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Jim Kilpatrick |
Jim’s Just Champion
Newly (re)crowned World Solo Drumming Champ Jim Kilpatrick talks exclusively to the Piping Portal about what it takes to keep on winning...
by Rob Adams
You've just won your sixteenth RSPBA World Solo Drumming Championship. What do you do next? If you're Jim Kilpatrick, you start preparing to win the seventeenth.
Apart from being a supreme drum technician, Jim, who claimed his most recent success at the worlds held at Bathgate Academy in West Lothian on Saturday October 29, is competitive by nature. Actually, that's an understatement.
Take, for example, golf - at which Jim concedes he's not very good. When the next outing with his golfing buddies is imminent, he'll practise "for days and days and days" beforehand so that he can get his game up to the best level he can to minimise his chances of losing.
"I'm like that with everything and always have been," he says. "I just have this competitive streak, a very competitive streak. I'm as motivated now as I was the first day I picked up a pair of drumsticks at the age of nine."
In fact, he likes winning almost as much as he likes drumming - and that's saying something, because drumming has been Jim's life since he got that first pair of sticks.
"My uncle played drums, so that probably gave me the idea," he says. "But at that time, in the late 1960s, bands were pretty active. They'd play at gala days and in all sorts of different parades and events, and I just loved the sound of a pipe band. You know how you see wee boys marching behind a band? That was me every time. It didn't matter what kind of band - I was the same with flute bands and brass bands - but pipe bands were special."
Practice makes perfect
| Indeed, Whitburn in West Lothian, where Jim was born and brought up, was and remains a strong brass band centre, with the local band competing successfully and producing lots of talented young musicians to this day. Jim, however, was never drawn to brass bands as a player, although then as now he had friends involved in that scene. He took his first lessons at the age of ten, joined the locally based Polkemmet Pipe Band where he discovered a natural aptitude for drumming, and got down to some serious individual practising. | 
Jim Kilpatrick in his Worlds Shop |
"You never stop practising really," says Jim, whose dedication to pipe band drumming has seen him awarded the MBE. "These days I'll put in two or three hours a day. Minimum. But from the age of fifteen, when I joined the Shotts & Dykehead Pipe Band, until I was twenty-five, twenty-six, it would be twelve hours a day, and again that would be the minimum."
This regime paid off when Jim won his first solo World Championship at seventeen and when he landed the tailor-made day job for a drum obsessive, as a sales rep for Premier. He would have his practice pad set up on a stand in the car, ready for any eventuality - lunch breaks, traffic jams, a stop light (well, that's a slight exaggeration, but only slight) - where he could slip in some stick work. Even when he goes on holiday, the sticks and practice pad go with him.
"I actually find drumming very relaxing." he says. "Even competitive drumming can be relaxing. It can be stressful, too, but that's because you put stress on yourself, wanting to do well. People might ask, Do you never feel like taking a break from it. But no, I don't.
When my wife, Fiona, and I go away, I'll still put in my daily practice sessions. In fact, last time we were on holiday, I was making up the new scores for the band and I took them with me to
work on. I'm fortunate in that Fiona has no problem with this. In fact, she encourages me."
Jim always practises on a pad rather than on a drum itself, although he recognises that some drummers prefer a drum.
"The obvious reason for using a pad, for me, is the noise level," he says. "I really only play on a drum when I'm performing or competing. If you have a decent pad and a decent technique you can transfer from the pad to a drum quite easily. Plus the pad's convenient, you can sit it on your knee and, of course, it fits into a suitcase better than a drum does."
Cross over
As well as working for Premier, in the 1970s and 1980s Jim was a professional kit drummer, working the club and cabaret circuits all over Scotland. So, was he able to transfer any skills from one style of drumming to the other?
"The two are completely different really. You can hold your sticks the same way when playing a kit as you do in pipe band drumming but it's a different way of playing entirely," he says.
"I think, though, that I brought a sense of musicality from the cabaret band into my pipe band drumming and the way that I feel the pulse in the music is the same in the pipe band as it was when playing rock music or jazz. Funnily enough, when I played kit drums, people would tell me that I had a good swing feel and now that I'm concentrating on snare drum, I sometimes get told that I'm playing like a jazz drummer. Apparently, drummers who play traditional jazz
hear a lot of the traditional jazz style of drumming in my playing."
Having been involved in pipe bands at a high competing level for some thirty years - the House of Edgar Shotts & Dykehead band, for whom Jim remains Drum Major, have consistently been among the upper echelon of bands and are current World Champions - Jim has seen many developments in the pipe band style of drumming.
"One of the most important of these would have to be the introduction of Swiss style rudimentary drumming particularly as well as other styles from across the world, and combining them with the Scottish drumming style," he says.
"Added to that is the technology of the instrument itself which has made people play a lot more precisely. Kevlar heads have changed the sound of a drum completely. If you think back to the days of calf skin, the playing then could be quite mushy, whereas now because the sound is so clear, you really have to be clean and precise but you can also be much more musical."
Artist as composer
Musicality is central to Jim's philosophy on drumming.
"Melody and drive are what I look for in music generally and in pipe bands particularly, he says. "I don't like clever, outlandish things just for the sake of being different. It doesn't matter whether you're playing kit drums or pipe band drums, you play to suit the balance of the music you're playing. If I go to a theatre show or to hear a big band or an orchestra, I'm listening to the whole sound, not just the drums. I hear people saying that they've been to piping concerts and the drums were too loud but I often think that these people are only listening to the drums.
"I know that pipe band drumming is seen as competitive, and that drum corps will try to outdo each other. But you have to remember that the drum corps is only part of the ensemble. They're there to drive the music or to let the melody carry the music, whatever the piece they're playing needs and it either works or it doesn't."
When scoring new pieces for House of Edgar Shotts & Dykehead, whose drum corps are eighteen times World Champions and the current Scottish Champions, Jim works from both a recording played on a practice chanter by the band's pipe major, his long-time colleague Robert Mathieson, and a hard copy of the music.
"Mostly I listen to how the tune goes and ask myself what does this tune need the drums to do," he says. "It's important when composing rhythmical parts to find where you need rhythm and where you can let the melody take over. If there isn't too much rhythm in the tune, then maybe it's my job to create more rhythm. Or it might be that I can just go with the flow or just sit back on the melody and play a nice accompaniment."
Contrary to the proliferation of drummer jokes, arranging for a drum corps is a creative process, Jim insists.
"I never write for the sake of writing. I sometimes play for two or three hours to try to make a drum score and get absolutely nowhere. Other times, I can pick the sticks up and it's right there, it just happens. If I find I'm not in the mood, I leave it and go back later. Some people just bash arrangements out. They think: I'm going to write a drum score today and, sure enough, it's written. Whether it's right or not. If it turns out not to be right, hopefully they'll go back and do it again, but in the worst case scenario, they don't."
Quality improving
As for future trends, Jim sees pipe band drumming becoming more and more musical. "I don't think there's any doubt about that, both in terms of what a drum corps plays with the pipe band as an ensemble and how they incorporate bass drums and tenor drums," he says.
"Before, it would be one or two drums providing specific pitches, whereas now you find bass drum sections of five or six, all playing different notes. You're almost getting into timpani work in that
respect and it's no longer a case of just playing rhythmically, they're able to combine with melodic passages."
The quality of the individual playing, too, is going forward in leaps and bounds, with young drummers coming through playing to a level that will ensure that even the elite competition drummers will have to stay on their toes.
"Music is a continual learning curve, no matter what instrument you play," says Jim. "Teaching students as I do, on the RSAMD's BA Scottish Music course in Glasgow and through workshops and master classes across America, Canada and Europe, has shown me that there's always room for improvement. There's always scope for development. You can always play better and learn more and that's definitely one of the reasons I keep playing and competing."
Even when not holding a pair of drumsticks in his hands, Jim is up to his armpits in drum paraphernalia. Although he left Premier's full-time employment in 2003, having worked on the development of their pipe band drumming lines for almost thirty years, he continues to work with the company as a consultant for drum design and he remains an endorsee of the company's products, a position he has held since he was sixteen. He now also runs his own company, Jim Kilpatrick Percussion, from home, having developed a range of drum heads, harnesses, sticks and other accessories which he markets via the internet.
"I felt I'd done enough driving on motorways with Premier," he says. You can bet when he does go out in the car, though, that the drumsticks and practice pad won't be far from his reach, just in case he feels like stopping on the way for a spot of practice.