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doorstilend
Guest
to tell you the truth i dont use to think about that too much cause when im playing im so concentrated on what im doing so...
This is just so wrong. I said it before, and I'll say it again: some of the hardest hitters I know or have seen are jazz guys. Art Blakey was a beast. Heck, he was two or three beasts. Tony Williams, Buddy Rich, the list goes on and on.
The fact is, you can play any of these styles at any dynamic level. It depends on the band, the club, the role of the drummer in the band, etc. I have played rock shows where the room was so small, I used rods and no arm motion at all. I have also played jazz shows for audiences of 5000 or more, with no mics on the drums, where I had to play very hard.
And, I'll say it again...you can play hard and soft, just as you can play soft and loud. It has a LOT to do with technique.
That's a fairly general statement to make, jay. It's also incorrect since you're generalizing what rock music is. That would be akin to me saying something like "all jazz music relies on the drummer playing a spang-a-lang pattern on the ride."
I play rock music...I work very hard on dynamics. I listen to a lot of rock music that utilizes all types of dynamics....sometimes swinging up and down just as wildly as "jazz" or anything else.
The drum set is a musical instrument. It's capable of being loud, soft, and everything in between, the same way that all instruments are.
Is this, maybe, a matter of semantics? This "hitting" thing? I ask this because drummers do not hit their drums. They play them. You play the drums, just like someone plays the trumpet. If the music calls for me to play loud then I play loud, if it calls for me to play so softly that I can barley be heard then that's how I play it.
Hit the drums? Hit? Well, good luck to you if that's the way you approach the instrument. But how long do you think a piano player would last if all he could do was bang the hell out of the keyboard?
The way i see it is that a drummer who can play quietly but not loudly when the music calls for it is just as bad as a drummer who can play loudly but not quietly.
This whole thread seems so foreign to me. As a musician, your responsibility is to play for the music. Focusing on anything else is incorrect.
For example: If you're playing with Slayer you'd better have the chops to kick the crap out of your drums at warp speed for an hour and a half. If you're playing with a lounge act you'd better be able to play with feeling at a low enough volume so that people can still have dinner conversation.
That's it. There is no more complexity to it than that.
BTW, for those that think it's easy to hit hard, you are talking out of your rear end. It is very hard to play fast rolls across the snare and toms that are loud enough when your backbeat hand is absolutely slamming the snare. Most guy's fills end up sounding too soft when compared to the backbeat.
It's also very hard to play softly with emotion so please don't take this the wrong way. I don't want the "volume police" banging on my door tonite. (I like that phrase. thanks Matt)
BTW, for those that think it's easy to hit hard, you are talking out of your rear end. It is very hard to play fast rolls across the snare and toms that are loud enough when your backbeat hand is absolutely slamming the snare. Most guy's fills end up sounding too soft when compared to the backbeat.
I'm going to take this a step further. The truth is, it's NOT very hard to play hard. It's NOT very hard to play soft. If you spend all of your time doing one or the other, it becomes quite easy. What is hard, however, is being able to play hard and soft, as the music calls for, with proper technique, and without having your fills be too quiet (when playing hard) or your more complex technical parts be too loud (when playing soft). As with anything in drumming, the real trick is not being able to play one way or another...anyone can learn that...it's being able to be a musical chameleon, and fit into any situation.
Generally, drummers that always hit hard and play at one dynamic level aren't that impressive. That type of playing can be boring or fatiguing.
Someone that can hit hard,medium or soft and incorporates it into many dynamic levels impresses me.