Continued from earlier topic - singing and drumming at the same time, just a few thoughts I had.
Whenever Adam sings, his whole body is in functioning in the service of his singing. Adam is centered, his energy, as well as his breathing come from his core, his diaphragm taking over as gate-keeper for everything else. Adam is a master at that.
If you compare that to the drummer/singer training video ( ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84359240&v=f8J89l2aCx8&x-yt-ts=1421782837#t=20 ) that I posted earlier, that is the opposite to what this guy recommends and the opposite of what he is doing. He opens his video and right away talks about six-way independence. Exactly. He trains every body part to do their thing, and with exact precision, and then trains himself to do them in parallel, kind of like we know how to walk and chew gum, drive and have a conversation at the same time, or sing while taking a shower. Point is, you can only
think about one thing at a time, so therefore all others have to run on auto-pilot. That obviously takes a lot of training and a lot of skill. And the reality is, you can never let yourself be absorbed by any activity so much, that the concurrent auto-pilot does not work right anymore.
Ever taken a wrong turn, because you went the usual way to school/work, when really you were planning to go somewhere else? Sure, has happened to all of us. But, when you perform in front of 20K people, that autopilot better work well, so you can concentrate on your singing most of the time. I'll get to Roger's singing in a moment, but first back to rhythm.
I think, it is quite apparent, from watching the video, that 'Under Pressure' is significantly more challenging than anything this guy in his training session demonstrates during the video. UP goes in and out of any groove all the time, the whole song is rhythmically challenging to begin with. The vocals don't line up with the beat, tons of entries at off-beat moments. It is also not a continuous melody that is sung, but stop and go, all the time, and in this tour Roger has the larger part of those vocals, even though Adam gets the glory notes.
How tough this really is, becomes apparent, when you realize that you have two pros at the top level of their profession, and Roger having done this song since almost 35 years, and yet, it took Adam and Roger quite a bit of time to get that pocket exactly right. I think, somewhere, mid-America tour, it came together, but it took a while, even for them. With Freddie, Roger was much more in a background vocal role. He has now in this tour, taken a more dynamic interaction approach, where he has a much bigger role. But, I think, it also meant that he had to work a few things out differently.
The way, it looks to me, Roger controls his drumming, but lets Adam lead the vocal. But given that for the most part, Roger's vocal comes before Adam's in a call and response kind of pattern, Roger has to observe Adam and Adam gives physical clues, like taking a breath, hand movements, blinking with eyes, etc.
Adam actually 'sings' Roger's parts physically with his body, just not vocally, and Roger follows his lead, and that is how he gets the entries right and is able to divert his attention back to the drums, when they get complicated, as in this song they do. He can then come back, look at Adam, and get the next cue. Not sure, why they decided to have Roger sing bigger parts.
I am convinced at this point, that if Adam were not standing there, Roger would miss him, that is how strong this relationship has already become.
Adam is very good at giving signals to others, if he wants to, but usually it was to help someone of lesser skill. Here it seems to be in support of an overall artistic moment. But still, I am pretty impressed at what Roger does here, during this song.
During idol, we had tons of videos that demonstrated how Adam helped others find their entries or even the right key. Watch Adam pitch correct and guide Kris throughout WATC here. At some time we had a version where the fog was a little less thick, more HD or whatever, and you could see Adam's thumb in action too, but in this one it is hard to see, because of the fog. But anyhow, you get the idea and the eye-signal at 2:46 is clearly visible, when Kris has finally arrived at the right key.
But Roger of course, does not need any help with pitch, and is a lead singer in his own right, and so I am sure he was not exactly used to this. If anything, a drummer leads with the beat himself, and Roger did so, when he played that song with Freddie and Freddie did most of the singing. Here's an example.
So, I bet, this was somewhat new terrain for him too, and I wonder how this came about during practice, just from a people dynamic point of interest. But both Roger and Adam are musicians who want nothing less than perfection and so they had to work it out and they did. They have been performing it pretty consistently and perfectly for a while now and they are rightfully proud of it, because it probably was hard to get to this point.
I said, I would come back to Roger's vocals. I love the tone in Roger's voice, especially in his upper register, but his technique is nothing to write home about. He sings quite flat, with chest supported breathing, and that guy in the training video does the same. Watching it, it dawned on me, that it had to be that way, because the singing is just one element out of six. If he would let his core drive the performance, give more emphasis to the breathing, he probably would throw off the rhythm, which has to come first for him.
It also explains, why Roger feels so uncomfortable to sing in front of the stage, because for him singing is reduced to his lungs only, leaving the rest idle and therefore exposed.
That is the opposite, of course, from Adam. He sings with everything he has. His metronome is built in, right where the diaphragm sits, his energy center is at his core and everything fans out from there.
But just for laughs, it probably should be also mentioned, that this means that Adam could never properly play the drums or any rhythmic instrument for that matter, he would notoriously be off rhythm, or would have to completely relearn his technique of coordination.
Watch here in Merry the Night. When Adam stomps the floor, he does so with an energy that is inert and totally supporting his singing.
It is intense, and brilliant,...... but rhythmically - it is off. If those were tap shoes and you could hear that beat, it would be wrong. It does not matter, because what the viewer takes away is the passion with which Adam sings and everything else is in support of that. But it is something totally different than what Roger needs to do, to be able to multi-task in the way he does.
Different forms of art.
Just wanted to say, Roger being almost completely deaf, makes being able to do what he does so amazing. Vocals and drums.
WTF
