Artistic Characteristics of Snare Drums

Drums were mainly used for religious, military, communication, folklore, ceremonial, and other related activities in the early stages of their development, and were used for practical purposes. At this time, the drum was used as a sound device that could produce signals, welcome gods and ghosts, deter enemies, and symbolize status through its sound or shape, both tangible and intangible. Later on, through its rich sound and distinctive rhythms, people began to treat the drum as an aesthetic object, and applied it to daily entertainment or folkloric recreation in song and dance music, and the drum began to have the expressive power of musical art.

The artistic expression of Chinese drums is composed of the combined effects of rhythm, timbre, strength and speed. Although most of the drums do not have a fixed pitch, the combination of the above elements creates a profound artistic character. The richness and complexity of the opera drums, including a single strong beat of the palletized rhythm, or the combination of several series of rhythms according to the relationship between the number of columns, as well as the flexibility of the beat accents, changing beat combinations, and other rhythmic changes, will make the whole music to produce a lively and colorful expression of the ups and downs.

The sound of the drums, due to the different shapes and structures of the drums, as well as different playing techniques, such as the parts of the drums or different playing styles, etc., can produce a rich variety of sound changes. "Poetry", "Historical Records" and other historical records on the cited alligator drum Feng Feng, drums, drums, drums, drums, Kui drums, boring boring, as well as Kan, drums, drums, etc. dozens of drums, drums, etc. elephants, the light of the Chaozhou gongs and drums on the more than three dozen kinds of tone changes of the playing method and gestures. And with different strengths used in the same rhythm and timbre of the drums, can also produce a lot of changes, coupled with the speed of control, Chinese drums will be able to express a more colorful sound art.

The drum plays an important role in traditional Chinese art, for example, in folk dances, instrumental ensembles, rap music, opera music, and folk songs, there are many types of music in which the drum plays a major role, which are briefly described below.

History, the drum is often used as a folk dance accompaniment or props, such as the Han Dynasty dance "long-sleeved dance", with drums as props, dancing on the pan drum "Pan Dance"; the Han Dynasty, holding a double scarf, feet on two drums of the "Scarf Dance"; as well as the "Sword Dance," "Scabbard Dance", "Building Inspirational Dance", "~ # Ue833 Dance," and so on, named after drums dance music. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, the drums are used as the accompaniment or interlude of the songs and dances, including the "Hu Xuan Dance" and the "Cudgel Dance", etc. The drums are used as the main characters of the dances, controlling the dances. As the main role of the dance, the drums control the rhythm and stimulate the mood of the dance with their loud drumbeats. Nowadays, Han drum dances are popular among the people, including those used for rituals, such as the Taiping Drum, which is popular in the north and is used by sorcerers to jump to the gods, and the Flower Fragrance Dance, which is used by the people of Jiangsu to pray for the prosperity of the country and the people, and to drive away the plague and the evil spirits. As a reflection of the people's

labor life of the "rice-planting drums", popular nationwide "flower drums". The third is to reflect the battle life and morale, for example, after winning a battle to celebrate the dance of Fujian's Da Gu Liang Umbrella, Shaanxi's rhythmic, describing the plot, characterization of the Su Drum, and so on. These drums can illustrate the close relationship between drums and folk dances, the main reason is that one of the important factors of dance - rhythm or rhythm, which is the characteristics of drums.

In a variety of national instrumental music, the drum is an important instrument. For example, the percussion ensemble is composed purely of percussion instruments, including the gongs and drums in the large-scale suites of Shaanxi drum music and Jiangnan ten gongs and drums, as well as the opening gongs and drums of opera and the accompaniment of martial arts scenes, the prelude, interlude, accompaniment, and epilogue of religious ceremonial music, and the gongs and drums of folk festivals and celebrations, and so on, which are all purely percussive in nature. Under the sound combination of different drums and other percussion instruments, the rich and complex changes in timbre, rhythm and strength express the warm and passionate or light and lively atmosphere. Other blowing and playing ensemble music, such as Zhedong gongs and drums, Sunan Shifan gongs and drums, Sunan Shifan drums, Fuzhou Shifan, Liaonan Drums and Blows, Sichuan New Year's Drums and Drums, Shaanxi Drums and Drums, and so on, drums and other combinations of percussive music, but also with its timbre, rhythm, strength characteristics, in the music to highlight the richness of its expressive power.

In rap music, its accompaniment contains drums and percussion instruments, even such as drums, drums, fishing drums and other arts are named after drums, which shows that the drums have a close relationship with rap music. In these rap accompaniment, the drum has a beat accompaniment or set the atmosphere with, for example, a variety of "drums" in the small double-sided flat round book drums, or "Daoxiang" in the bamboo for the drum basket of the fishing drums, etc., the volume is not large, but as the main accompaniment to the art of rapping instruments

The drums are used to control the rhythm and accentuate the mood of the opera.

Opera music, whether it is singing, reading, doing, playing, all pay special attention to the rhythm of the accurate and distinctive, the rhythm on the drums and gongs to show and control. The rhythm is controlled by the gongs and drums, which are used to render the atmosphere of the drama, to express the inner emotions of the characters, to control the rhythmic changes of the singing and reading, and to promote the unfolding and climaxing of the plot of the opera. Drums and gongs are also used in the performance process to control the emotional response of the actors and the audience through independent artistic performances, such as the three gongs and drums before the beginning of the performance, and the percussion in the drama performance, and so on. In the opera, the drums are used as a stand-alone performance to simulate the sound of life, such as the sound of running water, and the drums are also used for singing. The drums are mainly used in a dominant position with other percussion instruments, as the actors' delineation of roles, such as expression, emphasis, punctuation, unity and coordination, bridges, rendering, omission and hints, etc., to clearly show the actors' roles. This ability to rely on the drums and other percussion instruments in the tone, rhythm, strength of the organic cooperation.

The drumming style of singing first appeared more than 2,000 years ago in the Book of Songs, and the drumming style of singing is a joyful and enthusiastic style, with a strong flavor of folk life. This kind of drum songs in rural fields can be divided into field labor categories, such as gripping rice-planting songs, planting rice-planting songs, rice-planting songs; slope soil labor categories, such as hoeing songs, mountain gongs and drums, etc.; car water gongs and drums, as well as flower gongs and drums, blowing gongs and drums and so on, all of which are accompanied by the drums as the main instruments, and in the singing and labor as a role of the conductor, this kind of drum songs can be passed down in the folk for thousands of years, it is because of the practical function to improve the efficiency of the labor, the artistic function of self-entertainment and emotional discharge, and the artistic function of the drums as the main accompaniment. This kind of drum song has been passed down in the folk for thousands of years because it has the practical function of improving the efficiency of labor, the artistic function of self-entertainment and emotional catharsis, the expression of primitive religious consciousness and the function of cultural dissemination. In terms of artistic function, in the case of the funeral drum, the use of various alternating and mixed beats, as well as the use of the rhythm of the second half of the beat and the rhythm of the appendage, etc., all present a high degree of performance in the timbre and rhythm of the drum. In the musical accompaniment of the hundred operas, the drum is also an essential instrument, and its unique drumming to help with, rendering masculinity, or as the role of command and order, have considerable artistic performance.