BrewBillfold
Silver Member
Just curious, after watching a lot of solos on youtube recently--from both famous drummers and not so famous, and both rock drummers and jazz drummers.
I actually find it kind of frustrating that so many drummers do not bother with grooving or at least keeping time when they solo . . . a lot of what I'm hearing sounds more like noodling to me. Sometimes it's impressive noodling--in terms of speed or dexterity, but most of it does not tend to sound very "musical" to me. In fact, a lot of it sounds to me like what someone who doesn't know how to play drums does when they sit down behind a kit, it's just that they do it with less "athletic" ability/finesse.
But that's not how we normally play drums. In other words, so many drummers approach soloing completely differently than they approach playing otherwise. It's almost as if they're trying to play a different instrument during the solo.
It seems like a lot of players think, "Ah, here's my chance to show everyone how fast I can move my hands and feet and finally hit every drum, cymbal, etc. every way that I know how." It would be like a guitarist doing a solo while forgetting about playing in keys, etc., and just trying to make sure that they get to every fret on every string at least once, as fast as possible, and with every different method of picking, harmonics, palm muting, etc. that they're aware of . . . which would be fairly ridiculous.
It might be interesting if we could start more of a trend towards grooving and keeping time during solos, trying to approach them more musically, at least to even things out a bit.
I actually find it kind of frustrating that so many drummers do not bother with grooving or at least keeping time when they solo . . . a lot of what I'm hearing sounds more like noodling to me. Sometimes it's impressive noodling--in terms of speed or dexterity, but most of it does not tend to sound very "musical" to me. In fact, a lot of it sounds to me like what someone who doesn't know how to play drums does when they sit down behind a kit, it's just that they do it with less "athletic" ability/finesse.
But that's not how we normally play drums. In other words, so many drummers approach soloing completely differently than they approach playing otherwise. It's almost as if they're trying to play a different instrument during the solo.
It seems like a lot of players think, "Ah, here's my chance to show everyone how fast I can move my hands and feet and finally hit every drum, cymbal, etc. every way that I know how." It would be like a guitarist doing a solo while forgetting about playing in keys, etc., and just trying to make sure that they get to every fret on every string at least once, as fast as possible, and with every different method of picking, harmonics, palm muting, etc. that they're aware of . . . which would be fairly ridiculous.
It might be interesting if we could start more of a trend towards grooving and keeping time during solos, trying to approach them more musically, at least to even things out a bit.