plays Bad by Michael Jackson

plays Hang Up Your Hang Ups by Herbie Hancock

Quartet

plays Touch Ground by The Semes

plays Song For My Father by Horace Silver

plays Strange Meeting by Bill Frisell

plays Song For Bilbao by Pat Metheny

This site is dedicated to the love of drumming and explains the steps I have been through to free myself as an instrumentalist.

MY CONCEPT OF FREE DRUMMING

STEP 0 - PATTERNS
When I started out to play drums I was just a kid trying to imitate the movements of a drummer. I finally got a teacher and learned how to play patterns - slowly working up the speed to practice my technics. But I learned that ready-made patterns did not serve the music in the best way - especially fills gave me a push to free myself. I started to work on solos and explore the freedom of playing around the kit only thinking about basic patterns such as 16th notes, triplets etc.
Playing with a band, my experience was nevertheless that the most important thing for me to do was to close my eyes and listen to the music. That way the drummer becomes sort of a tailor - binding the instruments together. All along my great inspiration was Dave Weckl who talked about, “the musical microscope”.

STEP 1 - TEMPO
My interest in the music became more and more about the expression and the feeling of the music. I looked at the hole of the music by playing different instruments and understood that not only my role was to keep the tempo, but on top of that to color the music like a producer. In a sense the drums are different colors to be painted. By doing that I also became aware of the elasticity of the tempo when it comes to playing with different musicians. Instead of trying to keep the tempo steady, I tried to exaggerate the feeling of being either behind or on top of the beat. All along Steve Gadd was a great inspiration and his ability to make the music flow is incredible.

STEP 2 - FLOW
The flow became a new starting point for me - is it straight or shuffle and if so, how does it swing? Based on a solid flow the drums becomes more than soundscapes - they even become tonalities. It gave me a new way to be creative by defining what drums to lead the part or to overlook the drum kit all most like a scale. Vinnie Colaiuta was a great inspiration in that sense.

STEP 3 - GROOVE / BREAK / SOLO
Freeing myself from standard patterns on the drums, developing patterns while playing, I needed an approach to respond to the arrangement of different bands, and genres, and found that I could do that by simply define whether I was to play a groove, a break, or a solo. In relation to the arrangement, I either tried to support the music whenever there was space left or tried to lean back and play very few variations. Tony Williams was and still is a great inspiration in terms of interplay.

THE CONCEPT
To me the best way to keep the tempo is to move my body to the music - almost like dancing while playing. Take a good look at Steve Jordan, he is very much alive. The tempo is defined by the subdivisions and the arrangement is a storyline with different moods to be expressed in time - just like conducting.

Tore Klitgaard

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