Tips for Adding Some Substances to my Grooves

?uesto

Silver Member
What can I do to spice things up in jam sessions and make what I'm playing more interesting?

All I really want to do at jams is keep time, but I want my grooves to have more substance and depth than they already do. I make use of 16th note grace notes on the snare drum, and 16th note hi hat grooves, and cool bass drum patterns. I make some use of displacing the backbeat too if I feel the other musicians understand what's going on.

So what else is there that I can work on? I like to think of myself as a decent groove drummer with a nice feel and a nice sound, but I feel so inadequate when I watch other groove drummers.

Any advice?
 
My first thought is that you already have the substance and depth, but adding spice is where most drummers get into trouble. If you're playing grooves that sound great within the music, then you're doing the right thing. Don't worry about how your playing compares to other drummers, you're not playing with them. Now if these other drummers are getting hired for gigs and you're not, that's a different story.

What kind of music goes on at the jam? It truly may be that you're not playing quite enough, but I know of very few open jams where the drummer is expected to do much more than lay a solid foundation for the guitarists to show-off. The best you can do in any situation is serve the song. That means taking a seriously objective listen to what you play vs what the other players are playing. And yes, the guitar player can show off, but if the drummer does it, they're considered to be over-playing. It's not fair... it just is.

Treat every playing situation - even a jam - as if it was an audition. Other players are listening to what you play and sub-consciously, or maybe very consciously, sizing you up as someone they would like to play with again, possibly for a band project or gigs.

Bermuda
 
Listen to a lot of 60's/70's soul (whatever kind of music you're playing) and remember that playing time and simple, appropriate fills really, really well is also substance. Try to be like this guy, not this guy.

It doesn't sound like you need to add vocabulary- displacing the backbeat is further out than most people ever need to take things.

And everything Bermuda said...
 
And everything Todd said!
 
Listen to a lot of 60's/70's soul (whatever kind of music you're playing) and remember that playing time and simple, appropriate fills really, really well is also substance. Try to be like this guy, not this guy.

James Gadson, the first guy? Saweet!

Todd, the other guy gets paid a heck of a lot of money for grooving, but overkill in my book too, yes.

To the OP I would suggest explore voicings and accents and what happens when you shift them around on the groove. Also experiment with changing the notes around on the kit.
David Garibaldi has had a lot of fun with that and left us all with a legacy of some truly wierd and wonderfully original badass groovin grooves in the process.

...
 
There are some more Gadson clips on my blog for everyone who now needs more...

Great treasure trove, Todd. Fun blog!

Funny thing about about "Aint no Sunshine".. I cover it with a Reggae band whenever I play with them, and our singer just cant sing it right. The band went blue in the face trying to get it to groove and get it to soundright but it never ever did; Moral of the story, you gotta sing this song right. The tightest groove in the world wont save shoddy phrasing

To the OP- I would recommend listening to some of the samples on the clip " A documentary called Keep In Time, which I'll be tracking down, also featuring Earl Palmer and Paul Humphrey: " on Todd's blog.
 
The next thing to add to the mix is structure and phrasing. As JB was saying Abe. Musicians need to know structure.

Notice how in this track, JR not only uses a mess of beats, one for each section; but he also adds little nuances to the groove that articulate the phrasing and structure. Plus the classic opening drum fill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nleyNwzWwk
 
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..
 
The next thing to add to the mix is structure and phrasing. As JB was saying Abe. Musicians need to know structure.

Notice how in this track, JR not only uses a mess of beats, one for each section; but he also adds little nuances to the groove that articulate the phrasing and structure. Plus the classic opening drum fill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nleyNwzWwk

Classic example! Which is why EVERYBODY loves John! Yea, that opening fill is straight out of Zigaboo, isnt it?

...
 
Got a couple of small ideas that I throw in occasionally....

-Quick hi-hat chokes. If I'm playing 8th notes on closed hats, I open the hat as I hit it and close it straight away, on the next 16th note. You'll often hear it played on the alternate 16ths (the e's and a's) but right now can't think of any songs where it's done on the 8th note. It could look like this, played on the second 8th note of the bar:

HH: x-o#x-x-x-x-x-x-

x=closed, o = open, # = close the hats.

-Alternate between rimshots and open hits

-Practice taking things OUT rather than adding

-Switch to half time for one bar. It's done in a couple of the verses in this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JkK_B81SrM

-Play regular 16ths on the hats but play the left hand VERY softly. This can sound really nice if done well

-Practice this: kick-floor tom-snare. Get it up to speed so it sounds like a quick 32nd note "badadup". Hit the snare on beat 4 at the end of a phrase (or anywhere, but this is a good place to start). Once again I can't think of any songs that you could hear it, too tired, haha
 
Some great advice. Agree with tbmills ... simplifying allows me to better hear what everyone else is doing. I think keen listening is key. Sometimes what's needed is not new notes but different timbres, especially all the different types of "chick" you can pull from the hats.

I've listened back to recordings of jams where I can tell I was thinking too much about the drumming and not enough about the music. There will be little accents played by the guitarist or whomever that are screaming for reinforcement from the drums, yet I'll be just chugging along - or worse - adding some fill that only serves to dilutes the total effect. Real facepalm stuff.
 
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It's hard to say objectively...."try and do this or that" during the jam. We don't know what kind of music is being played or how it is being played.
For your scrutiny I'd like to submit the proposal that instead of thinking with your head about what you can do to add spice to the groove, instead approach your jams with a totally "reactive" mindset.

With a purely reactive mindset you don't approach the song with an agenda (I'm going to do backbeat displacement), but rather go in with a blank slate and let whatever you are hearing steer you to where the groove wants to go.

I think most would agree that this is a higher, truer form of jamming compared to an agenda type approach. I just listen to whoever is taking the lead, whether it be a horn, a guitar, a keyboard, a vocalist.... I listen and try to inhabit the same headspace that the person is feeling, melodically and rhythmically speaking, and try to complement that. In other words, like Pol said, keen listening. Actually I like to think of it as beyond listening and closer to mind reading.

When you can predict where a soloist is going, you can pave the way for them, and that's what I'm taking about. No agenda whatsoever, just mind reading as best you can..

When I just can't predict a solist, that's when I default to a solid ostinato-ish pattern so that the soloist has a steady pulse they can use to build upon. Too many fancy things going on at once clutters things up, IMO.
 
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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..

You said it all, Thats what drumming is about. Like Todd Sucherman said in his DVD.
Time, Meter, Groove, Feel, making correct musical decisions, Interacting with other musicians. Thats it end of story.
 
Classic example! Which is why EVERYBODY loves John! Yea, that opening fill is straight out of Zigaboo, isnt it?

...

You got it. I don't think it's a Zigaboo thing, it has a very corp type of feel. It's a cadence that could actually come right out of a marching situation where there is a repeated rhythm and then there is some kind of cadence into You're a Grand Ole Flag or what have you. Probably has more to do with Gadd, 50 Ways.

It's really not a question of simplicity vs. complexity for me the question is are you doing something that is interesting to listen to? How many times can you hear that tune and still enjoy it? That's what makes a hit single.The Michael Jackson example is a great example of how that ability separates out the big boys. Looking at John Robinson's drum part, it stands alone as a musical statement and helps create the flow of the music with contrast, groove and subtlety. Dynamics do a play a big role in that; as in this example where I think there are three cymbal crashes, and one big fill.
 
Listen to a lot of 60's/70's soul (whatever kind of music you're playing) and remember that playing time and simple, appropriate fills really, really well is also substance. Try to be like this guy, not this guy.

It doesn't sound like you need to add vocabulary- displacing the backbeat is further out than most people ever need to take things.

And everything Bermuda said...

Get a load of the volume Gadson is playing at. Now THAT'S something I wish more drummers would get a load of.
 
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.
 
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