“Late Night Lessons Learned”
-by Mary Tolena
“The experiment failed, but we learned so much more.
At the 2025 DCFG Conference, Arthur Hull, Jim Boneau and I proposed wading into new territory to explore the notion of “Late Night” more fully. Late Night is DCF jargon for circles that happen “after hours.” No one takes the facilitator role. The music evolves organically as the group plays. Each groove has its own beginning, middle, and end, and sometimes loops around through different moods and tempos and textures.
Peak Late Night experiences are when the music reaches a transcendent musical flow, when everyone is so well-connected, the music takes on a life of its own. When it feels like the music is playing you. It doesn’t always happen, but boy is it sweet when it does!
That’s what Arthur, Jim and I wanted to explore in the Conference sessions just prior to the start of Late Night: What are the “ingredients” that lead to that kind of magic, and how can we, as unfacilitated Late Night players, help it happen?
Model of Transcendent Improvisational Ensemble
Our central quality for a group with that transcendent potential was “connected musical movement.” Like a flock of starlings murmurating, the group moves around within the Musical Space, collectively morphing the music while staying connected.
We described the Musical Space as having four dimensions:
Tempo: Slower to Faster
Volume: Quieter to Louder
Timbre: Mixed textures to larger sounds
Melody: Melodic tones in the mix or mostly drum melodies
Another of our premises was “variety is good” in the music. When a group swoops from energized and vigorous, to sweet and mellow, and back again (or vice versa), it’s a thrill because we’re all flying together through big territory with deep listening.
So, we presented the group with a proposal: How about if we intentionally expand our Late Night playground? Let’s explore this whole Musical Space together (unfacilitated), and see if we can experience all zones of it: Louder and faster, slower and quieter, mixed sounds and mostly drums.
The challenge is that while a group can collectively get faster and louder pretty easily, it takes extra connection, listening and willingness for a group to get softer and slower. That was the experiment — can we do both, and explore the whole musical space together over the course of the evening?
Here’s where I’ll add — full disclosure — that we hoped this “expanded playground” idea would offer a solution to a long-standing challenge at DCFG Conferences: How to have a one-room shared Late Night experience that is satisfying both for people who prefer to play drums loud and fast, and those who prefer softer and mellower tones and textures.
The Result: The experiment failed. People got into playing the louder drums, and the variety that we’d hoped for didn’t happen. The group got smaller over time, and a core group of drummers played till the end.
The lightbulb moment as to WHY the experiment didn’t work came for me on the second night, when we asked for people’s thoughts on how it went the night before.
Jeni Swerdlow and John Yost both said, “I’ve put a lot into coming here to play with my friends. It’s one of the few times I get to play with the people I most like to play with.”
“Of course!” I thought. Every hour at the Conference is precious, and people want to spend them playing how they most like to play. That makes perfect sense.
And . . . we have that in common. I, too, came a long way to play with my friends. But how I (and others) most like to play is completely different.
In that moment, I realized that our attempt at an “expanded playground” where we could all experience the entire musical range together was really like trying to put figure skating and hockey on the same ice rink at the same time. It’s just not gonna work!
Conference Implications
And so the experiment highlighted both a deeply held shared value, and a critical “both/and” difference among us as DCFs, players, and friends. As Conference-goers, getting to play with our friends Late Night style is a huge motivator to attend. And it’s a big disappointment if it doesn’t happen in a way that’s satisfying for us as individuals.
Yet we have two musical styles which can’t coexist in the few precious hours we have together. Some of us like to play around mostly in the fast and loud zone. Others of us want to play more in the quieter, mellow end.
The Bottom Line: One way or another, we need two rooms for Late Night. I imagine that a good portion of folks would like to go back and forth between the two.
It’s more than preference, it’s neurological regulation
Several conference speakers talked about neurological regulation in their talks — how drumming can help with that and how to accommodate participants’ needs along those lines.
Our experiment showed that we have a wide range of “neurological needs” among us DCFs as well. On one end, as one participant wrote in a Facebook post, “the way my brain works I sometimes feel the need to drown out my thoughts in order to achieve peace, and one of the ways I enjoy and choose to do that is with loud music and/or drumming, feeling the strong vibrations throughout my body.”
On the other end, some of us are quite dis-regulated by big sound waves hitting our bodies and ears. Playing softer and mellower is regulating for us.
In other words, the tempo/volume/timbre/melody zones we each gravitate to in the “musical playground” reflect our neurobiology as well as our musical preferences. We are wired differently with different needs.
Onward with gratitude
Thanks and appreciation to everyone who was there and helped push the envelope of our collective understanding of the Late Night phenomenon. It can be uncomfortable to poke beneath the surface and rattle existing patterns, but worth it to find important shifts.
And special thanks to the DCFG Board and Conference Committees (2025 and 2026) for their amazing work to bring us all together. I know that arranging for two rooms for after hours drumming is a logistical challenge, and here’s hoping that it’s possible. In any event, we are a resourceful bunch. One way or another, we will find ways to soar with our friends in the musical zones we most like to play.
Mary Tolena”
