didnt see if anyone has said it yet, but when i started to play simpler i found that my volume and dynamics really did alot for shaping my and the band's sound. in fact, way more than adding notes could..
Yes! More of this! In general, if the drummer comes up or down, the other players will do so in response, though lead guitar players often seem exempt to this rule...
I have a theory: the age of recorded music has changed drummers' perceptions of relative volume. When we hear a mixed recording, the drums are often very prominent in the mix. In pop contexts engineers often spend a lot of time getting the right SD sound because it sits so far ahead in the mix along with the vocals. Combined with all the compression, etc. used to get a "big" drum sound, many of us (myself included) have gotten into the habit of thinking we need to play at full bore a lot of the time to give music intensity and get the proper balance of instruments. In an age when the primary way to experience music was live and in the flesh, a whole different set of conditions applied, and there's usually a lot more dynamic variation in a live (especially acoustic, or small club) performance than on a record. Generations of drummers past imitated THAT while many of us have grown up imitating the limited dynamic range of studio recordings and the false sense that the drums should dominate in the mix. I think it's important to remember that from an audience's perspective, the drums tend to stand out because of their
timbre as much as their volume, so that we don't always have to bury the audience in drum sound to be heard. There is nothing more annoying to me as a listener than an inexperienced drummer thrashing away on the Hihats creating a tonne of white noise that buries everything else, though I know that from behind the drums it never sounds that way. Even worse is having the SD making everyone blink on every 2 and 4. I also sometimes try to think of using my BD simply to put a "point" on the front of some of the bass player's notes - i.e. not playing a drum part which is discrete and separate, but simply adding emphasis to notes that are already there by putting some attack on the front of them.
Meanwhile, we're all practicing with ear plugs in so we can swing for the fences and dynamics be damned. We're worried about "protecting
our hearing", but what about the audience and our bandmates? And the unfortunate consequence is that we don't hear the subtleties of the instruments we're playing. I know a lot of guys who've been playing classical percussion and drum set for 50+ years, and none of them are deaf. But nearly to a man, they play much quieter than most young drummers, most of the time. Don't get me wrong, they can play a
fff with the best of them, too. I think one difference in perception that's also technologically based is that we tend to think of dynamics and volume as "loudness" in the sense of turning the stereo up or down, whereas a lot of those guys always talk(ed) to me about "more sound" and "less sound" - i.e something more like the concept of "volume" of water or air.
Forte doesn't just translate to "loud", it more closely translates to "strong". There's a not-so-subtle difference in mindset there. Classical snare drummers even use zones on the drum head to help achieve dynamic range, because playing, say,
piano near the edge of the drum is not only quieter, but there is less sound. Less snare vibration, less stuff vibrating, generally. It's an interesting concept to think about/apply.
Moreover, I think all this emphasis on power and volume is self-defeating from a technical standpoint. It's simply much, much more difficult to get out all that fast intricate stuff we all love to play at a high volume level. It's near physically impossible in this part of the universe; gravity, etc. being what it is. So often I have students who come in frustrated that they can play some lick they've copped from a hero, and my first advice is almost always to tell them to try playing it softer. Not only does it make it physically easier to execute, it also tends to get them more relaxed mentally.
More importantly, though, it's self-defeating musically. Small, intricate notes that can add a lot of flavour and spice to our grooves have a greater effect when played at a lower volume level so that the real bare bones of the groove (e.g. BD and backbeats) can stand out. They're hints of "something else", not features in and of themselves. I think it's best to think of them as like grace notes (flams, ruffs, drags) that give some breadth or depth to the primary notes. Dynamic control is as big a feature of playing more intricate patterns as anything else. Without it, you're just playing a whole lot of notes that distract the listening ear from everything else that's going on.