of his kit, and it's somewhat personal opinion, but he does like to change it up. I can't think of many songs or beats he's used that have focused on only a few parts of his kit. For Spencer, his toms and cymbals are not just for creating interesting fills but also for creating interesting and, frankly, stunning beats and rhythms.
Part Four: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
I'll confess my bias now: I fucking love the percussion on Fever. I can't believe that Spencer wrote this stuff when he was sixteen. He was still in high school and the percussion on Fever is world class.
Fever is a very accomplished album for a drummer. But one of Fever's miracles is that the complexity and skill is maintained even live. Fever wasn't tracked live, which means Spencer would have had the ability to do many takes of the same beat if he messed up. Additionally, the album itself experiments with drum loops and what my ear is assuming is a drum machine while Spencer plays most of it live. Watching Spencer live after Fever's release and even playing the very complicated Fever's song later puts me in awe of his musician's stamina. Some of the parts in Fever are difficult, to put them together and switch between them in the same song is even more so. To play such complicated parts, so fast, with the kind of consistency that Spencer manages is a sought after skill in drumming and one I've certainly had drilled into me ever since I start playing.
This is him playing But It's Better If You Do in 2008. (Yes, this is the Pretty. Odd. era but it's by far the best angle to see Spencer's consistency.) The central beat in But It's Better If You Do doesn't change much but, because of the complexity of the song itself, it is interspersed with fills, transitions and other bits and pieces but Spencer transitions back to the beat without a hiccup and maintains the original integrity of the beat. (If you watch closely, it looks like he's even moving exactly the same way.)
Some more contemporary evidence. There's a few good shots of Spencer playing in each video. (One is at the Astoria (so, Brent) and the other is the Live In Dever video (Jon).)
So that you're not just taking the complexity of Fever at my word, here's an example of tabs from Build God, Then We'll Talk: (these tabs can be read with their original commentary from stele3 here.)
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Honestly, I'm actually seriously impressed with stele3, just for managing to pin down the tabs like this. Build God, Then We'll Talk, simply from a drummer's perspective, is very complicated. The large majority of rock/pop songs I've been required to play have an identifiable beat that is similarly constant, if modfied for chorus, verse, bridge, throughout the entire song. Build God doesn't stop changing! The song swings between tempos, from slow to very fast, and basically touches on everything except a basic rock song.
For those not used to reading drum tabs, each dash indicates a sixteenth note, of which there are sixteen in each measure. A dash means that that particular drum is not played on that note. A mark (x,g,f,O, etc.) indicates what type of hit is used on that drum on that particular note. An accent is harder and a washy hi-hat is half open. A flam is two strokes played very quickly together, the first one played quietly without an accent, the second stroke is played loudly with an accent.
Spencer's far from perfect in this era. I know he took drum lessons for a while after the album came out and he's continued to take a drum tech with him on most of his tours. (He's mentioned it in a couple interviews as being helpful as being basically a built-in teacher). But for a dude who was, at tops, eighteen, he's pretty damn impressive.
Part Five: Pretty. Odd.
Let's just all accept it now. From a drumming perspective, Pretty. Odd. is not a complicated album. There are a lot of things to talk about on Pretty. Odd. that are not the drums but when you do talk about the drums, it's pretty clear that, technically at least, it was a step backwards from Fever.
However! Pretty. Odd. and Spencer's drumming on it should get credit for their maturity. A lot of so-called "skill", especially among the rock drummers I've had to encounter, is found in louder, longer, more complicated fills and patterns, sometimes to the detriment of a song. We all know that Spencer is a nice guy and a mature guy and not about to push a drum line that would negatively affect a song but you would be surprised how many people would and Spencer should get credit for concentrating on how the percussion will fit the music and Brendon's voice. As Spencer said in an interview with ukdrummer when asked about his inspirations "The drumming just fits the songs, which is cool because it proves that you don’t have to play all these mad drum fills, and always be extremely technical for the drumming to work."
But one things that drums don't have in their favour is a way to play them acoustically. Even a non-micced up drum kit is really fucking loud. So we end up with this:
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Aiming for a more acoustic sound is something that will inherently exclude a drummer. Spencer's main skills do not lie in tambourine hitting and egg shaking, they lie in drum playing. Pretty. Odd. was not necessarily an album that played to those strengths.
That's not to say there's isn't some interesting percussion on Pretty. Odd. itself. This is a clip from about the 1:19 mark of The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know
There's some really interesting and nice stick work a couple seconds in, playing as something of a back track. It's not strictly required for the song at that moment and pops up again later but it sounds to me like someone (*cough*Spencer*cough*) trying to add something interesting and rhythmical to a song that could easily get boring.
Spencer said this about tracking live, which I can understand. Without the safety net of multiple takes, it would be easier to fall back on the beats you can trust, that don't force you to think or run the risk of messing something up. Tracking the album live is something that would definitely restrict everyone, including Spencer, and it's always been my opinion that when Brendon and Spencer talk about those "restrictions they placed on themselves" in interviews, tracking live was one of the main ones.
In this video, you can actually compare We're So Starving to Nine In The Afternoon. He transitions from We're So Starving to Nine at about 1:19,1:20 and you'll notice that the tempo (how fast) decreases pretty sharply from Starving to Nine.
Tabs and music! The tabs are of Northern Downpour which, while being really pretty, is a really basic song on drums. There's no drums for about the first minute, it's pretty slow, there's not much changing going on and the beat is pretty simple.
We've also got Nine in the Afternoon, which is a bit more difficult. Notice the changes from 4/4 time to 7/4, which is moderately difficult to do. (For anyone who can read music, keep in mind that a different bar placement just means a different part of the kit, not a different note.)
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To summarise, here's a list of Pretty. Odd. songs that have no discernible drum line (i.e. a kit being played that I could make out.) (I didn't put Behind The Sea and Northern Downpour on here because they do have drums but I was very tempted, because, seriously, those songs are not hard.)
- Folkin' Around
- She Had The World
- From A Mountain In The Middle of The Cabins
- I Have Friends In Holy Spaces
Part Six: Vices & Virtues
harborshore has a very lovely reaction post to V&V that talks a bit about Spencer's drumming on it here.
Vices and Virtues' drums sound a lot like they were written by someone who tried out Beatles-revival percussion, didn't like it and now never wants to do it again. Even in songs like Always, which is more a slow ballad than anything else, Spencer does something different in the second verse then in the first verse. The main difference I can see in V&V is that the drums are now an integral part of the songs. In Fever, the drums were intricate and complicated because everything was intricate and complicated. In P.O, the drums were an after thought. In V&V, the percussion actually works together with the guitars and vocals.
As Brendon said: “I love the way Spencer plays drums...I feel it’s what makes this band our band. It definitely gives us our own voice percussive-wise. It’s awesome to have someone as talented and as creative as Spencer on my side.”
The band appeared on Conan and the footage has some really nice shots of Spencer playing:
A little detail to notice from the video is that Spencer plays his kick drum from his hips, not from his ankle. To push down your kick drum pedal, you can either lift your leg from your hips or move your foot from your ankle. Either way has its advantages and disadvantages. Playing from your ankle can give you shin splints, playing from your hips can tire you out. It's a matter of personal preference and also knowing your strengths.
But getting back to the Vices & Virtues side of things, this is us getting to see Spencer at the top of his game. The inexperience of Fever is gone and he knows what he's good at. One thing I notice is that he's playing from the shoulder less. He still does it a lot but not as much as I was seeing during Fever. Playing from the shoulder is stronger but, in my experience, you have less control. Watching the Conan video is watching an experienced, professional drummer be really good at his job.
Also, watch Spencer play at Reading!
It doesn't tell you what song he's playing during each clip but, the thing is, I think I can pick out Memories because that is a quick song, especially right at the beginning. I think I love Memories partially because the drums are used to build the speed and tension right at the beginning more than the guitars, using the drums as a full-fledged instrument, more than just a backbone.
One of the big things I love about V&V is its nice touches of technical drumming, such as the intro to I Wanna Be Free.
Check out that stick work! It sounds to me like some really nice, well-constructed rimwork, i.e. playing the metal rim of the drum and not the drum head. Rimwork is one of my favorite things in the world but it's quite easily to do badly and I love that the intro to I Wanna Be Free is pretty much dominated by it.
I watched an interview where Spencer mentioned that he was trying out some variations on Latin beats in different songs and I think one of those might be Sarah Smiles or Hurricane. Sarah Smiles is one of my favorite songs on the album, drum wise. The "SAARAAHH"s would get repetitive pretty quickly if it wasn't for some really nice drumming. The guitar's relatively understated and the sound of the drums comes through pretty strong. There's some great stick work (you may or may not be noticing a theme here) at about 1:23, which isn't present in the first verse, following in the great tradition of Spencer-doing-something-different-in-the-second-verse. I love Hurricane because it's got a sort of Latin drag to its tempo/timing and a really nice syncopated beat going during the chorus that I get really get behind as being dancey and awesome.
One of the things I have a lot of respect for Spencer for is his ability to work with drum loops/drum machines. A lot of traditional drummers don't like them and think they're subpar but there's some things a human drummer can't do and that's when you have a drum machine step in, something V&V and Spencer are not afraid to do.
In conclusion? Vices & Virtues has some pretty awesome percussion. Here's Spencer rocking out to it:
Part Seven: Bits and Bobs
Basically this section is all the stuff I feel like I should talk about but can't figure out where to fit it. So it goes here.
I. Spencer Uses A Click Track
I haven’t heard much evidence for it recently but I know that Spencer uses/has used a click track. If you know what a metronome is, it’s basically the same idea, only for a drummer playing live. It’ll play a repetitive click sound at different tempos, depending on how fast you want it to go. Some drummers love them and some drummers hate them. It’s really a matter of personal preference.
I can certainly understand why Spencer would use one, especially on some of their first tours when they were barely used to playing live. It’s difficult to stay on time, especially when some live setups make it difficult to hear the other instruments. As a classical percussionist, I certainly became used to relying on the cues from other instruments and, as someone who played in school and Jazz bands, Spencer would have been used to that set up back when he was a bb!drummer.
Also, when they started touring on Fever and still now, they were using a lot of synthesizers in the backing track and those need to sync up otherwise, you know, most things sound bad. A click track helps with that! (Spencer talks a little bit about it in this bb!interview here, after rambling about aprox. nothing for a minute and half). Another benefit of a click track is that it makes tracking live (i.e. Pretty. Odd.) much easier, especially since in a recording situation, you're playing entirely on your own.
II. Sometimes Spencer Plays With His Eyes Closed
If you watch closely here and also here (this one's the Reading clips again), you can catch Spencer playing with his eyes closed. Trust me, it’s not showing off. The best drum teacher I ever had taught me that trick as a way to shut other things out when I was getting hung up on aiming and not focusing on the movement of the song. Like playing other instruments or a sport, playing drums is a lot about muscle memory and learning the movements until they become second nature. If you know your kit and know your song, you don’t need to watch the kit. It’s not going anywhere and it’s your movement that creates the rhythm.
III. Thunder Rods / Hot Rods / Lightening Rods
These are not normal sticks. In fact, you can see Spence's normal sticks in the corner of the picture. These are something alternately called Thunder Rods, Hot Rods or Lightening Rods, depending on the company and who you're talking to at any time. They're a collection of thinner rods bound together. They produce a different sound then normal sticks, which are solid wood, and are usually cited as being better for acoustic/more intimate shows. Depending on the sound you wanted, you could theoretically use them any time but they're designed for a more intimate feel.
Conclusion/Summary: Spencer's Style and Form
Spencer's a pretty versatile drummer so I'll try and not make too many generalisations about him as a drummer here. Spencer plays open with a matched grip. He's fond of his cymbals and his toms but uses two floor toms and only one mounted tom. He plays his kick drum from his hip, not his ankle.
He's capable of playing both very complicated and fast drum lines and stripped-down rhythms, depending on the song. He does tend to play a bit "bigger" than normal. His arm movements are a little bigger than are strictly necessary. You don't technically need to move that much but, really, whatever works with the flow of the song and performance.
Basically?
Thank You and Credits
A huge thank you to starafar for asking me to write this in the first place, for providing amazing resources, for being really patient while I procrastinated horribly and generally being excited about it!
Thanks to misprintify for betaing, cheerleading, reading the entire thing about a hundred times prior to posting, correcting my spelling, making me explain drumming terms in English and helping me with all her fantastic musical talent.
All tracks with stripped-vocals were thanks to starafar!
Thank you to stele3 for letting me use her tabs in this entry.
And, finally, thank you to Spencer. |
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