Drumming with a set of constraints

Hear me out…

I have great memories from my time at Lycée Masséna in Nice and one of the things I loved was linear algebra. I’m not doing maths anymore, and real mathematicians might have heart attacks with this, but hear me out!

Systems and sets of constraints

Most of the time, you’d try to solve for $x$ (or any letter you fancy). In other words, you’d look for a set of points that satisfies a system of constraints, such as 👇.

In this example, the solution is 👇. And yes, I used ChatGPT for that, call the cops!

My goal with drumming

So where is this going you might ask. Since I don’t have 4 hours a day anymore to play, I stopped trying to be the ultimate drummer. Yeah, I’m looking at you Matt Garstka. Right now, my goal is to:

Correctly play with people on the spot without knowing what’s going to happen.

Meaning that:

1. I need to be comfortable with standard situations (binary, ternary, slow stuff, fast stuff…).
2. I have to create sounds and grooves of my own.
3. I must respect or generate song structures on the spot (verses, choruses, bridges, fills…).
4. I should manage improvisation and soloing without loosing my s***.

Playing with systems

And that’s where it all connects. What if drumming was just playing within the constraints of a specific system? You could of course apply one system for the intro, one for verses, one for the chorus and so on… After all, that’s what makes a groove flow: you play a certain type of beat for a few bars, and you fill into the next one for the following section. Aren’t we already designating a system when we talk about the Rosanna Shuffle?

Writing and reading systems

So now you have it. If I can create and master let’s say 30 systems, it’s probably enough to have fun and envoyer du lourd as we say in French during an open stage evening. The only problem left, is how to write the systems themselves. I’m not going to spend hours on that right now, but I guess describing what each limb has to do and is authorized to do is enough.