Neil Peart, Drum Solo, Live 2004 - A Classical Musician’s First Listen and Reaction

hi everyone not long ago I had my first lesson on the drums by Carl sloman and he introduced me to the idea of drums as an instrument in their own right and also an instrument which has a lot of nuance and capability and and things that I had never imagined possible on the drums and he also walked me through how it works how it functions in a rock band and some of the different elements that a drummer thinks about when he is performing in a rock band it was a fascinating introduction to me and maybe one day I will get to try out the drums in person that would be kind of interesting but um I feel like it was a great start and if you remember he told me that he would give me a bit of homework well of course as you figured out by now he is a huge Rush fan and I don't know anything enough about Rush firsthand to be able to say whether that's justifiable or not but I have seen many of your comments also mention rush so I know they must be quite significant and um if we if you also remember in the first introduction of Carl and his friends Graham and tice you got to see a little bit of the opportunity that Carl had to meet the drummer of The Rush band Neil Peart some years ago and actually sit at his drum set which was exciting even for me to watch just as an observer because I I understand when you have a an icon uh a sort of role model ideal you could even say an idol in a sense um it's so exciting to be able to get close and interact and and all of those wonderful things so here I am with my little bit of homework that Carl has assigned me which is to listen to a drum solo from a live performance that Neil Peart gave in Frankfurt Germany and I'm going to just let it play straight through without pausing because I still feel like I am not qualified I don't understand enough yet to dissect a a solo drum piece of music so I'm just going to listen and let it go and then when I get to the end if there are any parts I want to go back to I will go back and re-listen to those or comment on say say some some thoughts if I have any if I don't that's that all right so let's just get started and see where this goes here we go my first solo drum performance that I've ever heard [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the entire time and that was impressive it really was um yeah I didn't know the drums were capable of so much I guess the things that I appreciated most of I wouldn't say most about it but that helped hold my attention I enjoyed when he brought in the pitched percussion sounds because I am a very melodic thinking musician um and and it helped me to relate to the non-pitched percussion in a more nuanced way and yes I did pick up probably not I'm certainly not on all the nuances because that has to come with training and experience and knowledge of the instrument but I certainly heard that this drum performance was not simply a bunch of banging and crashing around it had structure it had designed it had it took you and I took me on a journey through the course of the music and I am going to call it music not just a drum part I feel like he managed with that set of instruments to actually create a complete piece of music which is capable of standing on its own now I watched the live version and I watched with the video so I was also very much engaged by watching it happen I don't know if I would have been quite so riveted if I were just listening to it but I would certainly have still heard that this is an incredible performance and um I think that's pretty amazing I guess as a harpist I kind of appreciate the idea that an instrument is underappreciated for being an instrument in its own right we as harpists have dealt with some of that in the past couple hundred years too as the as the harp has developed because it didn't used to always be able to function fully in an orchestral setting or even to have a a solo reputation like say the violin or the piano and so we harpist also even it's though it's a completely different instrument we also have this sensitivity towards the idea that it's underappreciated or underrepresented um even among musicians and I have to say that I am so glad that I'm I'm learning to appreciate the drums more as an instrument in its own right and thank you Carl for giving me for choosing this performance I think you chose a very good one to get me interested and engaged in this it was incredible one of the things I enjoyed about it was the way he would take some of the pitched percussion sounds where you hear a bit of a melody coming out and then he would use the same rhythm of that Melody on the non-pitched percussion and by by taking the rhythm of what he did melodically and then applying it in a different way at a different layer it helped me to appreciate the the capabilities of those non-pitched moments even more and also the in really incredibly well thought out development of musical ideas which he applied here was really impressive never mind the technique I mean I can see he's flying all over the place like like um I didn't know was possible but so there we have my first exposure to a drums solo and it was enjoyable engaging educational for me and entertaining and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did at least because that's pretty impressive

Channel: Virgin Rock

Views: 214,976

Keywords: rock, rock music, music review, rock music review, neil peart, rush

Id: 0qTI65cEPwE

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2022