greatly need help from experienced drummers

ekloot said:
Everybody here seems to have pretty good advice. I would definately rather not replace the drummer if at all possible...he's a good friend of mine and aside from a couple of these really bad habits...he's actually a good drummer. I actually have brought up that I would like us to have some band practices where he isn't using the metronome because he's way too reliant on it...and needs to listen to the rest of us more. He has admitted that it's become a crutch for him...but he has yet to try practicing the set without it. His methods of counting all the parts out and relying heavily on the click doesn't seem like any fun to me since you can't possibly be feeling the music nearly as much...plus if I played like that, it would make me susceptible to mistakes much more frequently.

Hedon...to answer your question. We haven't really had any songs with odd time signatures. I think that would be a disaster for him actually. There is one song that I wrote with a different type of rhythm where every other snare hit during the chorus is supposed to come in a 1/16th note earlier than the cymbal hit that is struck on each beat throughout all the measures of the chorus. It's some sort of groove beat that I decided to use when I wrote the song. I've heard other bands use the same type of beat in songs so it's nothing wierd. This beat has given him trouble for months. When he didn't get it right...the snare hit that is supposed to come in a 1/16th note earlier than the crash would lag to the point of almost hitting exactly when the crash did instead of a 1/16th note earlier. He's finally starting to play it fairly close to correct now. I've been able to hop on the drums and do that beat perfectly from the beginning though. In terms of halftime and stuff. He's typically good with that stuff. Occasionally, it gives him some trouble at times especially when a song is new...and every once in a while on older songs he'll have a little trouble getting to halftime and will pause on the snare for a hit or two until he figures out what he's supposed to be doing...like he's trying to decide where he should hit it or something.

Aside from all that stuff I think he probably needs to also change his technique a bit because he breaks his top-of-the-line Zildgian cymbals every 10 to 14 months and chews up a pair of fairly heavy duty drums sticks every week or two and has to buy new ones. That issue doesn't matter much to me though since it's his money and not my own.
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To me it doesn't make sense that he's using a click or metronome while you guys are playing together. He should save that for his own individual practice in getting his timing down in general, but not for every single song that you play trying to work it out mechanically, sounds to me like he's getting too overconcerned to the point where that is his only focus and he's forgotten about everyone else.

When a good band gels and comes together musically, it's all about listening and bouncing off each other, how can he feel the vibe if that's not going on? I agree, get rid of the metronome during your practices - if he needs it that bad, then you don't need him! Not discounting that he is a nice guy and all, but is it worth the aggravation?

Fishnmusicn
 
ekloot,

What's going on here is that your drummer has zero confidence in his timekeeping abilities. He's afraid that he's going to drag or speed up, and he is clinging to that click like a person who can't swim would cling to a life jacket. He would rather someone hear him flip the beat, or blow a fill, instead of change tempo at all costs. It's just a confidence issue.

You need to take his click away. Explain that it's ok for the tempo to fluctuate slightly, giving the song a natural feel. Don't let him use that click during rehearsals, and let him build his confidence that the world won't end if he doesn't use it. The ONLY time I personally will use a click is for recording. That's it. Tell him to listen to Bonham's live recordings, the man is all over the place tempo wise. Nobody thinks less of him, right?

If things don't improve, then friend or not, he's not the drummer for you.

-Jeff
 
Yeah, I've been telling him to dump the click in order to get better at "feeling" the music and "sensing" the transitions to the various sections of the songs. I figure this all will hone his listening skills and his gut instinct. The rest of the band isn't backing me up on this. They say things like..."there are pros and cons to dumping the click"...and "the drummer is the timekeeper, we follow him no matter what...even when he flips the beat on accident". That last statement was made by the bass player when I said the drummer should immediately feel when he's gotten upside down on the beat and should correct to us rather then him just staying that way and all 3 of the rest of us trying to skip a beat to flip upsidedown and correct to him. In reality, if the drummer was truly "feeling" the natural groove of the song and listening to all the other instruments...it should almost be impossible for him to randomly get upsidedown on the beat after a fill or something...it should feel rotten and I think he should immediately correct before the next hit even happens...that's how I am when I'm on the drums anyways. The drummer is actually a good drummer in most ways...but he relies too much on counting and mechanical means of playing songs, rather than sensing the groove and truly listening to the other instruments around him. The other guys in the band either don't realize this or don't think it's a big deal. I think it's a huge deal. I'm fairly certain the drummer could learn to play the drums more naturally like most drummers do...but he needs a push and it isn't helping that the other band members aren't backing me up with this at all.
 
It's management. If you don't have the backing you won't get your policies through.

Different things are important to different people. Very hard when playing with friends in this situation because, unless you have grand plans, I disagree with those who suggest dumping the drummer. It would mean hurting someone you care about and seriously harm the friendship - and friends are precious.

If you have no grand plans then it looks to me that you have two choices:

1. Put up with it and hope that he'll make progress. See if you can get the guys to just have a casual jam every now and again. If that's not the others' idea of fun and they'd rather focused work on the songs, say it's for songwriting purposes, to see if ideas / new riffs come up for that could be used in new songs. Jamming is the best thing for honing musical instincts. You might come up with some new dirt too :)

2. Find a better band and tell the guys that you really, really want to do something different and hope they'll be reasonable. Obviously you'd need to time this to cause minimum inconvenience.
 
I'm starting to wonder if the issue is not so much the drummer, but the band.

The drummer playing in time and counts everything out. One would assume he is coming out of fills in the right spot. Perhaps the other musicians time is not quite right?

Or he may be throwing the other musicians by playing overly complex fills. In this case simplifying his parts may prove useful.
 
No, it's not the band...it's the drummer...believe me. He admits when it's him, plus it's been caught on video as well as recordings. He'll go into a fill...sometimes simple, sometimes complex...and just miss a hit or add an extra hit by accident because he mis-counts....so then he's suddenly upside down on the beat and stays there...sometimes he doesn't even notice it. There's a big update to this though...we had a gig tonight and the drummer completely screwed up 3 or 4 songs. He got upside down on the beat on at least one of them and on the other songs completely hiccuped and stopped because he had trouble finding the rhythm again...probably because he wasn't listening to anyone else but we kept playing like we are supposed to when mistakes happen. The drummer felt awful, the bass player was actually pissed this time and said we are going to talk about this at our next practice. Maybe finally it's sinking into my other band member's heads that this is a big problem. Even a couple of my friends in the audience said they knew exactly who was the the offender with these mistakes and they couldn't believe how obvious and bad the mistakes were from the drummer when he fell apart during those songs. Just goes to show how susceptible you are to mistakes in music when you don't feel the music and just try to mechanically play it by counting and memorization. The drummer tried to make excuses and complained that his bass drum pedal didn't feel right and that he couldn't hear anybody...but earlier in practice this very same day...he said he was fine playing without hearing anybody (which I had said was messed up since everyone should listen to everyone else). The funny thing is that both of my bands were playing...so the next set was me on the drums on the very same stage with the same monitoring and everything. I couldn't hear everything as well as I would like in a perfect world, but I could hear plenty well enough and played a flawless set on the drums...but I play by listening very closely to the other musicians around me and I play by feel and not with counting sections of songs and all that crap.
 
ekloot said:
Yeah, I've been telling him to dump the click in order to get better at "feeling" the music and "sensing" the transitions to the various sections of the songs. I figure this all will hone his listening skills and his gut instinct. The rest of the band isn't backing me up on this. They say things like..."there are pros and cons to dumping the click"....
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There are no pros to using a click live except for very specific purposes. As a result of the gig last night, sorry, the guy needs to go or you need to find another band unless you've got a year or two spare to allow him to change. I don't think he's going to change after 14 years behind the drums though. He has multiple issues other than the click. To stop in mid performance because you've lost your place (or any reason apart from heat attack) is unforgivable.
 
Keep it simple...you may be right. I'm curious to see what is discussed in this next band practice though. This show last night really drives my point home. As a drummer, if you were there...you would have been horrified. I'm kind of glad it happened in a way because now I have more proof that I'm right about this stuff. I'm even more glad that in my other band, I played the drums perfectly during the second set which proves that the sound was plenty good enough to be able to hear the other instruments if the drummer in my first band would have just turned off the metronome and pulled out his damn in-ear monitors and actually listened to everyone around him. I did a pretty good job playing drums in that second set...on top of the fact that I was tired from playing guitar and singing most of the songs in the first band...so talk about having the odds stacked against me. Just goes to show how powerful "feeling" the music and having good listening skills truly is.
 
Just goes to show how susceptible you are to mistakes in music when you don't feel the music and just try to mechanically play it by counting and memorization.
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This is what I'm struggling with. Playing mechanically is no fun. It's as though his problems stem from trying to suck the joy out of his drumming. Why not let himself have fun with the edded bonus of being more reliable. Skip the fills that would theoretically enhance but don't because he's not quite up to it and allow himself to enjoy the music.

It can only be a complete lack of confidence. I feel for the guy.
 
Pollyanna said:
It can only be a complete lack of confidence. I feel for the guy.
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Agreed Polly, but after 14 years of playing? I feel for the guy too, but I feel more for ekloot who's enjoyment is being stifled as a result of one band member's substantial flaws. The drummer can't be enjoying himself either. Going separate ways is a win win as far as I'm concerned. The other band members aren't supporting ekloot either so I think the cleanest path is for ekloot to leave on good terms & find something he can enjoy.
 
Keep It Simple...you are very likely right...but that's assuming the other band members aren't backing me up. This show and all the screw ups might have changed all that...but I won't know for sure until we are in practice and talk about all this in a couple days. A few of my friends at the show last night said that the other two guys in the band looked in horror at the drummer during each of these major screw ups...and they didn't look happy whatsoever. Normally, I'm the one who gets a bit angry, and gives the dirty stare when this type of stuff happens...but at the show I pretty much just gritted my teeth and only looked over with an angry expression maybe once. I figured that if I could completely keep cool about all that happened during the show, that when it comes time for me to have a serious conversation with the drummer about all this in a couple days...he might not feel overly defensive about it. In the end though, I'm not some guitar virtuoso or a phenominal singer...but I am fairly decent and I am an all around solid musician and I'd like to believe a pretty good songwriter...so I care about this stuff a lot and if it starts becoming no fun and is too frustrating...then yes, I'll be forced to move on. As someone mentioned much earlier in this thread...my heart is very heavy with regards to this situation.
 
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OK, I read all the posts on the first page but not on this page, so forgive me if I missed the part that relates to what I'm going to ask-

Are you the band leader or is it a democracy? Based on what you've said about the way the other players approach the situation, if it's a democracy, you're screwed- find another band. Nobody is on your side. If you're the band leader, make the decisions and make your bandmates comply. Otherwise, you're in a no-win situation.
 
BilKay...honestly, I'm not sure if we're treating it like a democracy or if I'm the official leader. Half the songs in our set I've written on my own...and the other half of the songs were written by us as a band together...but even on those songs I still did the largest chunk of the writing except on one song. I play guitar in the band...rhythm and many of the leads...and sing all the original songs except for one. The second guitar player sings a few covers and I sing a cover as well. We didn't have a second guitar player until recently though...so we were playing out as a 3 piece band for a while until we found a fourth member. Long story short...it was for the most part...my blood sweat and tears that got this going...particularly in terms of the song writing. Hell, at our very first gig...pretty much every song was written by me alone except for one that we wrote together. And every gig so far (except for one) has been because of me...either I've gotten us the gig myself or it's been offered to us through my other band. Either way, if I wasn't there...we wouldn't have had those gigs. Not to mention that at every single show, I've brought more people than anyone else in the band...in a couple cases I've brought more people than the entire rest of the band combined...which is funny because I only moved to this area a couple years ago and didn't know a soul here when I came here. Two of the other guys grew up around here so you think they'd have more people coming to the shows. It's not a big deal and I'm not complaining... it's just ironic. I've only exerted my authority in the band once or twice because I try to let everyone have a say for the most part. I think the countless hours I spend working on writing music for the group (or finishing the music we start together) often gets forgotten and they take advantage of the fact that I'm a nice guy. I have made mention that for all the work I do...that occasionally I'm going to make the final call on something if I truly believe I'm right...even if everyone disagrees. We'll see how that all goes when we get into more of those situations. It's funny that you bring up this band democracy thing though. The singer in the band that I play drums in mentioned that he recently read an article that democracies in bands don't work because people all just end up fighting with one another...apparently the article said that there always has to be someone making the final call to settle things. I don't know...makes sense I suppose.
 
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Good lord. I've never fallen out at a gig. That's not to say that mistakes aren't made, we are all human, but falling out of a song???? Never. That would be the worst thing ever. I even broke a finger once on a rim and made it through the song before stopping to tape it up. I've been gigging for 20 years now, the last few years as my profession, and that has never happened to me, not once. I can't even imagine.

Keep It Simple brings up a good point. This guy has been playing for 14 years...he is set in his ways, and even if he's willing to change them, you are probably going to experience A LOT of growing pains, more mistakes, etc, as he tries to get better. Are you willing to wait for that? Especially when you don't even know if he will be able to get to an acceptable level?

One final thought: I said it before and I'll say it again. You keep saying that he's a really good drummer other than all these mistakes...but that is just the "friend" part of you trying to not slam the guy totally. Fact is, even if he can play some cool stuff, he's not a good drummer, based on the stuff you are telling us. In fact, he's a pretty bad one. I can pick up a guitar and play some two-handed finger-tapping stuff that a friend showed me...with the right effects, it sounds like Eddie VanHalen. But I don't know many chords, have no feel, etc. I can do some cool stuff with a guitar, but I am not a good guitarist. There is little room in the music business for making excuses for friends who don't have the talent to make it...if you really want to make it professionally, you are going to have to ask yourself if you are willing to do the right thing, regardless of if it means hurting a friend.
 
ekloot said:
BilKay...honestly, I'm not sure if we're treating it like a democracy or if I'm the official leader. Half the songs in our set I've written on my own...and the other half of the songs were written by us as a band together...but even on those songs I still did the largest chunk of the writing except on one song. I play guitar in the band...rhythm and many of the leads...and sing all the original songs except for one. The second guitar player sings a few covers and I sing a cover as well. We didn't have a second guitar player until recently though...so we were playing out as a 3 piece band for a while until we found a fourth member. Long story short...it was for the most part...my blood sweat and tears that got this going...particularly in terms of the song writing. Hell, at our very first gig...pretty much every song was written by me alone except for one that we wrote together. And every gig so far (except for one) has been because of me...either I've gotten us the gig myself or it's been offered to us through my other band. Either way, if I wasn't there...we wouldn't have had those gigs. Not to mention that at every single show, I've brought more people than anyone else in the band...in a couple cases I've brought more people than the entire rest of the band combined...which is funny because I only moved to this area a couple years ago and didn't know a soul here when I came here. Two of the other guys grew up around here so you think they'd have more people coming to the shows. It's not a big deal and I'm not complaining... it's just ironic. I've only exerted my authority in the band once or twice because I try to let everyone have a say for the most part. I think the countless hours I spend working on writing music for the group (or finishing the music we start together) often gets forgotten and they take advantage of the fact that I'm a nice guy. I have made mention that for all the work I do...that occasionally I'm going to make the final call on something if I truly believe I'm right...even if everyone disagrees. We'll see how that all goes when we get into more of those situations. It's funny that you bring up this band democracy thing though. The singer in the band that I play drums in mentioned that he recently read an article that democracies in bands don't work because people all just end up fighting with one another...apparently the article said that there always has to be someone making the final call to settle things. I don't know...makes sense I suppose.
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There was a great thread about this on here, search for it. Basically everyone on here who actually makes music for a living agreed that a band needs a leader, and we detailed why. That may be well worth your time to read it through.
 
mrchattr...I know you're right and part of this is the friend part of me not being objective. Although, if you heard him play on a night that he didn't have any blatant screw ups...you'd think he was a pretty awesome drummer too. However, in all honesty...his drumming feels like a fancy house built on a foundation of sand...it may seem good as long as the weather is perfect, but even a slight rain can make everything crumble at a given moment. I feel that he's learned some awesome drumming but without the strong basic foundation skills that make a good musician a truly good musician...things like having strong listening skills, instinctively sensing the rhythm, ect.

Also, in terms of having a band leader...others outside the band have talked about this with me as well. Obviously since I've done the vast majority of the writing in the band, I play guitar, I sing most of the songs, and I'm actually able to play all the other guys' instruments very well...that all practically makes me the band leader by default. Hell, i'm even bringing the largest share of people to our shows. We've already had a couple incidents that made me realize that a true democracy in the band likely won't always work. The bass player wanted us to ditch one of our songs...one of the ones I wrote by myself. He said he wasn't really feeling it. However, half the people who come to the shows say it's their most favorite song out of the set. And even the people who say it isn't their most favorite say it's one of their favorites. Well, the bass player said..."we might have to take a vote on this" within the band. I just said..."you guys can vote on it all you want, but I'm making a stand this time and this song isn't going anywhere because too many people like it way too much". Even the singer in the other band that I'm in freaked out when I said that the bassist in my main group wanted to drop that song...that singer said it was his favorite song and he was going to seriously kill us if we got rid of it haha. Already this showed me that if we had all voted on it...those guys might have gotten rid of the song. The drummer has trouble playing the chorus beat corrrectly for this particular song so it's always been one that's a sore spot for him...so if the bass player had voted it out, the drummer would have probably followed him, and the other guitarist is tight with them so he might have followed them as well. This is where I see true band democracy not working...3 of the guys in the band would have been happy...and our audience would have been mad. I am going to look for that thread about being a band leader though...because I'm probably going to have to take a slightly more aggresive role in that area and stop being "the nice guy" much of the time.
 
Hey for all those that gave me advice on this. I did talk to the drummer one on one, about playing by "listening" and using his gut "feel"...and I said he needs to rely on this more and I mentioned about getting rid of the metronome for a while. I told him that relying more on his listening skills and rhythm instincts again (rather than the metronome and memorization) would help him always keep the groove and be an easier, more reliable, and more fun way for him to play. He seemed resistant and I thought he was going to just ignore my thoughts on this. However, the next day he called me and seemed to have a big change of heart and said he now wants to slowly stop using the metronome and get back to playing with the rest of us like a normal drummer...the way he used to play before he got over-reliant on a metronome for rhythm. He said he realizes that trying to focus on the click too much takes him out of the music and then because of that...once in a while bad things happen.

He's actually excited to start practicing without the metronome sometimes. One of our newest songs that we've started working on is the one he first wants to work on by just listening to us around him and with no metronome at all...and actually he hasn't ever used a metronome when we've jammed on this song idea in the past...so he thinks this will be a good song to start with in order to build confidence...since he hasn't used a metronome on it before and sounded fine. And from there then he'll start practicing other songs...one by one...without the metronome and then only use it from time to time in order to make sure his timing is correct. He said this will help him get back to feeling the music and build confidence and also will make him more reliable at not making wierd groove killing mistakes since he'll be locked into the music around him instead of the click in his ears. He actually told me not to tell the other guys about all this because he'd rather just slowly work on this without them knowing so he won't feel like they are scrutinizing his timing (I've played music with him a lot longer than them since he and I were in our last band together so he doesn't mind me knowing about all this...I was actually the bass player in the last band though).

He also said that from now on...when he is using the metronome, he wants to make sure we're for sure patched into his in-ear monitors because he realized that when he can hear us then it's easier for him to stay on beat and not fall apart when something unexpected happens in a song or if he forgets where he is at in the song. I don't know if it was me that changed his mind or if he was already coming to these conclusions on his own and just needed a little nudge...whatever the case, I'll keep my fingers crossed and we'll see how things are going in a couple months.
 
Sounds good, ekloot.

I would be really interested to know how his timing is once he's playing without the metronome. Since practising with a metronome is the recommended means of developing good timing you'd expect his timing without it to be very good ... ?

I wouldn't want to reduce your friend to the role of lab rat but if you could provide updates on this it would be very interesting :)
 
Yeah, I'll update this thread once we start going without the metronome from time to time. It is a bit of an interesting experiment to see if playing with a metronome truly improves people's natural sense of timing. To use the drummer's exact words from the other night, he said that when he first started to use the metronome "he ate a big piece of humble pie" because he realized his timing wasn't nearly as good as he thought. It was actually the frontman of the last band who forced the drummer to use the metronome all the time because he said the drummer's timing was bad. I started playing bass in that last band after the drummer had already started using the metronome all the time so I can't really say what his timing was like pre-metronome. Now for over two years he's never played without the metronome so yes...in theory his timing should be a lot better. We've only jammed on that newer song idea a few times so far. The jam came up spontaneously after he was screwing around with a beat and I jumped in on guitar and the bass player then jumped in with a cool bass line and then I just started singing. Since it was all spontaneous, the drummer apparently didn't have time to turn on the metronome and set the speed. I didn't actually realize he wasn't using the metronome when we were playing it so hopefully this is a good sign because my timing is pretty good. He also simply wants to be able to jam without the metronome because obviously if we randomly are somewhere that has a drum set (like a friend's house or something)...he wants to be able to comfortably play the drums without it since he obviously doesn't carry it with him everywhere he goes. Plus, like I mentioned to him...what if it were to break at a show...or he forgot to bring it? So, I'll keep this thread updated as everything progresses. Should be interesting to see how this all progresses as the drummer starts relying more on his listening skills and internal rhythm again. I've always said that listening skills and being able to closely focus in on all the music around you in a band...is one of the most important skills any musician should have...including drummers.
 
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