We stayed in the studio for about six hours, until 4:30 in the morning. Out of all that time, I was only allowed to play the full drum set for exactly one minute at the very end.
Even so, as I left the studio...
“Kanno-san, thank you so, so much...!!”
I bowed my head so deeply I was practically on the verge of performing a dogeza.
That was how much I felt I had grown during that incredible time.
“Ha-ha! Don’t mention it.”
She laughed cheerfully, looking as if she hadn’t just pulled an all-nighter for the sake of a junior.
“You really are amazing, Kanno-san...”
“Don’t underestimate me, okay? This was just the basics of the basics. I’ve got way more than this.”
* * *
“...Only the rim of the snare drum.”
After correcting my posture, Kanno-san had finally told me I could hit the drums, but this was what she said.
“Aw, man...”
The snare—officially called the ‘snare drum’—is a part that could be called the face of the drums.
In a ‘boom, clap, boom-boom, clap’ rhythm, the ‘clap’ part is the sound of the snare drum.
Hitting its edge is called a ‘rim,’ and since it’s usually made of metal, it makes a dry ‘ka’ sound. If you imagine the ‘ka’ sound from Taiko no Tatsujin, that’s exactly what ‘hitting the rim’ is like.
Well, in short, for someone like me who was excited thinking, ‘I finally get to play the drums!’, being told to only hit the snare’s rim was a very unsatisfying menu. I wasn’t even allowed to hit the head of the drum.
Kanno-san set the metronome on the large studio speakers to 120 BPM. (BPM is the number of beats per minute; the higher the number, the faster the tempo.)
“Try hitting it with your left and right hands alternately in quarter notes, matching the metronome.”
“...Yes, ma'am.”
Ka, ka, ka, ka...
It was the kind of basics-of-the-basics training you do when you first pick up a pair of sticks.
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, Takuto. I’m telling you that you lack the basics of the basics that are required for every single song.’
...That said, even I should be able to do at least this much. Or rather, if I couldn’t do this, I wouldn't even be at a level where I could say I play the drums in the first place.
I was hitting on tempo, and even looking strictly, the range of my deviation wasn't that large.
In fact, I couldn’t hear the metronome sound anymore.
This is something I’d mentioned to Azuma at the public bath, but if you hit at the exact same timing as the metronome, your sound masks it, making the metronome’s sound disappear.
“Um...”
The moment I spoke, I felt something strange with the stick I had swung up.
A sound had played when I swung it up.
Aside from the sound of the snare rim I was hitting, there was a sound like sticks clashing together. While the rim sound was perfectly on beat, that stick sound was quite irregular.
“...?”
I looked up. In the darkness, I saw Kanno-san’s sticks floating like a bar, limiting the height of my swing-up.
It seemed Kanno-san was holding her sticks with both hands from the opposite side, keeping them at that height.
“...Does this mean I shouldn’t swing up any higher than this?”
“No. Hit my sticks on the off-beat.”
If you express the beats as ‘1, 2, 3, 4,’ the off-beat is the part between them.
“On the off-beat...?”
“Well, you probably won’t get it just by being told. I’ll show you.”
Kanno-san signaled for me to stop playing.
“Hold your sticks with both hands.”
I held the tip and the butt of the sticks in each hand and raised them to about chest height. Kanno-san moved my arms and fixed them in place.
“Keep them at this height.”
“Now, listen.”
Then, Kanno-san struck the snare rim at 120 BPM, and on the off-beats, she struck the sticks I was holding.
A sharp vibration ran through both my hands on every off-beat.
This wasn’t like my ‘irregular sound from accidentally hitting them’ earlier. At the exact moment she swung her arms up, she was accurately hitting the sticks I held on the off-beat.
I was completely stunned.
Previously, when I saw Kanno-san play the drums, I felt like she was ‘playing the rests,’ and it turned out to be true.
The sound Kanno-san and my sticks were making right now was essentially just the motion of swinging the stick up, which is normally silent.
But Kanno-san was hitting an invisible striking surface in the air, beating out a rhythm that couldn’t usually be heard.
“That’s what it means. Got it?”
“Yes...!”
It was a mind-blowing concept that drove away my sleepiness.
I want to try it too...!
“Kanno-san, let me do it.”
“Sure. ...Though that phrasing is a bit risqué.”
“Can we not do that right now?”
While rudely brushing off my master’s words, I took up the playing posture again. Kanno-san held her sticks with both hands at the same height as before.
I started playing again, but once I became conscious of it, even the quarter notes I could play before started falling apart like a crumbling foundation.
“...Dammit.”
“Don’t let your heart be shaken. You aren’t wrong.”
Listening to those words—I couldn’t tell if they were a scolding or encouragement, neither of which seemed to suit her—I spent the next two hours training bit by bit until I could finally do it.