April Wine Drummer, Strobe

April 27, 2013 9:27 AM

There's no way Gerry Mercer can do snare as seen at 7:00-ish in this video, is there? (Youtube link)

I saw him do this many years ago live under strobe lights, and thought it must have been a recording. Arms in the air while rapid-fire snare hits are going on. Wow.

posted by PixelPiper to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

That looks... totally doable to me? The sticks bounce, and it's all in the wrist and fingers, you're not like moving your whole arm up and down for each strike. Yeah, he's definitely especially skilled at it, but it definitely looks within the range of what's totally possible.
posted by brainmouse at 9:40 AM on April 27, 2013

Well, there's the video of him doing it. So there's that.
posted by mazola at 9:40 AM on April 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Are you talking about the strobe portion at 7:11? The sticks don't appear to be moving since that's what strobe lights do. But I don't think there's any particular virtuosity needed to achieve that effect. Now, if he had his arms appear frozen above his head or something, that would be neat, but that's not what is happening in the video.
posted by wnissen at 9:51 AM on April 27, 2013

Seen it with my own eyes, he is a god.
posted by wats at 9:59 AM on April 27, 2013

He seems to be hitting the snare more or less in time to the strobe frequency, as wnissen says. That would indeed have the effect of "freezing" him; your eye is fooled into thinking that he is not moving when he in fact is. As brainmouse points out, it's not especially difficult to do those rapid, one-handed hits on the snare. With those muscles, he's more than capable of bringing a controlled and sustained attack. Even though I don't have his muscles I could do it pretty easily.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 10:00 AM on April 27, 2013

Yeah, he's not doing single-hits, he's bouncing the sticks. In contrast, check out the quad solo in this excellent video around 7:25, and especially 7:50. There's some impressive single-handed rolls earlier in there as well.

The strobe might be triggered off his snare with some delay that would sync it perfectly as seen.
posted by supercres at 10:23 AM on April 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Playing 16th notes with one hand is no less doable than playing 32nd notes with two hands. It's impressive that he can keep it up for that long, but it's not magic or anything.

Incidentally, I went to high school with the daughter of one of the founding members of April Wine.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:45 AM on April 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yeah, agreed with everyone--there's nothing out of the ordinary there.
posted by The Michael The at 12:36 PM on April 27, 2013

Okay, so the reason this seems impossible is that your eyes and your ears are telling you two different things. Your eyes say "Clearly he's moving his arms very slowly," and your ears say "Clearly he's hitting the drum very fast." And the answer is, he's doing both — one with one hand, and one with the other.

That is, at any given moment in that part of the solo, two things are happening:

1. One hand is in the air, moving in a big slow exaggerated attention-getting arc. This doesn't make any noise, but it's visually attention getting.
2. One hand is close to the drumhead, and the wrist and fingers of that hand are tapping the stick quickly up and down with a small, nearly-imperceptible motion. Visually, this is really easy to overlook, but sonically, it's the only important part — the only thing that's actually making any noise.

And then after a while, he switches hands.

It's a little like the Moonwalk. In the Moonwalk, you make a big flashy show of pretending to step forward on one foot, and meanwhile you give yourself a teeny little backwards push with the tiptoe of the other foot. In this routine, he makes a big flashy show of pretending to beat the drum slowly with one hand, and meanwhile he gives the drum a lot of quick little taps with the other hand.

More broadly speaking, it's a form of misdirection, drawing your eyes in one direction while the real action is going on somewhere else.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 1:55 PM on April 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for all the responses, I'm also a Peart fan. I admit to possibly being under the influence of certain herbs while watching him live, but still...

At 7:15 he seems to be going impossibly fast one-handed, but I'm not a professional drummer.

You guys have convinced me that there wasn't any magic or prerecorded stuff happening.
posted by PixelPiper at 2:16 PM on April 27, 2013

Yeah, this is a pretty common technique used by a fair number of marching band drummers. We used to do stuff like this when I was in high school (not for like an entire minute in a row, mind you, and without strobe effects). It helps to tune the top head REAL tight - this both makes the sound super crisp and also helps the stick bounce higher so the drum is doing part of the work for you.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 3:33 PM on April 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Check the video at 1:40 and watch his left hand only on the hi-hat. Its going as fast or faster than the misdirection trick you point out at 7:11.... I'm nowhere on the same block as Mr mercer and can easily play this part of the solo. Its visually cool but as a drummer the section from 1:30 to 2:30ish is way more technical and impressive and awesomey.
posted by chasles at 4:00 PM on April 27, 2013

Paradiddle
posted by humboldt32 at 6:57 PM on April 27, 2013