Saturday, February 04, 2023

Some short tempered performance notes

Following are some comments I wrote after hearing some younger drummers— in a jazz setting, players far enough along with their playing to let their ambitions get the better of them, musically. I got a little impatient with what I heard. I think these are good things even for non-offenders to think about: 

The first job is to keep great time. All the extra stuff is meaningless and annoying if the time feel is mediocre. 

Groove is not an exotic idea to bust out for show on the one funky tune of the night, time has got to be Funkadelic solid on everything, all night. Even when floating stuff with a loose execution, there's a way to do it that respects groove, and a way that kills it. 

Youtube is really messing up people's cymbal technique. I saw a lot of screwing around with finger technique. Better: take the stick, hit the cymbal: DING DING GA DING. 

Stop thinking about things to play on the drums.  

LISTEN, and stop thinking about the drums. Don't think about anything, listen.

Jumping from cymbal to cymbal is like a lighting guy changing the scenery every three seconds. BLUE PURPLE RED PSYCHEDELIC. It's not good. 

A lot of players seem to be interjection oriented, rather than texture oriented. I say that because I'm getting annoyed by all the interjections.

No canned anything ever. Worked out beats sound worked out and usually don't fit, and the other players may not be willing/able to help you make them fit. Usually you have to adjust your personal stuff to work with what they're doing.    

Support the other musicians, don't force them to support you. Not all the time. 

The audience will make some noise when people play loud and bad. They are wrong, they don't know what they're hearing.  

Why can't I tell who anyone is listening to?

A good musician on another instrument, taking up the drums, needs to learn what the drums are about. What's their function— think foundation. They're not just another arena to wail in, except easier; they're not my-regular-instrument-for-idiots. A player like that should have better time than the other bad drummers. 


HI-HAT LIGHTNING ROUND:

The twitchy leg really doesn't add anything. It doesn't make up for not stating good time with the rest of the drum set. People who do this get burned when they have to hold a tempo their leg doesn't like twitching in. 

It's a loud instrument. That worked-out rudimental groove is blowing away the bass and piano.  

NEVER play it on 1 and 3. This is not an invitation to play it on 1 and 3. It's purely wrong and bad, there isn't a drummer good enough to make it be not-bad. Never for more than a few measures. 


There you go. The good news about all of that is, this job is easier than people make it. Most of these complaints can be fixed instantly by people using their freedom to do less.  

1 comment:

Ed Pierce said...

Well put. And I so much agree with your last statement. It's funny that there are so many things, technique and coordination-wise, that we have to put a lot of time and effort into developing in order to play competently; yet so many things could be improved instantly (and enable us to get hired) simply by editing stuff out. But that's learned not by practicing but by doing a lot of listening (to recordings, to our fellow musicians on the bandstand, to ourselves (critically) and simply to others who literally say "Don't do that!").