All roads eventually lead to where you are going
Posted in Journal on September 30th, 2011 by adminI want point out that those are just my own personal opinions and not based on actual facts or laws of nature. I sincerely hope that you judge my words in this article for what they are, they are a part of my own spiritual understanding of the instrument and are not meant to impose.
To me the instrument should not be studied but within a musical context. I have studied practically hundreds of drummers in my time, most of them simply in the context of arrangements which have always been of high interest to me.
However there are some that I have studied from a pure technical standpoint and those I have pretty much analyzed so thoroughly that when I hear them play, I usually hear and understand every note simultaneously. To make an analysis of an advanced drummer you need to go through the layers and building blocks of that particular individual.
Some drummers are not meant to be studied technically in my opinion. As much as you may adore Elvin Jones (I certainly do) he should not be studied. Rather you should listen purely to his nuances and timbers, Elvin played drums somewhat like a painter. He was not a harmonic drummer, he was rhythmic but very tribal, but most of all he had an industrial quality to his use of tonal spectrum and color.
But do not attempt to play his stuff, please don’t do that. Rather listen to his playing for countless hours and years, enjoy it but never count out his measures. Don’t try to sound like Elvin, rather he should inspire you to do your best in your attempt to get to a similar place by your own methods, but it will be a different place, a place where you are one with your own angels and demons, where by some long shot, a Colombian feel turns in to a weird funk-groove or an ambiance soundscape molds it self in to a free-jazz pattern.
99.9% of the stuff I hear on the radio, I know exactly what the drummer will do next. This is not good for me, it means that there is so much cliche going on and so much mimicking. That’s why I liked Mick Fleetwood in the old days. He would pass on a fill going in to the head or a bridge of a song, breaking an almost unwritten law by that inaction.
Instead he would throw in a fill or rather an awkward phrasing where it was not necessarily mandatory or common to do so. This behavior of Mick Fleetwood was very important in the history and evolution of rock drumming. Unfortunately cliches are very relentless and a conscious effort should be made to break away from them.
Listen to Mick Fleetwood, then take this a litle further and listen to the very unpredictable phrasings of Vinnie Colaiuta. Some of his most advanced stuff should not be studied though; If you hear Vinnie play a 7-3 polyrhythm, don’t try to mimmick that, please don’t do that.
But if that type of stuff interests you, you should come up with a study in metric modulation, ask around and buy some books on the subject and give yourself a few years to work on many different things in that field of drumming, it will make your playing grow and transform in to a less foreseeable process, but don’t pick up one poly-rhythmic idea from someone and then try and put it to use.
In my case I use a small percentage of the rhythmic llusional stuff I have studied (consciously), but unconsciously those eliments are at play to a much greater extent, what happens through your evolution (quite a few years in my case) is that your own sense of time becomes more and more wacko and you are able to stretch more, but on the fly and without throwing the whole band out the window.
As much as I see Elvin (and this is my personal view) as a painter, I see Vinnie as an energy sculptor. He molds different energy’s and time compression with an awesome spectrum of dynamics. Only a part of his stuff should be studied and the rest left to the pure enlightenment of witnessing his imagination, whereas Elvin should not be studied at all, only enjoyed to the extreme.
Below is footage of an old friend of mine Dave Stanoch, my mentor and teacher, showing what can be done with Metric Modulation and mixing together different styles at the same time. Dave is one of the baddest players in Minneapolis and he has an excellent book on Metric Modulation, ‘Mastering the tables of Time‘
It seems this album is taking forever. Take it outside, was an album that took a long time and incredible amount of work but this one is going through a whole different game, namely the economic crises here in Iceland.
So here is a piece in the making; Sonic Empire with a preliminary drum track. Keys; Derek Sherinian. Percy Jones on bass.
It´s great fun working on this album. Ewery day is fresh and new when it comes to making music. Yesterday I did something I have never done before, I played a 12 bar drum break in 3/16 time at 120 bpm. Not easy but great fun and I found that to be quite comfortable (by the way this was on a scratch track and I’m using a Roland V for those).