On numerous occasions I’ve had older relatives, friends, and teachers call something like the following images a “meme”.
This is troubling because technically none of those are memes: that’s just some words over a nature background, a comic strip, and a political cartoon. While I’m truly glad everyone is attempting to participate in internet culture, it’s a pretty big letdown when someone says “I saw the funniest meme” before showing you something that’s decidedly not a meme. Honestly, the whole thing is harmless and actually kind of charming in a well-at-least-you’re-trying kind of way (if you’re still confused about what a meme is no shame: please click here). Unfortunately, a very similar situation happens repeatedly in the music world causing untold frustration.
Rimshots
There are several unique sounds one can produce on a snare drum. For whatever reason many musicians refer to any and all of these sounds as “rimshots”. I really don’t understand how this has happened as it’s not like there’s some internal BAM/Jazz type debate about what to call these sounds in the percussion world. Essentially, the definitions in the video below are, in my professional opinion, inarguably correct.
On the surface, this might appear to be a simple meme-like mislabeling: harmless and laughable. In actuality the thin veil holding together any sense of order with regards to explaining music is under attack. If that sounds like an exaggeration I hope the following narrative helps you understand my reasoning.
The situation goes something like this:
You’re on a gig. An easy piano trio hotel hit with some seasoned players. You’re in the middle of a tune when the piano player looks at you and yells “Rimshots!”. What do you do? You’ve been in this position before. You’re painfully aware of rimshot’s fluid definition, and you also only have about 1 measure to make your decision. There are several factors to weigh here, but you don’t have much time (and in the heat of the moment you tend to take requests at face value), so you just let it rip with an honest-to-God rimshot. This decision, almost invariably, will be met by the older, accusatory-type musician (OATM) emphatically pantomiming a cross-stick before flashing you a condescending smile and eye-roll as if to say check out this green, little drummer who doesn’t even know what a rimshot is.¹ Their look and eye-roll combination coming, of course, after you’ve made the switch to cross-stick which, for ideal tone, requires turning the drumstick around with some sort of flip or twirl action. The flip/twirl is an understandably dangerous decision because the OATM may very well see your flip/twirl as performative or pretentious or further confirmation you spent too much money on a music degree from some liberal arts school where they taught you how to spin your drumsticks but not what a rimshot is.² The whole embarrassing thing happens in the span of a few seconds. However, you’ve just had a basic, musical truth uprooted (one of the few grounding you this early in your career). Now you’ll spend the rest of the set questioning everything you know and desperately trying to appease this OATM. The vibe of the gig is further complicated because the veil of music’s seniority-based power dynamic – meaning you’re generally expected to take everything established musicians say as gospel since they are older and more experienced – has been lifted, and you’ve realized, despite their undeniable connection to this music, you can’t actually trust everything this person says to be true. And finally, there’s the pure lack of regard for social etiquette (i.e. “the hang”) you’d display if, rather than letting the whole thing go, you were to bring the situation up to the OATM at set break and call them out on their error.³ The emotional Jenga block you’re pulling at supports decades of pent-up, fragile ego, and you’re going to receive a response somewhere between complete dismissal and outright confrontation if you pick this battle; you will not get called back for the gig.
Most everything about music is overwhelmingly open to interpretation, and an artist is generally expected to publicly confirm they understand “all perspectives are valid” before they can take anything like a definitive stance on a topic. But, for our collective sanity, not everything in music needs to be so mystical and objective. Some things should have a single, standard definition that gives us a reasonable chance at communicating musical ideas effectively: rimshots are one of those.
¹ By blindly trusting the OATM’s judgement, and knowingly inviting this whole ordeal of a situation into existence, you believe you’re actually being respectful by assuming they know what they’re talking about. I.e. if after being told to play rimshots you decide to play a cross-sticks instead, but it turns out they really did want rimshots, now you’re the arrogant, young drummer who assumed they don’t know what a rimshot is.
² Said maneuver really is worth the risk when you factor in the added warmth, presence, and body your cross-stick will have. In fact, the cross-stick sound is so much better when played with the butt end of the stick it’s entirely possible the disapproving musician would feel compelled to another pantomime display instructing you to turn the stick around if you don’t decide to do it in the first place. All of this would, of course, be following by another condescending smile and eye-roll, and the whole thing would be completely obvious to anyone in the audience.
³ Again, and this really cannot be stressed enough, these definitions are widely agreed upon among industry professionals.