Guitarist comment on drummers

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
At a gig last night an old rocker dude with the leather jacket, "been through the war" denims and big old leather boots, dyed dark hair, red bandana in his hair, smelling of beer and cigarettes, and being a little loud in the audience (you know how some musicians have to participate from the audience)...yea one of those guys. Not putting him down, just painting the picture.

So afterwards, since there wasn't a whole lot of people, I try and say hi and thank people for hanging out till the end. That goes a long way. So I went up to rock dude and struck up a conversation since he was a local musician I never saw before. He complimented my drumming and then (in a joking manner) he said, and I'm a lead guitar player and we hate drummers. I took that to have some truth in it.

No real point, just gleaning a little insight as to how some guitar dudes see us. I should have asked him why he felt that way, but when he made his comment, I just jumped in and said "because we ruin everything, right?" Which he agreed to but that could have been social graces. I didn't want to drag the conversation down with his reasons. But I wish now that I did just so I could pick his guitarist brain a little more.

He did tell me a semi funny story where some woman he dated told him he was a wannabe. But he made a pretty good counter maneuver by saying that he wasn't a wannabe, he's a has been. Lol. The only time where being a has been is the preferable option lol.

I'm not ragging on guitarists at all, I love a great guitarist, but I definitely have experienced firsthand the "guitarists hate drummers" thing a number of times, with different people.

Why is that?
 
Lately I have had the opportunity to watch many drummers play. I have noticed that many of them play too loud. And they feel they have to add a large tom and cymbal fill at every transition in the song.
There are also many drummers that have a bad sense of time. It seems there are more bad drummers out there than there are bad guitar players.

Two weeks ago a guitar player complemented me on my playing and said,"It is great to have a good solid drummer behind me. It give the song a strong foundation."

.
 
Yea, drums are so instrumental in creating the mood. Honestly, the biggest issue I see is drummers thinking that the drum part is the most important thing in the band, and should take precedence. What these drummers haven't figured out is when you pull the drums back....all of a sudden, they blend better and sound MUCH more interesting. Just by lowering the overall volume achieves the effect drummers are going for by playing loud. It's backwards. Plus drums are just so darn powerful. Taming the drumset to make a great drum part is a high skill. Drums are like a wild animal. The drums have to be the most precise instrument onstage IMO. So take the wildest instrument there is and make it sound like the most controlled instrument there is. The slightest glitch in meter can be felt instantly. If the tempo is off, it ruins the feel, and ruins the song. Too many tom fills ruin songs. Playing too loud ruins songs. Not listening to or supporting the others, instead, playing with an agenda, ruins the song. Trying to impress people. There are so many easy traps to fall into, it's a minefield. You can't take the music higher if you fall into the traps. Like playing with no regard to context instead of LISTENING and playing off of people and predicting where their spaces are.. So it's not the playing, it's the playing choices...and NOT LISTENING that are the big issues I see. It all comes down to how you feel music, and if it fits or it doesn't fit or work with what you're playing.
 
Last edited:
There are so many easy traps to fall into, it's a minefield.

I never thought of it like that. But you are correct.
It is easy to screw up the drum part.
And the mistakes are probably more noticeable than say a guitar or bass guitar mistake.


( Geese, now you are making me scared to play.)

.
 
I'm guessing he referred to volume? Of 2 instruments in a band, guitar and drums seem to compete most in terms of volume (they need not, but do in many cases). Many guitarists turn up to combat that. And I agree with Jim many cover-band bar drummers seem to have only one volume setting. Having just joined a trio, I was super-proud when the first things they said they liked about me was playing the right volume at the right parts.

I don't like when somebody like your rocker dude audience member says a flippant thing, and I don't have the good retort. I feel like they one-upped me.
 
Probably? Drum mistakes are absolutely more noticeable than ANY other instrument mistake onstage. They stick out like a biker at a knitting bee. And enough with the scared stuff, we're high wire artists. Or at least high lolo.
 
I'm guessing he referred to volume? Of 2 instruments in a band, guitar and drums seem to compete most in terms of volume (they need not, but do in many cases). Many guitarists turn up to combat that. And I agree with Jim many cover-band bar drummers seem to have only one volume setting. Having just joined a trio, I was super-proud when the first things they said they liked about me was playing the right volume at the right parts.

I don't like when somebody like your rocker dude audience member says a flippant thing, and I don't have the good retort. I feel like they one-upped me.

Eat $h!% is an easy one to remember lol

But your volume compliment...that's a big deal to guitarists. So is listening to them. Which you must be doing to get the volume right. They are trying to reinforce good behavior lol. A guitarist compliment is worth 3 of any other compliment lol.
 
And enough with the scared stuff, we're high wire artists.

Well I just have to say this. Having not practiced since I was a teenager, I get these strange feelings just before I play.

I'm all set up and I'm sitting there while the band gets ready to play. My mind begins to say,
"How come you know how to play the drums?"
"Can you really play these drums?"
"Why do you think you can play the drums?"
"What are you going to play?"
"Where are you going to get the grooves to play?"
"Maybe you can't play the drums and you are just fooling yourself."

Stuff like that enters my mind.

As soon as the music starts, I start playing and it's just magic. I can play really well.
So after a few minutes I relax and I begin to watch the football game on the big screen TV while I'm playing.

I'm telling you it's weird !

.
 
I'm all set up and I'm sitting there while the band gets ready to play. My mind begins to say,
"How come you know how to play the drums?"
"Can you really play these drums?"
"Why do you think you can play the drums?"
"What are you going to play?"
"Where are you going to get the grooves to play?"
"Maybe you can't play the drums and you are just fooling yourself."

Stuff like that enters my mind.

Interesting. Were that me with all that in my mind ...I'd freeze with doubt.

I simply sit there and inside bubble with excitement, can't wait for it all to begin...but outside have a cool facade. Such a fugazi I am.
 
Hey whatever works. Not for me, I try and clear all thoughts from my head, retract the shields and turn the receivers up to full sensitivity. I'm really fortunate that I have a great musical source where I get all my ideas from, my bandleader. He creates the landscape and I drive right through it.

When I have to solo, that's when I really feel like the high wire dude because I have nothing external from which to draw. No net. I get everything I do from what the others play. When they stop it's like someone cutting off the stream of ideas I count on.

There is a volume heirarchy though. IMO, generally speaking it's vocals, then guitar, then bass and drums about equal. Any lead player is at the top. Piano is somewhere in the middle. So many exceptions. So when the guitarist turns up, he's trying to take his space relative to the drums. Drummers should pretty much always let the guitars be louder than them. In fact just about everything should be louder than the drums for a great blend. The drums never get lost because the are so percussive. Cutting through is too much drums. Blending plain sounds better. My recorder tells me this every time I listen. Sometimes I may play a good figure, but it's just a tad too loud, and misses the mark. Pulling back sounds better than too loud everyday of the week in my world. Feeling secure enough with lower volumes is a beautiful thing. It's all about the blend. When you're baking a cake, everything has to be in just the right proportion relative to everything else to be tasty. Volume is exactly like that too.
 
Last edited:
I'm calling selective attention on this one Lar.

Guitarists are widely panned on this very forum......sure, mostly in jest......but I suspect the jibes made by the guitarist in the crowd were made in similar vein.

I really don't see it as being any different from guys continually shit-canning their guitarists on a drum forum. Whether it's a serious gripe or just a harmless dig, it happens here a lot. I'm not at all surprised to hear that it's not the sole domain of drummers.
 
You guys are all funny with this self doubt thing based on whether or not the guitarist likes you. I play both instruments and have played both in touring bands, so I guess I have some insight into this.

First off, everybody hates a bad drummer. And Im not referring to dynamics or ability to listen. I grew up in hardcore bands, we had one dynamic. Its dropping beats or a constantly sliding tempo that pisses everybody off. The problem is that its much easier to spot a bad drummer than a bad guitarist. Combine that with the fact that everybody thinks the drums are easy and don't require any practice and you have a recipe for dislike. However, I get along with everybody and many guitarists are good friends of mine. I personally think the guy was just a douche and wanted to be an ass.
 
I just went over to two guitar player forums and read about what they don't like about drummers. The comments vary a lot. Basically the thing they hate the most is a drummer who can not keep the band on a consistent rhythm.


I did find one good joke. I hope this will not degrade this thread into drummer jokes, but this is just too funny:

Q. How can you tell if the stage is level?
A. Drool comes out of both sides of the drummer's mouth.


.
 
Basically the thing they hate the most is a drummer who can not keep the band on a consistent rhythm.


.

haha, fair enough, but as somebody on here once said, after the count-in, song starts, "the whole band keeps time". That means you guitarists too.
 
I'm a long time gigging lead guitarist that switched to drums 4 or so years ago. Nobody hated drummers, but I will say that a majority of drummers I've played with or seen in the area kinda suck. They either play too fast, too slow (or both in the same song), try to do as many fills as possible, twirl sticks and screw up the tempo, etc...

As a guitarist, I used to joke to other guys in the band that all I wanted was a drummer that could keep a good tempo and lead the rest of the band into different parts of the songs. That's it. If they could do that, they were high on my list!
 
It was probably just a put-on. Sounds like a funny guy just having fun with you.
 
It's simple, they are morons! More realistically though, they are just different, different personality types, if you take my meaning. It's cat people vs. dog people. When you talk about production you find two schools of thought. Guitar loud mix and drum loud mix. Of course vocals are always loudest, but the next instrument in volume, generally speaking, is either drums or guitar. I know that when I mix, I follow a drum loud formula. Let my guitarist have the board and the results are decidedly guitar oriented. This guy just sounds like a jerk. That's not a guitarist or drummer thing, usually that's a singer thing :)
 
Well, to be fair he was giving me a compliment. So he wasn't being a jerk to me. To be fair, I've seen drummers just ruin stuff. A good drummer is much rarer than a good guitarist IMO. Plus unmiced drums are really one of the only truly acoustic instruments onstage. They are much harder to get in line than anything with an amplifier. But a monkey can hit drums, right?

eclipseownzu summed it up very nicely.
 
So after a few minutes I relax and I begin to watch the football game on the big screen TV while I'm playing.

.

I find it interesting that you brought the football thing into it. I have always considered myself to be like the offensive line. Without a good offensive line you just ain't gonna score...its gotta be solid and dependable.
 
A guitar player who knows how to play RHYTHM guitar is as rare as a drummer who understands dynamics. Yeah, there are lots of these clowns who can wail, too bad they can't play actual songs. Hey, at least they're loud enough.
I've said for years (as a guitarist) that I can get away with murder with a good rhythm section. A good drummer makes the whole band better.
Larry said most of it in his second post above. Right on.
Oh, and don't be too hard on me guys, I'm now a drummer of four years and counting. Ha! (drummer joke there).
 
Back
Top