The lyrics-oriented drumming of Neil Peart
By Luis Ricardo
Méndez
In this article we´ll explore
how "The Professor" employed his percussive abilities to highlight
the message of the lyrics. This is also a personal attempt at explaining why
these unique drumming moments have always caught my ear since I first listened
to them. All excerpts examined are taken from Rush studio recordings. You may
need to listen to them several times, but make sure to listen to the whole songs
in their entirety.
Let´s begin by taking a look at two of Peart´s classic fills, which he used as building blocks on some of the examples to be discussed. The fill shown below first appeared in the instrumental song "YYZ", from Rush´s Moving Pictures album, released in 1981. This fill is featured as a mini drum solo at around 1:50 of the song, and it adds a lot of excitement and motion to the music. We will refer to it as the YYZ fill.
1. Second nature (Hold your fire, 1987)
This fill occurs at 2:58, in bar 12 of the second bridge of the song. It´s played as a percussive interjection between the lines "It´s hard to take the heat, it´s hard to lay blame", and "to fight the fire while we´re feeding the flames".
Observe how Peart
combined the YYZ fill and the suspense fill to create this unique phrase. The particular
make up of this fill effectively leads the attention of the listener to the closing
vocal line of the bridge, which makes the message of the lyrics have much more
impact. An interesting exercise is to compare this fill to the one played at
1:35 in the first bridge. Mentally interchange both fills to notice the different
effect each one generates.
The fill shown above is played at 3:55 in the rideout section. This is a very intriguing fill. On the surface, it sounds as if Peart had launched into the YYZ fill but half way through it he changed his mind and decided to play a different one (see brackets in the example).
However, when considering
the meaning of the surrounding lyrics a surprising purpose is revealed - the
fill mirrors the contrasting ideas expressed in the line "you see black
and white and I see red (not blue)". The unsettled nature of the first
part of the fill matches the agitation expressed in the statement "I see
red", while the second part conveys the change of mood implicit in the
words "not blue".
Also, notice how the whole
fill is resolved on the second beat of the following bar, right where a ringing
guitar chord is played.
This transcription shows what happens at around 4:12 in the rideout of the song. Here Peart employed the drums to literally reflect the meaning of the lyrics. Notice how he mimics the "future coming fast" by adding fast double bass flurries to the punctuations of the snare drum and china cymbal. Besides the word painting technique already described, the increased rhythmic motion also helps to rise the intensity level of the section.
4. Presto (Presto, 1989)
This fill occurs at 5:12 when Lee sings the line "I´d
set everybody free". In his A work
in progress DVD Peart claimed he
didn´t play fills under a singing part. But as we can see, there were instances
where he did so to achieve a specific purpose.
In this case Peart played his fill along with the
vocals to embody the yearning expressed in the lyrics. The accent pattern on
the snare makes it feel like Lee is gathering up energy to set everybody free, and
then he magically sets them free when the fill goes down the toms. This is also
an excellent example of tension and release, both musically and emotionally.
In addition, note how in the three bars preceding the fill Peart used his bass drum and crash cymbals to stress certain syllables of the vocals while playing the groove. He referred to this procedure as punching up the vocals.
5. Virtuality (Test for Echo, 1996)
The example above is another fine example of word painting from the drums, which Peart pointed out in A work in progress when he talked about the drum parts he composed for the song. This fill occurs in the last chorus right after Lee sings "send your impulse ´round the world", where we can hear Peart sending that impulse around his world of drums.
6. Anagram (Presto)
This last example occurs at 3:25, right before the intro reprise at the end of the piece. Observe how the suspense fill effectively sets up the arrival of the section. Also, listen to how Peart and Lee stop playing the groove to punctuate the vocal line. This slowing down of the rhythmic motion makes the message of the lyrics stand out more.
At the end of the section
both the vocals and the drums make an exciting closing statement. That effect
is achieved by means of the rhythmic acceleration and the upward/downward melodic
motion that occurs between the line "the saint turns to sin" and the
drum fill. The overlapping point occurs on the word "sin", where the pitch
of the small tom that starts the fill matches the high note sung by Lee. On the
other hand, the length of the fill makes the contradiction of the lyrics stay a
little longer in the listener´s mind.
Maybe Peart himself
didn´t think of some of the observations made here about his drum fills, but the
relationship between drums and vocals in the music of Rush is undeniable. And
as Peart once stated about his drum fills, "they probably roll out that way for a good reason". In any
case, we as drummers can be inspired by his ideas to find our own way of interacting
with the lyrics and, ultimately, to make more meaningful contributions to the
music we create.
Note from the author: The above is a tribute to the late great Neil Peart that I wrote in 2023. I submitted it to an online drum magazine called Drumming Review, but on publication they changed the title to "How Neil Peart wrote drum fills off Geddy´s vocal parts". Drumming Review became Drum Spy, and the article is now available there. At first I didn't mind those changes, but after giving it some thought, I decided to share the article again with a name that better reflects my original purpose. |