musical drumming

3:30 Sums it all up for me. Also 6:11 is an interesting quote.

Maybe it's just more obvious because we can't produce nice melody lines and harmonies, and we have to make up our parts without the help of harmonic structure or melodies that are given?

Now this is where I disagree. :) Who says we can't? A drum kit usually consists of multiple things. Take for example a simple kit. Snaredrum, two tomtoms, a floordrum, a basedrum, a hihat, a crash and a ride cymbal. All these elements make up for a musical instrument. And all these elements provide different notes one can add to the music. When you can play multiple different notes, you can play melodies. Which is something I think more drummers should do.

Is it possible to make that work than? Yes, simply beceause every melody has a rythmical pattern.

Now, when you're in a Brassband, and you play the snare, you've got only one note to work with. In that case you're forced to stick with the rythmic structures only.
 
I think that Musical drumming is something that only fits or works in certain situations.

There's no doubt that drum sets are musical instruments, as even the most basic ones can produce all three tone ranges(lows, mids, and highs). But I suppose there's variation in how different people play the instrument.
 
I think that Musical drumming is something that only fits or works in certain situations.
I'm not sure if that's what you actually meant to say. Shouldn't all drumming be musical? Unless, of course, it's designed purely as a technical display or exercise.

Another train of thought that always bothers me, the concept that the drum kit is a musical instrument. It's not IMO, it's a collection of musical instruments assembled as a kit. Just the same as a set of 4 timpani. Each component of the kit is an instrument in it's own right, & I believe a player improves significantly if that is encompassed within the playing.

Love the interview Ken.
 
I'm not sure if that's what you actually meant to say. Shouldn't all drumming be musical? Unless, of course, it's designed purely as a technical display or exercise.

Another train of thought that always bothers me, the concept that the drum kit is a musical instrument. It's not IMO, it's a collection of musical instruments assembled as a kit. Just the same as a set of 4 timpani. Each component of the kit is an instrument in it's own right, & I believe a player improves significantly if that is encompassed within the playing.

Love the interview Ken.

I don't think I could call a basic rock beat musical. There's time-keeping, and then musical drumming. But of course there's stuff in between.
 
Another train of thought that always bothers me, the concept that the drum kit is a musical instrument. It's not IMO, it's a collection of musical instruments assembled as a kit. Just the same as a set of 4 timpani. Each component of the kit is an instrument in it's own right, & I believe a player improves significantly if that is encompassed within the playing.

Love the interview Ken.

That is indeed another way of looking at it. Still, I think my theory is aplicable on this.

I think that Musical drumming is something that only fits or works in certain situations.

I think it fits in more situations than usually is acknowledged. It for e.g. doesn't fit in laid back songs, like a ballad, simply because it would distract from the other instruments or the vocals, because ballads put the emphasis on melodies rather than rythms. If used here, it could very well be considered overplaying.

But in most other cases, like louder, up-tempo rythmical songs, melodic drum fills can really add something to a song. It would give them a sharper edge, so to say. It truly saddens me that most drummers, especially in pop & rock music, just stick with a groove and do everything by the book, and very few have the creativity to think out of the box. Now don't get me wrong here, a proper groove is essential to be maintained in order for up-tempo rythmical songs to work. But for e.g. rock grooves are mainly patterns on the snare, hi-hat, and bassdrum, and the tomtoms are used only for fills. Now, who said the toms can't be incorporated into the groove, creating something like a bass line usually played by the bass player? Sometimes less isn't more, but just less.

This is more or less the same thing as what I meant in the 'underplaying' topic. (Is it a good idea to merge the two topics?)
 
I think it fits in more situations than usually is acknowledged. It for e.g. doesn't fit in laid back songs, like a ballad, simply because it would distract from the other instruments or the vocals, because ballads put the emphasis on melodies rather than rythms. If used here, it could very well be considered overplaying.

All that distraction isn't musical.

If a ballad is laid back and doesn't require much in the way of embellishment, the musical thing to do is to take a back seat and let it breathe.
 
Another train of thought that always bothers me, the concept that the drum kit is a musical instrument. It's not IMO, it's a collection of musical instruments assembled as a kit. Just the same as a set of 4 timpani. Each component of the kit is an instrument in it's own right, & I believe a player improves significantly if that is encompassed within the playing.

Here's Elvin Jones on this subject:

Rick Mattingly: It would be ridiculous to refer to a piano as being a collection of eighty-eight instruments, and yet, many people seem to think of a drumset as being a collection of instruments. They talk about the function of the cymbal, and the function of the bass drum, and so on, as though these things were not connected. You seem to play the set as though it is one instrument.

Elvin Jones: It is one instrument, and I would hasten to say that I take that as the basis for my whole approach to the drums. It is a single musical instrument of several components. Naturally, you've got tom-toms scattered around, and the snare drum is in front of you, and the bass drum is down there, and you have cymbals at different levels. But all in all, just as a piano is one instrument, a drumset is one instrument. That is not to say that the cymbal isn't an instrument. But in order for it to be an instrument you have to use it as an instrument. They are individual instruments if you have them set up that way and you have a tom-tom player and a bass drum player and so on. Okay, then they are individual instruments. It just depends on how one chooses to apply it. So I think that's probably where people get confused.

In a dance band (to use that phrase), or a jazz band—small group, big band, combo, or as college kids call them, "stage bands"—then this is a single instrument. You can't isolate the different parts of the set any more than you can isolate your left leg from the rest of your body. Your body is one, even though you have two legs, two arms, ten fingers, and all of that. But still, it's one body. All of those parts add up to one human being. It's the same with the instrument. People are never going to approach the
drumset correctly if they don't start thinking of it as a single musical instrument.

We live in a world where everything is categorized and locked up into little bitty compartments. But I have to insist that the drumset is one. This is the way it should be approached and studied and listened to, and all of the basic philosophies should be from that premise. If you learn it piecemeal, that's the way you're going to play it. You have to learn it in total.
 
I think it's important to note that Elvin's approach to the drum set comes at a time when the drum set is in its infancy. Elvin is essentially creating a whole new conceptual approach to the drum set. His approach radically changed the way drummers viewed the instrument. It is a tremendously important occurrence in the history of drumming. But it is still just one way to look at the drum set.
 
I'm not sure if that's what you actually meant to say. Shouldn't all drumming be musical? Unless, of course, it's designed purely as a technical display or exercise.

Another train of thought that always bothers me, the concept that the drum kit is a musical instrument. It's not IMO, it's a collection of musical instruments assembled as a kit. Just the same as a set of 4 timpani. Each component of the kit is an instrument in it's own right, & I believe a player improves significantly if that is encompassed within the playing.

Love the interview Ken.

That's odd to me, because many of the timpanists I know don't approach it that way at all. When I'm playing timpani (which isn't that often any more) I try to be very conscious of the fact that I'm playing a single instrument and that the harmony, rhythm and dynamics have to be of a set no matter which particular drum I'm playing. And I take this approach because when I hear a timpani line - say, as an audience member - it sounds like one instrument with multiple pitches. The timbre is the same, the physical and harmonic location of the instrument is the same, etc. Additionally, timpani tend to be tuned to particular harmonics and so the intonation from drum to drum has to be right.
 
Here's Elvin Jones on this subject:
Of course the kit is an instrument, it's just made up of a number of instruments assembled together. Once assembled, it becomes a whole with each relating to the other. I have no problem with that concept, but the piano analogy is just silly. My regarding each group component as an instrument in it's own right is my way of appreciating the range of tones each can produce and the totally different contribution each can make according to how it's played. Perhaps I shouldn't have said the kit isn't an instrument. I was drawing attention to the individual instrument status of the component parts.
 
That's odd to me, because many of the timpanists I know don't approach it that way at all. When I'm playing timpani (which isn't that often any more) I try to be very conscious of the fact that I'm playing a single instrument and that the harmony, rhythm and dynamics have to be of a set no matter which particular drum I'm playing. And I take this approach because when I hear a timpani line - say, as an audience member - it sounds like one instrument with multiple pitches. The timbre is the same, the physical and harmonic location of the instrument is the same, etc. Additionally, timpani tend to be tuned to particular harmonics and so the intonation from drum to drum has to be right.
Completely agree, but it doesn't mean to say that a single timpani isn't to be regarded as an instrument. Some pieces require only the playing of 1 timpani, but in a way that extracts many different tones/expressions to make the performance.
 
The main gist of that intelligent interview that I came away with are the importance of really interesting musical ideas. I'm with Gavin in that I prefer to hear a drummer play stuff that just sits so well with the song, a perfectly placed and executed note that the general drumming public would normally not even consider, as opposed to over the top flash for flashes sake type drumming.
That's the musical part, the ideas. If your ideas are everyday, commonplace, done a million times before, then no amount of technique is gonna win me over. I need cool ideas to really get on board. A good rhythmic design trumps phenomonal technique applied to uninspired ideas everyday, JMO. Of course phenomonal technique applied to killer ideas is the goal, not knocking technique here, just saying that intelligent musical ideas is where the real focus should be, after you've developed sufficient technique. Musical maturity is what I'm referring to.
 
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