UC Irvine

The modern drum set is a result of the rich and varied material development of its material technologies, one which evolved from a stochastic collection of personal mechanized inventions into a standardized technological assemblage used around the world. Once referred to as the contraption (or trap) kit, the mechanical inventions yielded from new industrial developments of the early to mid-20th century led to a standardized outUitting of the instrument. As the standardization of the drum set proliferated, and the popularity of African-American-based improvisation practices in Hot Jazz, Swing and Bebop became a worldwide phenomenon, methods for playing this outUitted instrument developed, creating an inextricable relationship between an emergent performance vocabulary, the development of modern, mechanized musical technology, and the material and cultural conditions from which they both derived. Throughout the drum set's existence, both the conceptual understanding of this instrument and the agreed-upon methodologies for its scholarly examination have undergone considerable transformations. This dissertation will argue that the drumset is not a site of cultural exchange because of the innovation in mechanical technologies alone. Rather, these innovation led to the development of an abstract interface that both supersedes and transcends the materiality of the drums. The drum set interface is a hyperobject consisting of individualized spatial assortments, ergonomic relationships, and gestural vocabularies that are particular to each player, yet exist independently of the instrument itself.

This dissertation will detail my experiments into virtual augmentation, which is a method of utilizing emergent digital technologies as the means to for processing a sound of a hybrid instrument in real-time. It will highlight not only my own performance practice that have developed but the collaborative work produced with some of the most in-demand jazz drummers in Southern California. Through the use of virtual technologies, this will dissertation will theorize on the musical potential of conceptualizing the drumset interface as a form of software. When conceptualized as software, the drum kit allows for the application of novel codes, new gestural relationships, and paths of motion that facilitate the blending, matching, and manipulation of sounds and performance techniques from around the world, making the instrument a domain of diverse cultural synthesis and profound musical potential.