By: Allison Ballard
We worked the 45-minute set as a large group over the course of about 1.5 hours during a single rehearsal. That’s all it took. Of course, there were some additional rehearsals of specific songs by specific subgroups of drummers who wanted to work on this or that or the other…we were preparing for our Fort Wayne Three Rivers Festival performance and we wanted to play well with confidence. But the large group only played through the entire 45-minute set once–and that one rehearsal included time spent figuring out how to integrate one of our youth drummers into the show. I certainly took notice of this as an achievement, yet another milestone marking our growth as a group and as individual drummers.
There was a time we didn’t know enough songs to even present a 45-minute set. And then there was a time it would have taken weeks of practice to prepare for such an event. But those days are long past. We now have an extensive enough repertoire that we can pick and choose what songs we want to play. And enough experience that we are easily able to make decisions about how to sequence a set, taking into consideration things like the energy level each song requires, the position of the drums and allowing for a variety of music. Now most of our prep time for a set is spent not on practicing songs, but on clarifying details. Who wants to play what song? What part is each person playing when and on what drum? How does the group transition from one song to the next? Who moves what drum where? How can we best integrate new drummers? These are the details that now get our attention.
We plan. We practice. We load out. We set up. We play. We load in. We go home. We rest. And then we do it all again. Frequently enough that it no longer takes hours of preparation. But it still takes hours of practice. Now instead of spending our time preparing sets, we focus our practice on learning new music (expanding our repertoire or redoing familiar songs), on getting new drummers up to speed and exploring and experimenting with new instruments and techniques. It takes a couple of years for me to really get a new song or a new technique in my body. It happens slowly, little by little, bit by bit and requires a lot of repetition. I am grateful that we now have the time to indulge in the repetition needed to increase our range of skill and music instead of preparing for a single show. Now that a foundation is in place, we have the luxury to invest in an ever-evolving vision. The fundamental question is no longer: What are we going to play? (for some given show) The question has become: Where do we go from here?