Sometimes we go slow
Sometimes we speed up
We go with the flow
Or fight to keep up
Time is always there
Unfolding before us
Find your groove
Let yourself move
Twelve years ago I fell in love with hand drumming. Keeping a beat energizes and relaxes me. Drumming with others is just pure fun. I learned how to facilitate community drumming from Mary Knysh and Arthur Hull. Between singing and teaching, I’ve been doing a lot more drumming. In the Music for People Musicianship Leadership Program, we are covering rhythmic exploration. I am also facilitating community drumming as part of study at McGill. The study is all about the benefits of group drumming. Drumming has helped me grow as a musician.
This has me thinking about pulse, meter, rhythm, and life, or as life. Pulse is at the heart of the music we play. We feel it as a constant one, one, one, one, one… it’s the lifeforce of the music. When we walk we can tap into a pulse: right, left, right, left, right, left… For those of you who proclaim to be rhythmically challenged, I invite you to go for a walk and notice how steady your steps are. Sing with your footsteps. Feel the beat. When you are sitting quietly find your pulse by gently placing your index finger on the side of your neck just slightly below the jaw.
Let’s dance: Meter is the way we choose to organize the pulse: ONE two, ONE, two, ONE two. ONE, two three, ONE two three…, and so on. Meter is a dance. Our bodies, if we let go and stop overthinking, can naturally feel the beat and move with it.
When we are in sync with each other, things work!
Rhythm is all the fun stuff that happens between the beats. It’s playful, often syncopated, freely moving in unexpected ways. It’s playing within the constraints of time, adding accents and expressions in time, or sometimes against it.
When we are in sync with each other, things work! We get into a flow. For centuries music has been used as a means to coordinate work. Work songs unite people in a task, everyone moving together as a beautiful self organizing system.
When we drum alone, we connect with where we are at, and if we stay with it long enough, we settle into a steady state. We feel calm and energized. When we drum with others, we connect very quickly. It is natural for us to fall in sync with each other. We ground ourselves in pulse, we dance in the meter, and then play in rhythmic expression. When we sing, the beat keeps us from getting stuck. Flowing with the pulse, or groove, is about trust.
As in music, life is always flowing. Sometimes the tempo is slow and sometimes it’s pretty fast. I sometimes have to check in with my own speed, in music we refer to speed as tempo, I can then adjust to go with the flow. If I fight and try to speed up, I feel rushed and tense. This morning, everything took me longer to do. I felt pressure to get things done, and then things got even slower. I had no choice but to accept my tempo and go at that pace, things still got done. The world around me may be frantically moving in 16th notes, but I can choose to keep my steady
half time. Checking in with the pace of life or the people around us can also be a game changer. I notice how different the pace of lessons can be depending on each student’s tempo of the day.
I invite you to check in with your inner pulse and tempo. Time is always there for us - don’t fight it - go with it - trust. Oh, and don’t forget to dance sometimes.
