Drum

“ The drum, strange damask drum.
Oh, will it never sound?
I thought to beat the sorrow from my heart,
Wake music in a damask drum; an echo of love
From the voiceless fabric of pride!
[137]
GARDENER.
Longed for as the moon that hides
In the obstinate clouds of a rainy night
Is the sound of the watchman’s drum,
To roll the darkness from my heart.
CHORUS.
I beat the drum. The days pass and the hours.
It was yesterday, and it is to-day.
GARDENER.
But she for whom I wait
CHORUS.
Comes not even in dream. At dawn and dusk
GARDENER.
No drum sounds.
CHORUS.
She has not come. ”

“ Troops will step faster and march for a longer time to the rhythm of a drum than to any other way of keeping time. What is more stirring than the heavy, measured boom-boom-boom of the bass drum, the rhythmic clatter of the snare drum and the great blasts of tone from the huge, wide-mouthed horns?
In the beginning American military band music mainly consisted of the shrill tones of the fife paced by the rattle of the snare drums with their vibrating snares. ”

“ During the dance this drum rhythm speeds up to a felt time, and at moments of great stress, as when an avenging ghost swims on with a spear, a third drum, played with sticks, comes in with rapid regular beats, louder and softer. Sometimes when the beats are not so followable, but anyway quicker in succession, I seem to make out that they must be involving themselves in some business of syncopation, or the catching up and outstripping of a slow beat by a quicker one. ”

“ Every time the drum begins to rattle he flourishes his tail, and when each little ceremony is over he moves on to a fresh place with a jaunty air, as if he were aware that all this drumming and fuss were especially intended for his entertainment. ”

“ Music is a universal language, and the despised, unmusical drum has a polyglot tongue. All other musical instruments have their speech of sentiment, love and emotion, but the voice of the drum knows the eloquent language of liberty and can get more volunteers for God, home and native land than all the orators. The roll of the drum, like that of the sea, fills the soul’s shore-line and its every bay and gulf. ”

“ Glorified drum -majors’ sticks, gigantic clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds, balls, crescents, stars, or puzzles, are borne aloft by the color-bearer of the detachment, who stands in the midst of smoke, sparks, and the thickest of the hurly-burly, to show where his company is at work. ”

“ On moonlight nights the drums will be brought out, reed rattles, ferret bells, and anything else that will tinkle, will be tied around the ankles, the men and women will form lines opposite each other, and for hours the dancers will jump, twist, and wriggle to and fro in the most approved fashion to the tap, tap, or boom, boom of the rhythmic drum. ”

“ Tune now your wakening pulses to the throbbing of the drum,
While God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat ”

“ A drummer close to him is beating very skilfully, from time to time, on his long wooden kettle-drum, and answers quite doughtily the roll of one of our drummers. Another is blowing a wooden trumpet, in which the mouth-piece, or the hole at the upper end, is like that of a flute. ”

“ There followed an interval of intense silence, and then, from some distance, as it seemed, came the tapping of drums, imitating, most curiously, the sound and accent of the words; "tūm," for instance, being rendered by a large drum of deep, cavernous tone. ”

“ As I heard the deep bass of the old Drummer, rolling in a low, solemn undertone, a sudden shifting of the scene came to me. I was in a great auditorium filled with light, and packed with humanity rising tier on tier and stretching far back till lost in the maze of distances. A grand orchestra, banked before me, with swaying arms and earnest faces, played a wonderful harmony which rolled about me like the sea and whelmed me with its volume till I was almost swept away by the tide, then suddenly down under its sweep I found the low deep roll of the bass drum. ”

“ I was a drummer, for example, I'll tell you about it. Look you, I know by the sound what sort of a heart a man has, when he beats a drum; where you, my brother, hear nothing but noise and confusion, I hear music and deep meaning. ”

“ To the primitive tribe, the drum is a powerful, thrilling musical instrument. So are all forms of drumming to the child. He imitates the whistling, tooting, rattling, banging sounds in his environment, sometimes until he becomes noisily tiresome. ”

“ But there's a kind of cracker That I need much worse, A bright red giant cracker To set off under nurse!
The Drum The drum's a very quiet fellow When he's left alone; But oh, how he does roar and bellow, Rattle, snap and groan, Clatter, spatter, dash and patter, Rumble, shriek and moan Whene'er I take my sticks in hand And beat him soundly for the band. ”

“ The drum, roughly speaking, is the oldest musical instrument. It is of great interest to us inasmuch as it still holds a place of honor in the modern orchestra. It is the king of the group of percussion instruments whose object it is, not to produce a tone, but an accent.
No tribe of savages has been discovered but what is possessed of a drum of some sort. The most usual form of construction of the primitive drum has been that of a section of tree trunk, hollowed out, and covered with skin at each end. Certain trees, such as the bread-fruit tree or the bamboo, render this peculiarly feasible. ”

“ The drummer beats his drum whimsically—fast and slow alternately, with no rule—just as it pleases his fancy, and the dancer always keeps time with him in all his frenzies and eccentricities, so that his movements are sometimes so slow as to be barely noticeable, and at others so rapid that his arms and legs can no longer be distinguished. ”

“ The drummers danced wildly together, crossing and changing places and beating all the while, keeping on till exhaustion claimed them and then slipping out of the drum straps for others to take their places. ”

“ I'd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a drum.
And now tho' I must beg, with a wooden arm and leg,
And many a tatter'd rag hanging over my bum,
I'm as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet,
As when I used in scarlet to follow a drum.
What tho' with hoary locks, I must stand the winter shocks,
Beneath the woods and rocks oftentimes for a home,
When the t'other bag I sell, and the t'other bottle tell,
I could meet a troop of hell, at the sound of a drum. ”

“ The maker of a drum must climb up the tree from the wood of which he is about to make it, and there, until the drum is finished, he must remain sitting among the [213] branches, or, if these are inconvenient for the purpose, he may erect a scaffold around the trunk of the tree, with a platform on the top of it, and work upon that. Whilst working, he must always keep the upper or tympanic end of his drum facing the wind, the idea of this being that the wind gets into the drum, and makes it musical. ”

“ Musicians inform us that the drum—exception is made in the case of the snare and the kettle drum—is an instrument in which the pitch is a matter of comparative indifference, its function being to mark the time and emphasize the rhythm. Page 143 There are other elements, it would seem, that must be taken into the account in estimating the value of the drum. Attention may be directed first to its tone-character, the quality of its note which touches the heart in its own peculiar way, moving it to enthusiasm or bringing it within the easy reach of awe, fear, and courage. ”

“ Among all the woodpeckers the drum plays an important part in the matchmaking. The male takes up his stand on a dry, resonant limb, or on the ridgeboard of a building, and beats the loudest call he is capable of. A favorite drum of the high-holes about me is a hollow wooden tube, a section of a pump, which stands as a bird-box upon my summer-house. ”

“ One double drum, I noticed, was made from reversed sections of human skulls, and my attention was also attracted by some peculiar headgear worn by the Lamas during their services and ceremonies. On these occasions they not only accompany their chanting and prayers with the beating of drums and clashing of cymbals, but they at the same time make a noise on cane flutes, tinkle hand-bells, and sound a large gong. ”

“ The side drum, so called because it is worn at the side, is struck in the centre by two small wooden sticks with elongated heads or knobs of hard wood, producing a hard rasping sound when the drum is played singly and in close proximity to the hearer; when, however, several drums are played simultaneously or with other instruments the effect is brilliant and exhilarating. ”

“ The drummers beat their instruments slowly and in strict time, accompanied by the clash of the cymbals, the weird, prolonged blasts of the trumpets, and the more agreeable notes of the flutes. But now and then the time is accelerated, the beats of the drum follow one another more and more closely, and the claps of the clashing basins pass into one continuous resonance. The musicians seem to stimulate one another, and there is a great crescendo; there is more than enough noise to deafen one, so it is useless to attempt to speak to one’s neighbour. ”

“ But when some savage first struck a hollow tree and found that it gave forth a sound peculiar to itself, when he found a hollow log and filled up the open ends, first with wood, and then—possibly getting the idea from his hide-covered shield—stretched skins across the two open ends, then he had completed the first musical instrument known to man, namely, the drum. ”

“ I see a sad procession, And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles, All the channels of the city streets they're flooding, As with voices and with tears. I hear the great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring, And every blow of the great convulsive drums, Strikes me through and through. For the son is brought with the father, (In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell, Two veterans son and father dropt together, And the double grave awaits them.) ”

“ But the war-dance would seem to demand a kind of music, making the strongest appeals to the ruder passions of so rude a race. The most prominent instrument is the drum, the construction of which, out of an old cast-by-keg, or hollow trunk of a tree, I have already noticed. ”

“ In the drummer boys’ quarters, drums were used for writing stands and card playing tables, while often a checkerboard would be sketched on the head of the drum and for men buttons would be used, and with plenty of rations we managed to be quite comfortable except when on picket. ”

“ There is a note of barbarism in the brassy jar and clamor of the instruments, enhanced by the bewildering ambition of each player to force through his piece the most noise and jangle, which is not always covered and subdued into a harmonious whole by the whang of the bass drum. ”

“ Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical instruments since their pitch is alterable: [96d] I have often admired p. 97the drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key. One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he gets his large babies into the proper temper. ”

“ The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. ”

“ But even that grows more and more indistinct, and the big drum alone, which hitherto has played only a modest part, now gains ascendancy over the other instruments, for its dull, droning beat travels furthest into the distance. ”

“ The Eustachian tube? Describe it, and state its use.
97. The musical instrument, the drum, is not complete if the air within be perfectly confined: we therefore find in all instruments of this kind a small opening in the side, through which air may pass freely. By this means the pressure of the air upon the vellum which forms the head of the drum is made equal upon all sides, and the resonance of the drum remains unaffected by the varying density of the atmosphere. ”

“ The skill of the drummers and the pieces they perform are not contemptible, when two or even three performers sit down to one drum and play some piece of native drum-music in the Banks' Islands, or when three drums of different size and tone, as I have heard at Saa, are played together with surprising precision and variety. ”

“ Some drums are shallow, some deep, and each is made by the individual player, who tunes it by heating the drum until the metal is soft, and then pounding it until he acquires the exact tone he desires. ”

“ The way of holding the drum has not always been the same. Nowadays we are told to hang it from the thumb or wrist. But in many early drawings it is apparently firmly strapped or tied to the forearm, or even above the elbow. [110a] The Lincoln Angel and Luca’s boy have tabors supported by a string round the neck, and this I find to be the best method.
I hope that the drum may long survive in Provence with its ancient companion the pipe. [110b] A different instrument, however, supplies an accompaniment to the galoubet in the Basque provinces. ”

“ There were ten drums, and a boy for each, ascending in height from the smallest to the biggest drum; so that the boy who beat the smallest drum must have been about ten years old, and the boy who beat the largest drum was a sturdy youth of twenty, or thereabouts. ”

“ The drummer uses a side drum, a big drum and cymbals played with the feet, and various other instruments on which he beats a tattoo with his drum-sticks in alternation with the side drum. He is in fact a sort of one-man band in himself and adds considerably to the rhythm of the ensemble. ”

“ It is a little boy’s drum, the sort of thing I used to play myself at one time, until people took it away from me, and threatened that if they heard it once again that day they would break it over my own head. It is cowardly going up and down, playing a drum of this sort, when there is nobody to stop you. ”