Four Drums for Dresden

It goes without saying that four drum-kits is a slightly unusual combination and as such, I had two major concerns when writing the piece: the first was that it had to be a real piece for drums (as opposed to percussion) and the second was that it had to be a real quartet. By “real quartet” I mean that the piece, for the most part, had to feature some interaction between the players and that each one was contributing to the general texture. With this in mind, I had to work out how to write at least some counterpoint for four drum-kits. As one drum-kit is, in and of itself, contrapuntal, how to achieve this was not immediately obvious. One thing that did strike me very early on in the writing process was that our concept of “drums” has changed in the last thirty years or so with the advent of drum machines and drum programming. The same sounds (cymbals, snare and kick) are used in both acoustic and electronic drums but things that are not necessarily playable by one drummer are common in all sorts of electronic music. Indeed, several genres of dance music have been founded on the very fact that electronic drums are an instrument in and of themselves unfettered by the perceived limitations of human performers. So, I allowed this to be my guide in writing the piece; this would be a piece for four drummers but these four drummers would combine, contrapuntally, to make up a kind of meta-drummer. The irony that by adding more humans one can get closer to what a machine can do is, for me, what the piece is about.

— Oscar Bettison

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