Is it wrong of me?

Is it bad of me to mentally acess what another drummer may be playing? You know, the whole...thinking "oh man i would have done THIS there..." or whatever...i hate to sound like a jerk, it just naturally happens every time i see a drummer play (today at a new church we checked out)...i start tapping along with the drum beat automatically. i dont put them down, anyone playing in front of people has my respect...its just, if their time suffers for whatever reason I tend to wonder if they take practice seriously enough. lol....i'm such a tool! just thought i would share...

peace,
JG

Dude, I do the exact same thing, it's not a big deal as long as your not super cocky about your own playing. I try to look at what they are doing thats good. Try looking at your own playing the same way sometime too if you can record it, it's nots what you see sometimes.

I do get angry when a drummer that is not committed is just killing the grove though...

Josh! You should hang your head in shame!

I'm kidding of course.

I think it's very natural to compare and analyze what other drummers are doing on the drums. I do it all the time. But, sometimes a drummer may not be playing exactly what he/she wants to play because he/she may have been told certain things to do or not to do by the worship leader in a church. There are other times when I was planning to play a certain way but I totally changed it because the other players changed unexpectedly or the volume was different from when we practiced or some other weird circumstance which caused me not to play at my best.

I play in church and today there was a good example of how I over-simplified a section of a song that should have had a building fill of some sort, but I noticed a spider near me that totally distracted me for those few seconds and I "missed it." When I feel a drummer should have done something or left something out, I try not to be too judgmental and just try to enjoy the music, regardless of mistakes or poor playing. You just never know what a person is going through either when they're playing. I once played at my church on a Sunday morning and I had a horrible migraine headache that day and it didn't help my playing much.