Thrills with Zills at the Fire Circle (Part 2)

In a previous post, I wrote about the why zills are an excellent choice for pagan fire circles. Let’s dig in a little deeper. The simplest way to support the drum beat at a fire circle is to just emphasize the down beat. Sometimes I just want to make sure everyone hears the “one” and will just hit the one of each measure. Or hit each beat with a Right, Left, Right, Left (or the other way around if you are a genius lefty).

That’s right, your handedness will impact your zilling. Let your dominant hand take the lead. Some zills have a slightly different tone within the pair, so if you switch off lead hands, you end up with a strange unevenness (CLINK-clink-CLINK, clink-CLINK-clink). Not the end of the world for casual playing, but might as well get in good habits from the beginning, just in case you want to take your zilling to the next level.

Once you feel comfortable with a downbeat, you can move on to what many dancers call the gallop. The gallop places three zill strokes on each beat. However, it is not a true triplet. The actual rhythm is +a1, +a2, +a3, +a4.

The zill “gallop”

We call this rhythm a gallop because apparently some dancer back in the day had a three-legged horse who sounded like this when he ran. The dancer’s name was Regina Gallop, so the rhythm was named after her. And I totally just made that up.

You can stick with the gallop indefinitely. It is probably the most versatile and common zill pattern on the planet. Because 99% of fire circle drumming is in 4/4, you will always be able to gallop along.

But maybe you want to get more complicated. One way that many dancers improvise with rhythms is through the number system. Just pick a number (let me recommend starting with 1-7 as a reasonable basis) and every number pattern starts with your dominant hand. As you are starting, try saying the numbers out loud. As one of my early dance teachers says, “if you can say it, you can play it.”

Rhythm Practice

For instance, try 3-1-3-1 (a 3 is your gallop).

3-1-3-1

Flip it to 1-3-1-3 and you get a different sound.

1-3-1-3

The combinations are practically endless.

1-5-5

3-7-3

You can even go wild and just start running through numbers.

1-3-5-7-3-1-7-5

But what do you think? Is that more muddled to the ear? I tend to think so. Staying simple and repetitive not only sounds cleaner, it allows you to get into that chant-like zone so your playing and dancing can be a spiritual experience rather than a math lesson.

Now check out the instrumental bridge on Warrior Woman from the Seasons album. Can you tell what I’m playing on the zills? First, just try to pick out the difference between the “rings” and the “clacks” that I described in the last post. Then, see if you can pick out a few number patterns.

If you get into zilling and find you love it, first of all—YAY!!! Secondly, that might mean you are ready to move on to learning some traditional rhythms.