Air Drumming

So in my adventures to try and find a way to bring the dumb step sound live I've started playing with the idea of air drumming. I know what you're probably thinking "AQLUR! That's a really stupid idea!" Well, to be frank it is. As I have stated this genre of music is called dumb step. We're not trying super hard to be taken seriously and that has led me to start doing performances with just a few drum sticks and an invisible drum kit.

I'm doing this in favor of a DJ set due in part to the nature of the music. Because the songs all move about through awkward time signatures, common DJ mixing techniques such as beat matching doesn't really create much of a flow. A measure in 5/8 won't synch up with a count of 7/8 until around 35 counts which is really inconvenient for phrasing anything that sounds coherent. If I do this air drumming thing I can present the sound work in a way that doesn't compromise the music at all. This method also allows me to have a good amount of fun with the performance which is why I got into music in the first place. When I started drumming eight years ago I decided on picking up an instrument that was stress free, easy and intuitive.

Air drumming is all of that... except it's not always easy. I get really into it actually and I'm usually more tired than I'd normally be on a real drum kit after just a few minutes. Also, some of these rhythms are impossibly hard to try and nail. I'll be posting some videos soon for lulz but for now here's a still from an experimental prototype recording...