drumming vs fife

drumming

noun
  • A noise resembling that of a drum being beaten. 

  • In many species of catfish, the sound produced by contraction of specialized sonic muscles with subsequent reverberation through the swim bladder. 

  • The act of beating a drum. 

fife

noun
  • A small shrill pipe, resembling the piccolo flute, used chiefly to accompany the drum in military music 

num
  • Used instead of five in radio communications to avoid confusion with fire. 

verb
  • To play this instrument. 

How often have the words drumming and fife occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )