Should all drummers learn piano?

I actually started a conversation that is the reverse of this one over at the allaboutjazz forum, but I was curious on everyone's perspective on this issue.

Do you think that all drummers should learn some piano (or the equivalent on some other instrument)? What are the pros/cons?

Drummers, no. Percussionists, yes. To me, the piano is the simplest way to visualize the way the notes interact with one another. If you just want to keep time, you don't need it, but if you want to be able to speak coherantly about arrangements and such with your fellow musicians I think it's a great idea. I took 4 years of piano lessons before I picked up the drums. I wish I'd never put the piano down. I can't really play the piano with any skill, but I do have a fairly solid foundation of music from that background. I love it when I'm playing with someone that looks at a chord chart and says "C7, what's that?" Then, they all look at me in amazement as I simply explain to them that they need to add a "B" note to whatever they're playing.

haredrums said:

I actually started a conversation that is the reverse of this one over at the allaboutjazz forum, but I was curious on everyone's perspective on this issue.

Do you think that all drummers should learn some piano (or the equivalent on some other instrument)? What are the pros/cons?

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Yes.

Pros: You learn melody, harmony, and rhythm on one instrument.

Cons: You could end up like Liberace.


...

Ha!

Good point aydee, got to watch out for that!

And joshvibert, why would this apply to percussionists but not drummers? I am confused about your distinction here.

I don't think it matters what melodic instrument you decide to study a bit, I really can't think of any realistic cons. I play some bass and guitar, I know it's helped me to think of the music a bit more instead of getting focused on how fast my strokes are, or the math behind everything.

joshvibert said:

I love it when I'm playing with someone that looks at a chord chart and says "C7, what's that?" Then, they all look at me in amazement as I simply explain to them that they need to add a "B" note to whatever they're playing.

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Oops, careful. Provided that "whatever they're playing" is a C major chord, adding B would make it a C major 7. The C7 wants a B flat.

As I've said before, I'm convinced that all musicians should be functionally conversant on the piano. At the very least it makes being a musician a whole lot more fun, and you can take it as far as you're willing to go.

haredrums said:

Ha!

Good point aydee, got to watch out for that!

And joshvibert, why would this apply to percussionists but not drummers? I am confused about your distinction here.

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Sorry, that's just a bit of lingo. Kinda like, any idiot can sit behind a kit, start pounding out a rhythm and be a drummer, but percussionists are musicians and can play more than just a drumkit.

con struct said:

Oops, careful. Provided that "whatever they're playing" is a C major chord, adding B would make it a C major 7. The C7 wants a B flat.

As I've said before, I'm convinced that all musicians should be functionally conversant on the piano. At the very least it makes being a musician a whole lot more fun, and you can take it as far as you're willing to go.

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You're right, sorry I missed that. The "whatever they're playing" bit was because most guitar players in modern worship (most of what I play) don't actually play the true major chords. They usually play open configurations and most of them don't even know what all the notes they're playing even are; just "you put this finger here and that one there" kinda stuff.

I don't know about any of these "Should all drummers..." types of questions. Can learning piano be helpful? Yes, no question about it! Should learning piano be required before adding the "drummer" title to your business card? I don't think so.

joshvibert said:

Sorry, that's just a bit of lingo. Kinda like, any idiot can sit behind a kit, start pounding out a rhythm and be a drummer, but percussionists are musicians and can play more than just a drumkit.

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Any idiot can sit behind a set of bongos or on a cajun, start pounding out a rhythm, and "be a percussionist". I see it regularly enough on acoustic gigs.

There's more to being a drummer or percussionist than that; and I don't think the two terms make the distinction as to what that "more" is.

Duckenheimer said:

Any idiot can sit behind a set of bongos or on a cajun, start pounding out a rhythm, and "be a percussionist". I see it regularly enough on acoustic gigs.

There's more to being a drummer or percussionist than that; and I don't think the two terms make the distinction as to what that "more" is.

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Fair enough. You're right, I forgot about the hippies. I had a "percussionist" join me on stage a few weeks ago. The worship leader invited him to join us and the guy played a soup pot through the whole set...wow.

The distinction for me came from my instructor in high school.

** Drummers beat on drumkits

** Percussionists play Timpani, Marimba, Bar chimes, clave, cabasa, Vibraphone, drumset, snare drum, etc

Well, I'm learning piano at the moment, and I feel it helps me a lot in the musicality department(and theory department). It also makes me appreciate piano/keyboard solo's even more.

joshvibert said:

** Drummers beat on drumkits

** Percussionists play Timpani, Marimba, Bar chimes, clave, cabasa, Vibraphone, drumset, snare drum, etc

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I'm gonna just modify this a little bit...

me said:

** Drummers beat on drumkits

** Percussionists beat on Timpanis, Bongos, Marimbas, 5-gallon buckets, Bar chimes, coffee cans, claves, each other, cabasas, their chests, Vibraphones, triangles, drumsets, snare drums, etc

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Okay, that's better. Ha ha!

MikeM said:

Can learning piano be helpful? Yes, no question about it! Should learning piano be required before adding the "drummer" title to your business card? I don't think so.

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+1.

Duckenheimer said:

Any idiot can sit behind a set of bongos or on a cajun, start pounding out a rhythm, and "be a percussionist". I see it regularly enough on acoustic gigs.

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Didn't know you were at one of my acoustic gigs. You should've come up and introduced yourself....I'd have bought you a beer.

Should they? That's each persons individual journey. I do know I don't believe everyone needs to follow the same path to get to where they're going. But with the benefit of hindisght, I certainly wish I had put a little more time into a tuned instrument.

Imo yes, even if it's just to know how to construct chords and scales, it helps immensely, and even though it doesn't correlate directly with drumming, I do think it makes you a better musician.

In my case, I'm taking complementary piano at college now, it's required and I need it for when I take the harmony, arrangement and composition classes, it's already helping me in my theory class.

MikeM said:

I don't know about any of these "Should all drummers..." types of questions. Can learning piano be helpful? Yes, no question about it! Should learning piano be required before adding the "drummer" title to your business card? I don't think so.

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Well said!

"Message is too short...even with quote."

MikeM said:

I don't know about any of these "Should all drummers..." types of questions. Can learning piano be helpful? Yes, no question about it! Should learning piano be required before adding the "drummer" title to your business card? I don't think so.

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Hi MIke,

I think I understand where you are coming from. My response would be that I don't think that playing a piano is a prerequisite to being a drummer, but I also can't think of any reason why drummers would not learn piano (or some equivalent). In other words, my position is that playing the piano makes everyone, particularly drummers, better musicians. That doesn't mean that everyone has to play piano in order to be called a drummer though.

I think that we basically agree about this.

haredrums said:

...but I also can't think of any reason why drummers would not learn piano (or some equivalent).

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You're right, I think we're in agreement on this.

I'm just pulling this part of your quote to play devil's advocate with. My response would be that some drummers won't learn piano or any other instrument simply because they don't feel like it.

I don't mean that to sound flippant; it's exactly how I felt during my first decade of drumming. I could appreciate good guitar, keyboard, & bass players, but I felt absolutely no need, and had no interest, in exploring their instruments. The first part of my epiphany came after meeting a group of guys who liked to jam together all the time - and they honestly didn't care what instruments they were playing. It's not that any of them were necessarily good, per se, but that they simply didn't have a notion of "I'm the guitar player," or "I'm the drummer," or whatever.

The second part of my epiphany was after playing in a band with a guitar player and a bass player, who weren't bad players, but who just couldn't seem to compose a song and it was really holding us back (it broke us up, as it turned out). It seemed very simple to me: find a cool riff, match it with one or two other cool riffs, have an interesting melody (or hook) ride over the top of it, arrange it in a nice way and call it good.

I thought, "Hell, even I could do that." And besides, these other cats I know don't limit themselves to any particular instrument, so why should I? So I bought a 4-track, a drum machine, a guitar, and a bass and started figuring out how to play (with much help and guidance from a non-drumming guitar player friend) and I was right: composing wasn't all that hard. I won't claim to be any sort of genius at it, and my playing skills with strings are still rudimentary, but I was able to get a lot of material committed to tape and I eventually put drums to a good chunk of it, and yeah, it informed my drumming quite a bit. I could have stuck with it and got a lot better at it (as with anything else) but mostly I just like playing drums.

So it's easy to imagine that if I hadn't wasted a lot of time with players who could play, but couldn't write; and if I hadn't been exposed to some hacks that didn't care if they played drums or guitar, that I might still be in my earlier mindset where I thought drums were for me and notes were for everyone else.

I currently have a lot of practice time and tbh I max out mentally on the drums after about three hours, so I pick up the guitar or hit the keyboard in breaks between drumming and afterwards. And I get to discuss tunes, compose them and actually out-theory the other musicians in the band most of the time. It helps cement me as a drummer in the band for those reasons

Pros: You know more about what's going on in the music you're playing and how others in the band are experiencing the music (and your drumming). However, a drummer can go a long way with good limbs and good ears.

Cons: Same as anything else - opportunity cost. While learning piano you have less time for other things you want or need to do.