I have always got along well with drummers. It goes all the way back to my first band in the garage at my parent’s house. My best friend, T.W., and I decided to start a rock and roll band, he played drums and I played guitar. Neither one of us could play a lick when we started so; we learned the language of music together. Through all the years and different bands I always try to get to know the drummer, it seems to help if we are on the same page. If the drummer and I agree, the rest of the band tends to follow in our direction.
While most musicians are initially thinking about executing their individual part, a good drummer is thinking compositionally and always looking at the complete musical picture. It is often a case of playing to make someone else sound better. Most good drummers I have played with hate playing drum solos.
Over the weekend, I was looking at my posts over the past months. From time to time, I have written comments about what I am currently listening to. For the most part, I have been listening to old records. I am not doing this on purpose in fact; I have been consciously making an effort to seek out new music. It seems to me that on most new music, the drums are boring.
Here are some reasons that drums are boring on modern recordings.
1. Click Tracks: Musicians have been using metronomes to check their timing for a long time. It seems to me that somewhere in the early 80’s it became a standard practice to record everything with a metronome, or click track, to ensure that a record did not vary in meter. As a result, you now have a couple of generations of drummers who grew up listening to nothing but music played in perfect time. I hear a lot of these guys play and they sound like they are using a click track even when they are not.
2. Pro Tools: Pro Tools is a set of software programs designed to turn a computer into a recording machine. Any major label, mass produced music is recorded with Pro Tools or a similar product in some capacity. One of the main advantages of Pro Tools is the editing capability. If a kick drum is a little off beat, it is often easier to go in and move it to the correct spot via Pro Tools than have the drummer get it right. You can also fix an out of tune vocal, change the key or tempo of a whole song and a myriad of other tricks.
3. Separation/Microphone Techniques: It is standard procedure to stick a microphone on every drum so a sound engineer can take each one separately and manipulate each sound more effectively. By doing this it sometimes takes away from the feel of the drum kit as a whole.
4. Sampling: A lot of producers and engineers take each drum track and assign a digital sample of a “better” sounding drum to it. You can record a snare drum that sounds like thud each time it’s hit and make it sound like CRACK! Each time it is hit. So, some of the things drummer’s do to sound individual (tuning, technique) are unnecessary.
Music is about tension and release. As a musician, there are some basic tools available to create tension or release. They are melody, harmony (chords), rhythm, and sometimes lyrics. By mechanizing and sterilizing one of these elements, you are cutting your options and taking any creative element out of the drummer’s hands. Drummers should revolt.
I started thinking about this today as I listened to a couple of old records.
The Kenny Burrell Trio, Live at the Village Vanguard: I was listening to this while driving. It struck me how human it sounded. It is one of those live recordings that make you smell cigarette smoke. Great drums by Sherman Ferguson. Some real nice Latin grooves. Kenny Burrell is one of the blusieist of the big guitar, jazz guys. Also, I’ve always thought that if we handed the Martians only records that had Village Vanguard on the front, they would know what Jazz is.
B.B. King, Live at the Regal: This is probably one of the first ten records I ever bought. I saw B.B. on the Carson show and something about it grabbed me. It was one of the reasons I bought my first guitar. Great drums by Sonny Freeman. I once had a jazz drummer friend who borrowed my copy for over a year because he dug the feel of the drums. There is a song on here called “Please Love Me” that starts with the “Dust My Broom” guitar lick. It’s a lick that is used in a ton of blues songs. B.B. plays the intro and Freeman comes in immediately at a faster tempo, and it adds excitement. I realized while listening today that I have always been disappointed by playing songs with that same intro because the drummer comes in on correct meter.
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Tags: B.B. King, Kenney Burrell, Pro Tools, Sherman Ferguson, Sonny Freeman
mrs. Sherman Ferguson wrote,
Thank you for your comment reSherman Ferguson’s music.And yes, KB is one of the GREATS!
Link | November 26th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Pat wrote,
Is it now or then that I apply adage: “We dance to the beat of a different drummer?”
How on this earth that is not a perfect sphere, and has a wobble in its spin, with instinctual turf wars decided along a drumline of nature, ever support music that is from an electronic tick. Drumming is meant to be live…
:button pushers rule the world, yes/no? Too bad!
I remember Gene Kruppa, Buddy Rich, your friend Jake, that guy with the Fugitives, my room-mate Irby Hughes, in college who set up his trap set in our room… and the President of the same college was a show band drummer, came to my room and banged with old Irby.
Show bands and Texas Swing… you see Timmy, trundling fools may not be allowed in the studio doors with their snares in tow anymore, and pop dancers may not like the bass drum rattling their aerobicized bulbous butts… but it is the crash of a cymbal that still introduces an important speech in any show!
I never thought I’d see the day that hip-hoppers had no rythm, when the Rice fields around Katy Texas would have houses built on them, and El Jardin would be eatup in emminent domain and be dredged up along the shores of Houston Bay. But this has all come to pass.
Any one reading this please refer to “Eat a Peach” double drum team on the cuts, Alman Bros. And review those records Jack is referring to above. Don’t be afraid, go forth errant youngsters and drum to a beat of a different plumber.
Pat’s last blog post..The Granny Gang 2005
Link | February 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm