I first came across the term ‘dram’ in early 1973, while working at a mental hospital. My charge nurse, Mrs D’Orsay, who had definitely trained before the war, used the term while measuring out a small portion of a liquid medicine.
It was a bit less than 4ml or 3/4 of a teaspoon. Not much as medicine and even less as a ancient measure of whiskey.
No need back then to use the term ‘a wee dram of whiskey’, not in the days when whiskey was scarce and very expensive : men would ask for a dram to swish about in their mouth a while before slowly swallowing.
‘Dram’, in my new definition, is the smallest possible form of a full length musical drama that still retains much of the conflict and tensions.
A 4 to 5 minute music video, using hand-made stills, built for Youtube Era. A bedsit opera, bed chamber music. Created by one individual, with their iPad, in their homes, in their home towns anywhere in the world.
The use of visual stills, not visual motion, suggests right off that ‘drams’ are somewhere between an unstaged oratorio or rock opera LP and a regular live action opera or musical. More than just a Youtube song but less than most conventional Youtube music videos..
For most of us, the massive budgets required ($1 million to $ 200 million to put on a full length musical drama, be it a stage or film musical or opera) versus the very few venues to perform it in means its only open to those of us living in global alpha cities like London, New York or Tokyo and with heavy financial backers behind us.
But with free or very cheap professional music,movie and art software available on the increasingly large number of reasonably priced second hand durable iPads, with free internet access available somewhere in town in most parts of the world, we all now have the ability to create a mini-drama and have it viewed potentially by everyone worldwide, without big city cultural and financial gatekeepers saying no.
Yes, of course, I agree, even a brief music video is best done by a team of varied skills - even an amateur team of varied skills.
But now one can do even a poor attempt of a mini drama on one’s own, as a sort of proof of life to garner interest from others with better talents in certain areas.
Its a start.
Leaving aside the visual component up to now, if musical mini-dramas are so easy, why are they so rare up to now ?
It think it helps to think of categories of poetry and then compare them to the impoverished variety open to the writers of popular song. Lyric poetry, the brief elaboration of a single emotion, is but one branch of poetry among many.
But in popular music, all - if 99% is all - of songs are lyrics. A single emotion, the melody, floats on a bed of agreeable harmony. There may be many singers but they are all in basic harmony.
Drama, on the other hand, needs at least a duet of sharply divided opinions.
We may think we know of pop hits based around conflict, but is that really true ? Otis and Carla may squabble over tramps, as do June and Johnny en route to Jackson, but they’re hardly Tosca versus Scarpia. Ditto “Do you really want me” and “just someone I used to know”.
My drams are duets, based around three areas of actual and sharp conflict.
The first - horizontal or serial - conflict is between strongly held public opinions on a ‘life or death’ type of disagreement. The two sides take turns presenting their views and attempting to rebut the other side.
The second conflict is also horizontal or serial, turn on turn, but its ‘inside’ one or other of the two sides. It is both semi public and semi private, because the characters effected genuinely still support their side’s wider goals but may wish they were presented more aggressively or perhaps with a bit more softly softly. When its their turn to present their sides view, we can hear that their words conflict with those of the leadership of their side.
So far these type of conflicts can be dealt, are routinely dealt with, by strictly verbal staged dramas.
But the next conflict, is the crowning jewel of opera : it pertains to the constant conflict between our socially imposed public voice of reason and our own private emotional passion on the same subject.
In the best of opera, the greatest drama and conflict is between what a character is publicly singing and what the music says they are actually privately feeling.
For unexamined traditional reasons, opera singers are still ‘accompanied’ and accompanied by ‘harmony.’
I simply suggest harmony il-supports conflict and we’d do better with a sort of internal Greek Chorus or conscience musically playing out in jagged counterpoint rather than smooth harmony.
The voice of reason, one at a time voices, is a single melody line in the low treble clef. The voice of passion is a single melody line in the high bass clef. The voice of each character has their own diatonic mode and rhythm pattern, shared with their music of passion.
The side that takes the YES position on a particular action uses the three major modes, the white key modes based on F, C and G.
C takes the most mainstream view, with F being more extreme and G more moderate.
Similarly the NO side, gets the three minor keys with A being the most mainstream and E more extreme and D more moderate. The white key mode based on B is the neutral moderator (diminished mode) and starts and end each dram/debate and plays in the cooling off interludes.
A musical drama composed of a series of different single note at a time vocal melodies and a series of conflicting counterpointing single note riffs below might strike many as impossible thin, but many pop hits do something like this today - ignoring harmony completely.
Except that they have a very thick and busy drum part in there.
My drams will not only have no thick chords or thick BVs, they will have no drums.
Unusual in most of the world of popular music, but a commonplace here in my home province of Nova Scotia.
Our traditional music is just the skelton of a solo melody, seemingly based on conventional keys and modes at first glance. But in fact, the tunes deliberately withhold some of the notes in the seven note scale, bringing this note in and dropping that one out, to get a lot of pitch variety from just one diatonic mode.
That basic notated skelton is articulated in many ways, legato -staccato-dotted-even, in many octaves by many instruments and supported - at most - by a simple but strongly rhythmic tonic and dominant drone below.
If the hand drum is permitted, its player is sharply reminded not to fit the tune to the cliches of the drum kit drummer, but to closely follow the rhythms of each tune’s melody and phrasing.
The main kick I have against the traditional music of my home province is that its musical conflict is too horizontal and not simultaneous.
To over generalize, we have five to ten minutes of a stress-inducing strathspey type music relieved by the soothing effect of five to ten minutes of reel type music.
The strathspey and its ilk is what outsiders often think of as quintessential Scottish music. Its tempo is sort of slow and the durations of its notes are very uneven (dotted) and the distances between its pitches are often great. Many of its notes tend to be either heavily accented or almost thrown away, ‘ghosted’. It tends to arpeggio motion, in thirds and leaps.
The usual way to describe such music is to call it jagged, angular, rangy, stop-and-start, emotional,passionate.
The reel is the opposite : it is played much faster. Its notes are many and very even in both duration and accenting. The spaces between pitches tend to be quite small. It can be thought of a scalar oriented, moving by steps most of the time.It is called rounded, even or straight time music. It is the musical equivalent of the voice of calm reason.
I thought, why not a reel on top and a strathspey below - metaphorically, not actual reels and strathspeys.
But to really be something that can be composed or performed by people who may not either play the most basic keyboard let alone an actual acoustic traditional instrument, I had to create my drams in the way ‘programmers’ think and act.
And how rank amateurs program patterns on the 16 step sequencer is exactly how skillful rhythm guitarists/drummers play their patterns on their guitars/hi hats since the 1970s rise of funk, disco and reggae.
The strumming hand of a skilled rhythm guitarist never stops, over a moderately slow tempo, their hand moves in a constant up and down motion 16 sixteenths per bar. Some of those strokes hit a lot of strings and hard some touch nothing, others lightly grace a few.
The end result is often called percolating : yes, a constant unending stream of music from one instrument, but one that breathes and ebbs in flows : notes that are well accented, normal, almost inaudible (ghosted) or totally inaudible (rests).
For thousands of years, solo dance performers have had to do the same : keep up a constant stream of musical sound, yet at the same time give it shape and character : light and shade. No one more so that the Scottish piper whose instrument can ONLY produce an unbroken stream of music and as a result an entire artform of varied grace notes has risen to given the music most of its charm !
Back to the amateur at the 16 step sequencer on their iPad. The sequencer only programs the onset time, the attack of each new note, not its actual duration. So if an instrument meant to be accented heavily is played in as a pattern of dotted quarter, dotted quarter, quarter, but is actually only audible for a 16th note, a lot of built in rests are built into its part that can be filled by another unaccented instrument playing another part.
In effect, much popular music today is composed as if for a multi instrument drum kit, but based upon pitched notes and played by multiple instruments dropping in and out, playing various articulations, in various octaves and effects.
A surprising amount of variety can be got out of the simplest musical resources —- something long known by a group of trad musicians heterophonically playing one busy little celtic melody….
