Warning! Strong opinions to follow: on Long Beach Style drumming

Here in Portland, there’s a drum corps that has been entertaining folks since the 1990s.

The Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers (LRSD) consists of men and women who play a combination of snare drums, traditional [single] tenor drums, bass drums and cymbals.

Their web site explains that they were founded by a fellow who grew up in Long Beach, California, and after he moved to Portland he decided he wanted to recreate the drum line of his school days.

The style of drumming is called “Syncopated,” and was developed by a school band director in Long Beach in the 1960s. During its heyday, Syncopated Drumming was popular in Long Beach, with several schools assembling drum corps to compete against each other in local parades. 

Its popularity did not extend very far outside of Long Beach, back then or today.

During the 1990s and 2000s, a handful of alumni groups were in existence and mostly based in or near Long Beach. At the same time, LRSD was beginning to get noticed in the Portland area and a little beyond, thanks to the hard marketing and instructional work of its founder.

Ultimately, the Portland group would make its way to Long Beach, sort of like going back to the mothership, where it would perform alongside the remaining alumni groups to enthusiastic applause.

Today, this style of “Syncopated” drumming is performed almost exclusively by the LRSD. The Long Beach-based groups had mostly folded just before or during the pandemic. There may be a new alumni group in Long Beach, but it’s small. And women do not play any of the instruments there except cymbals. There is a prevailing attitude by the old guard that the overt physical demands of this kind of drumming are too much for women to handle. (Also remember that in the 1960s, when most of these guys were in middle school, it was incredibly rare to see a woman marching anywhere in a drum line. Old attitudes die hard. And so do old drummers.)

More recently, the founder of LRSD has made successful inroads into the public schools, promoting and teaching this style at any school where he will be welcomed as a volunteer coach. Considering how little arts funding there is in Portland Public Schools these days, some schools are grateful for his work and today there’s a tiny Syncopated Drumline at at least one Portland high school.

I want to be totally stoked about this.

At its best, it gets people excited and happy, and make kids think about learning a musical instrument in school. 

Unfortunately, the “style” involved here has no basis in actual Rudimental drumming. None. 

If you have studied Rudimental drumming, you know that no small amount of technical study and practice is involved in order to learn and master the twenty-six original rudiments (as codified by the National Association of Rudimental Drummers in 1933. The Percussive Arts Society later expanded this list to forty official rudiments). 

Syncopated drumming, if you go by these videos, does not utilize the rudiments. Nor does it emphasize the technical or visual uniformity that is a hallmark of Rudimental drumming. It approximates the traditional grip, but the volume required in this style destroys hands.

Check out this photo. The drummer has taped hands, in order to either facilitate a stronger grip or possibly to provide relief from the strain that may well come from drumming this way for a lengthy period of time.

The bass drummer, above, is putting on heavy cowhide work gloves, in order to better grip the bass drum mallets. That’s because when he plays loud, he’s pulling the mallet two feet away from the drum head in order to achieve the desired volume. A modern, Rudimental drum line doesn’t need to hit the head from that far away.

Here’s a drum line based in Long Beach, possibly the only organized Syncopated drum line left in that area.

Note how low the drums are hanging, with the leg rests positioned just above the knee.

Also note that most of the snare drummers are holding their sticks with the tips facing away from the head, presumably to get a bigger, fatter sound from the drums, which are usually older, 15” snares and tenors.

(I learned how to March using a drum on a sling and leg rest. My drum never hung this low. My leg rest was positioned in the middle of the thigh, and marching with it was pretty straightforward. I cannot imagine trying to march with my drum hanging this low.)

Here’s an example of the Long Beach style of “Syncopated” drumming, as demonstrated in this retrospective video that includes a couple shots of LRSD from Portland. As you can see and hear, while there’s certainly some syncopation here, there’s not a single legitimate rudiment being played other than single strokes played at varying volumes.

See, this is where I start to struggle a little with “Syncopated” style.

If this guy, in the name of encouraging kids to play drums, is successfully making inroads into schools and getting kids to engage with drumming this way, he’s potentially doing the students, and proper Rudimental drumming, a disservice. Sure, some of these kids may never want to play any other way, and/or may never play drums after high school; but if this is how they learn to play and they want to lay anywhere else — in a college or community band, in an orchestra or a jazz trio — they will have a lot of bad habits to unlearn before they can learn how to play rudiments from someone else, somewhere else. I’m still believe — and a ton of drum teachers will agree — that the rudiments can be applied in all kinds of musical settings and should continue to be a big part of the foundation of drum instruction. Introducing kids to this kind of drumming is cutting them off at the knees.

On the other hand, there are growing noises about just how boring the rudiments are, and how fewer kids want to get that technically geeky, and short attention spans and blah blah blah. And maybe there’s some truth to that. But there are still thousands of students every school year who take the time to learn and master the rudiments on their way to learning how to play snare drum, drumkit and classical percussion.

If I had not been a music educator for thirty five years, I might not care as much. But I was, and I do.

And I am personally glad that this “style” of drumming hasn’t caught on in many places.

Because if I had to choose between my kid learning this:

And this:

I’d pick the one that’s cleaner and more musical. 

Especially if I have a kid who wants to play drums in any capacity beyond high school.

If you grew up playing Long Beach style and you want to call me a snob, that’s fine. I can handle it. 

I went to a high school with a merely decent concert band and a horrible marching band, and I still managed to learn proper drum technique. I played a different marching instrument every year — single tenor, cymbals, snare and tritoms (class of 1981) — and I took all of that knowledge and technique with me when I played after high school.

I would want no less for my own child, and I don’t apologize for that.

I only hope the kids at the local high school will get exposed to other drumming styles and opportunities before they graduate.

Why am I writing about this now? Honestly, because I would really like to find some rudimentally trained drummers to play with recreationally, say once a month with a performance or three during the summer. And there just isn’t anything locally to satisfy my desires. There’s a small drum and bugle corp outfit in Milwaukie, OR that’s too far from where I live for me to get there regularly, and there are a few Honk! bands I’ve sat in with, one of whom I played with for the better part of three years. I sat in with the former, where none of the other drummers had any training at all (and most didn’t care if they got to play on two and four). I was the only snare drummer in the latter, and when they wanted to March in more protests and longer parades I couldn’t keep up with them. I also got tired of being the only drummer, with no one else on the horizon. (I like second-line, but it’s not something I’m burning to play.) 

Every now and then, while I sit at home and chop on a pad (or, rarely, a drum) and wonder what it wou”d be like to find some other drummers who would want to play together strictly for pleasure. It’s not terribly likely to happen here in Portland, especially when LRSD a is such a draw for the folks who never got exposed to more technical marching percussion. So I admit I’m sometimes a little sad that this kind of drumming is attracting more interest than traditional, technically based Rudimental drumming.

I’m on a particular place on the Timeline, and the likelihood of finding what I want is pretty darned low. So I’ll keep drumming on my own until I can’t anymore, and be grateful for what I have.

Happy drumming.

Drum love, community and patience

(At left: my very last pair of marching sticks from HS, circa fall 1980. CB700, model 3S. These sticks are forty years old and still feel great.)

In 1997 I was knee-deep in the world of percussion education and performance.
I taught marching percussion and movement at three Portland-area high schools, ran a small studio where I gave private lessons to kids and played three nights a week in a jazz combo. I also played pit percussion for two of the three major theater companies in town during the summer season.
Then it all packed up and left town.
On the way home one evening, I rode my bike past a parked truck when the drivers' side door swung open quickly and without warning, right into me. I caught the end of the door with my right hand, which bounced in and out of the latch, and then I slammed hard sideways into the pavement. Two bicyclists right behind me swerved wildly to avoid missing the spot where I'd fallen. One stayed and offered help. The driver of the truck was mortified; she made me lie still, kept me calm, and gave the ambulance driver and police her information while they dressed my wounds and decided I could get away with calling a cab to go to the hospital (I couldn't afford the ambulance ride).

Two surgeries and a year of physical therapy later, my right hand was put back together as well as possible. I could grip a wrench well enough to stay employed at my bike shop day job, and I could, with time play a passable snare drum roll. However, French grip timpani and four-in-hand keyboard mallets were gone forever, as I had lost access to the muscles in my right pinky and just below that in my right hand. That meant no more concert percussion and no more pit orchestra work, which was the primary source of my musical income. I was forced to close down my little drum studio and shad to sell my marimba to pay my bills. With the assistance of a lawyer, I eventually accepted a settlement from the driver's insurance company that covered the replacement of my totaled bicycle, all of my medical expenses and a fair chunk left over for "pain and suffering" and the loss of my  concert percussion career.

I spent the next ten years getting involved in synagogue music and eventually rebuilt myself as a singer-songwriter. Between 1999 and 2019, I enjoyed a small but growing career as a songwriter, cantorial soloist and Jewish educator. I made wonderful friends in my new sphere and grew a great deal as a musician and a human being.

And I never stopped loving drums and percussion. After a long stretch of not touching any drums (and wincing whenever I passed a marimba in a music store), I found my way back to drumming with an old practice pad and some sticks I'd kept. After six months of careful, patient practice, I'd regained the ability to play most of the rudiments I'd learned as a kid, plus a few more I hadn't gotten around to learning when the timpani bug bit. I began acquiring practice pads, to test and try and figure out which ones worked best for me. I started researching the history of practice pad development in the twentieth century, and began collecting vintage pads and sticks.

I continued to pursue drumming as a hobby while I toured, occasionally buying vintage sticks while on tour and bringing a practice pad along so I could chill out between shows.

I was on the verge of a very big breakthrough in my little Jewish music scene when COVID came along and brought it all to a screeching, painful halt.

Since last March, my travels as a touring Jewish artist have stopped cold. I've had a couple of online engagements but nothing solid or long-term. With the shutdown of my songwriting gigs came a wave of deep depression and self-doubt that has lasted, frankly, for months on end.

But all the free time of unemployment gave me time and space to dive deep into drumming, and to find myself musically in other ways.  Today, thanks in large part to the miracle of the internet, I've become part of a wonderful online community of drummers, our friendships based on mutual respect and a shared love of drums and percussion. It has been, and continues to be, a wonderful journey.

My friends in the Jewish music world may be wondering why I can't seem top pick up my guitar right now, but many have been surprised at discovering this other music side of me (through videos I've shared online), and have remained encouraging. Be patient with yourself, they've said. You'll come back to it when the time is right. I hope they're right about that.

Meanwhile, I am deeply grateful for the friends I've made in Drumland, and I want to thank a few of them here for their encouragement, acceptance and welcome.
In no particular order:

Joseph Coleman
Mary Gromko Murray
Jose Medeles and all the gang at Revival Drum Shop

James Travers and everyone at Rhythm Traders
Kevin Donka
Rene van Haaren
Don Stewart
Kevin Lehman and his amazing Wilcoxon Rudimental Challenge
Scott Brown at Flam7Percussion
René Ormae-Jarmer
Don Worth
Brian Wilemon, Jennifer Honnoll Wilemon and Bay Ratz Marching Battery
Unpresidented Brass Band

I'm sure I will fail to mention at least half a dozen other names here but they're all part of a wonderful drum rediscovery and I am grateful for every single one of them.

And I would be a complete dork and total loser if I did not thank the one who has been my biggest supporter through all of this weird and crazy time -- my Sweetie, Liz, with whom I will soon celebrate 20 years of US-ness and who may not have had any idea of what she was getting into when we started out.
I wasn't really a drummer at that point and when it all came back to me, it all came in for the first time for her. Lesser beloveds might have run screaming from the room, but she simply asked me to play on rubber pads behind a closed door.

I don't know what my return to the singer-songwriter thing will look like when we all get through this COVID mess, or even how much of that I will do going forward. It's impossible for me to know right now.
But I DO know that I will never stop being a musician, no matter what I use to explore sound with. And today, while everything remains terribly uncertain, that is one good thing I can be certain of, and deeply grateful for.

Happy Drumming.

Below: Evidence of participation. Gresham HS Band, Fall 1977. I am directly in front of the guy in the middle column with the saxophone neck strap on. You can only see half my face but that's me carrying a single tenor drum and loving every single note of the experience. (I also adored that uniform, right down to the overlay and spats.)
Someday I'd love to find photos of my brief time marching in Spartans Drum Corps [Vancouver WA, spring and summer1978] -- if you've got anything showing ME carrying timpani or bells, please let me know. Super-extra bonus points if you can tell me where to score one of those funky, black short slant-top shakos. Thanks.