Another Question About Creativity

jjmrvz

Junior Member
When it comes down to getting as creative as you can on the drumset whats the biggest factor?

I ask because I have asked this before and almost always someone says "play along" to songs but my thing is I don't personally enjoy doing this. I'd rather be playing with my band or for that matter anyone besides looking at a song book and I think many would agree.

I know there are other parts like rudiments ect.... but is playing along with a band a good way for fueling creativity or is it neccesary to get more into learning songs and grooves?
 
.... but is playing along with a band a good way for fueling creativity?

Most definitely.


.... or is it neccesary to get more into learning songs and grooves?

This will certainly help you expand your musical vocab.

Like most musical applications, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Personally I wouldn't limit myself to "one way or the other". Keep playing and keep listening.....that's how you'll expand your creativity.
 
I find personally that I get more creative after going on YouTube or here on DW and watching some drumming performances. And I don't stick to drummers I know.. I'll watch any great drummer just to see what they have stored up and what their "thing" is. Then I feel fired up to go create.

I also love pulling interesting sounds out of the drumset, then linking them together in a rhythm that I can then make variations of... especially if there's a good way to ostinato it on the feet and work something over it with the hands, or vice versa.

I'm also very much looking forward to getting some lessons next summer and seeing where that leads me.
 
You might try to play drum solo's of all kinds of sorts. Which means not only the chops and 64thnote's-only kind of drum solo's, but also groove improvisations and the like. Try to improvise little drum songs.
Or try playing along with music and totally let go of what the music is playing. Try to repeat as rarely as you can. That should give you some idea's.
 
Have really, really big ears. Listen to your band, listen to the radio, listen to your parents' dusty record collection, eat music for all three meals. Listen to styles you dislike, and find their virtue. Try to figure out how a song is really built, how many instruments it took to make a recording, etc.

I get a lot out of making myself do things a different way, changing the way I play standard songs for the millionth time by enriching the groove or drastically changing the tone of voice of the fills.
 
Being versatile and playing with musicians and bands! Preceeding this getting the foundations of theory and technique and expanding upon those. And only until then can you worry about creativity!
 
Have really, really big ears. Listen to your band, listen to the radio, listen to your parents' dusty record collection, eat music for all three meals. Listen to styles you dislike, and find their virtue. Try to figure out how a song is really built, how many instruments it took to make a recording, etc.

This is pretty much the key to everything.

I get a lot out of making myself do things a different way, changing the way I play standard songs for the millionth time by enriching the groove or drastically changing the tone of voice of the fills.

This often means giving up the things you really like about your or someone else's performance of a tune, to give room for something new to happen. Picasso said that when reworking a painting, he would paint over his favorite part first.
 
Creativity has to do with how you think about your playing--the parts you come up with, either precomposed or "written on the fly".

I wouldn't say it has anything to do with whether you're practicing on your own, or with a band, etc. The context within which you practice won't have a bearing on it. Only the way that you think about what you're playing will. I've heard tons of drummers play very non-creatively in both bands and solo situations. Neither is going to necessarily fuel or spark creativity. The vast majority of bands are not doing things that are particularly creative, in my opinion. So why would playing in that situation necessarily help?

So what do you need to do to be creative? Well, you need to learn what are the typical and cliched things for drummers to do in all kinds of contexts--whatever genres you're dealing with, all the styles in that genre, and various modes of playing--laying down grooves, playing fills, supporting soloists if applicable, playing solos yourself. Once you learn that, then you need to start avoiding those typical and cliched things.

Learning theory will make the process move along much quicker--you'll have better tools to analyze and generalize what others typically do and why.

Improving your technical skills will give you a much bigger toolset for coming up with unique things of your own.

The bigger challenge is coming up with things that are both creative and aesthetically worthwhile, things that emotionally resonate with listeners.
 
Listen to as much music as possible. By this I mean as many genres. You never know when a groove from one type of music will fit into another song. I grew up playing band and orchestra and learning a lot of meters and rudiments. Sometimes when playing around or playing along I may stick one of those pieces in a song. In a band situation your band may look at you oddly and say yea or nay, but give it a shot.
 
Some more specific things that I've found over the years that help spark creative ideas. To an extent these are fairly "mechanical" exercises, but the idea is to just get you started thinking differently about what you're playing:

1. Try setting up your kit in ways that force you to play differently. (a) If you're right-handed, set up and play lefty, or vice versa. (b) Set up your toms in "cymbal positions" and your cymbals in "tom positions", and don't just stretch to play what you'd normally play anyway. Try to use each surface differently than you normally would. (c) Leave some drums off that you normally rely on most of the time--like your bass drum or snare drum, set up two hi-hats for your feet instead . . . etc. The idea there isn't that you're going to play with your kit set up that way on gigs, necessarily, the idea is that you want to start thinking about what you're playing differently--start deconstructing the cliches and think about completely new ways to approach the drumset.

2. Try to consciously NOT do something you typically do. If you typically lay down steady rhythms on a cymbal--eighth notes, the jazz ride rhythm, whatever--force yourself to completely avoid doing that (and also don't just move instead to playing that rhythm on a rim or a tom or something--play differently instead). If you typically whack the snare drum on backbeats, force yourself to completely avoid doing it. If you're playing reggae, force yourself to avoid hitting the bass drum on "3". Try just changing one habit at a time. Practice for a couple weeks just avoiding steady cymbal rhythms for example. Then for the next two weeks, either ADD avoiding snare backbeats, too, or avoid snare backbeats instead, and go back to some steady cymbal rhythms. The idea again is that you're going to deconstruct what you'd habitually play, all that cliched stuff, and instead invent new ways to approach the drumset.

3. Try playing along with records you know well, but rather than playing along with drum parts, play along with other instruments, trying to match the kinds of things they're doing as well as you can on the surfaces/instruments you have available.--how can you interpret chordal figures on your kit? Melodic lines? etc.

Again, those are just a few ideas to try. It's not that you have to play so unusually in a professional situation, but the aim is to just get creative ideas welling up--to get into the habit of coming up with unusual approaches, on the fly problem solving skills, etc.
 
Listen to as much music as possible.
Yes, definitely. That's a necessary component of learning what the typical and/or cliched things are. One could only come up with something unique by chance if one isn't familiar with that . . . there's probably a better chance that one would reinvent the wheel rather than coming up with something new if one hasn't listened to a lot of music.
 
jj---good responses here...learn to listen to what's being played around you and respond musically but be prepared technically. Flipping through some channels the other day I saw this on the Documentary channel--DOC-- and sat there amazed at some of the things these hard core jazz musicians were saying. I've played a long time but these guys were PLAYERS! Seriously, look for the next showing of this documentary or buy it from Amazon, but this DVD was the tits...can I say that? The players in this vid even defined creativity...you'll have to see it for yourself to get the full effect. Look for it when you can. Well worth it.
 

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