Pocketless drummers

Deathmetalconga

Platinum Member
There's a lot of talk about "pocket" and it's one of a drummer's principal roles in most music. There are some styles, however, where the pocket is shallow or nonexistent, and the music sounds just fine. I'm thinking of Dave King with The Bad Plus; much of his playing is frenetic, complex, cerebral and has constantly shifting time signatures, but I like it. Billy Higgins, Ornette Coleman and other free jazz artists made great music that had no clear pocket.

Does anyone else have examples of great drummers who often play without a frim pocket, or of bands or styles like that?
 
Chris Dave plays a lot of free jazz type stuff and his drumming is pretty amazing. Love Dave King! Did you catch The Bad Plus when they were in Boise a couple of summers ago? It was great to watch him up close.
 
There's a lot of talk about "pocket" and it's one of a drummer's principal roles in most music. There are some styles, however, where the pocket is shallow or nonexistent, and the music sounds just fine. I'm thinking of Dave King with The Bad Plus; much of his playing is frenetic, complex, cerebral and has constantly shifting time signatures, but I like it. Billy Higgins, Ornette Coleman and other free jazz artists made great music that had no clear pocket.

Does anyone else have examples of great drummers who often play without a frim pocket, or of bands or styles like that?

The most well recognized pocketless drummer I can think of would be mr. TR-808.
 
This is really funny DMC that you started a pocket thread...you beat me to it. I was going to ask everyone here to post their definition of pocket, just to see if we can agree enough to get a basic definition of it.

So how would you describe "pocket" before citing examples of pocketless drummers?

I haven't the foggiest idea of how to describe it in words, except that I know what it is when it's happening. I guess it's when things are undeniably grooving...
 
Yeah it's hard to describe it literally too. For me, it's the feeling of being "tucked into bed" feeling very secure. The fundamental beats in my body match the rhythm of the drummer.
 
Strong and consistent downbeat eh...This is why I wanted to hear others understanding of pocket. I would not have described it like that, but I can see how you intrepret it like that.

I had a real "pocket" experience just last Sunday...(doesn't happen all the time) The band could do no wrong. (At least for the few songs that this certain black female singer was doing. It was an open mic jam situation that went really well) I had the feeling that I could almost drop out and it wouldn't matter, the groove was so strong. It's like I identify the groove, and really nail it, then after playing it for awhile, momentum gets built up and I find that I'm sometimes barely playing, just marking time, but it feels oh so good...

She did all shuffle tunes. A good shuffle tune is a great example of a pocket situation, if played properly.
I was playing a mid-tempoTexas style shuffle beat (my favorite sounding shuffle beat) when the good stuff was happening.

The band had really great top calibre players, and I felt great when the singer signaled a quick stop, and I was the only one who picked it up. I was paying the most attention to her. The other guys stopped slightly after me, but it didn't mess the song up, because I was on the money baby.

The black female singer went out of her way to give me a genuine complement afterwards, asked for my card and invited me out to her next gig to sit in with her band. I felt HIGHLY complemented that a soulful (and quite hot) black female singer acknowledged me. She TORE IT UP. I would have posted a recording but my recorder got mistakenly picked up by someone who mistook it for a friend of theirs recorder, and I missed recording that part of the gig. Damn! Lost forever!
 
Strong and consistent downbeat eh...This is why I wanted to hear others understanding of pocket. I would not have described it like that, but I can see how you intrepret it like that.

I had a real "pocket" experience just last Sunday...(doesn't happen all the time) The band could do no wrong. (At least for the few songs that this certain black female singer was doing. It was an open mic jam situation that went really well) I had the feeling that I could almost drop out and it wouldn't matter, the groove was so strong. It's like I identify the groove, and really nail it, then after playing it for awhile, momentum gets built up and I find that I'm sometimes barely playing, just marking time, but it feels oh so good...

She did all shuffle tunes. A good shuffle tune is a great example of a pocket situation, if played properly.
I was playing a mid-tempoTexas style shuffle beat (my favorite sounding shuffle beat) when the good stuff was happening.

The band had really great top calibre players, and I felt great when the singer signaled a quick stop, and I was the only one who picked it up. I was paying the most attention to her. The other guys stopped slightly after me, but it didn't mess the song up, because I was on the money baby.

The black female singer went out of her way to give me a genuine complement afterwards, asked for my card and invited me out to her next gig to sit in with her band. I felt HIGHLY complemented that a soulful (and quite hot) black female singer acknowledged me. She TORE IT UP. I would have posted a recording but my recorder got mistakenly picked up by someone who mistook it for a friend of theirs recorder, and I missed recording that part of the gig. Damn! Lost forever!

That sounds as good a definition as any I've heard. So, can you think of music that has little or no pocket, and drummers who play that way?
 
The pocket, if the definitions given ahead of this post are accurate, doesn't seem that hard to find.

I jam with my keyboardist every once in a while, and it's entirely improvisation. All that's needed to create a groove is a basic beat from me, some chords from him, then off we go. If we're lucky, we'll find that pocket in a matter of seconds.

We just click.
 
I'll kill two birds with one stone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ul7X5js1vE

Great pocket, AND a prime example of how you DON'T have to keep a steady tempo to groove and feel good. (When you get to the end, play the beginning again and see how much it sped up!)

In my transition from jazz drummer to rock/blues drummer, this is something I've studied the hell out of. A few common elements I've picked up from drummers with really good groove/pocket:
1) 2 and 4 is played very very very strongly (at least in 4/4) and very very consistently. This is accomplished very well by playing rimshots on EVERY 2 and 4.
2) The drummers with the best groove move with the groove with their upper body.
3) The best groovers will tap all 4 quarter notes or even all 8 8th notes with their hi-hat heel.

The drummer in the SW video linked above does 1 and 2. I couldn't see his heel for 3.
 
As much as I like the band and the guy, I've always thought Carl Palmer has, at least, a strange pocket. When I listen to Karn Evil 9, it pushes and drags all over the place. In fact, most ELP songs feel like this. Maybe it's the music, and if it is, kudos to him for being musician enough to make it all happen, but his playing never made me feel comfortable and in the pocket. I associate pocket with bands like The Meters, and Motown, but never Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.....
 
To me pocket (although the term has been generified) is a subset of groove, related to four on the floor beats. The late or behind the beat effect caused by displacing the 4 (and only the 4) late in the bar. Pulling that beat back "into the pocket". Deep in to the pocket, meaning really pulling it back late. Thus increasing the swing value (or complementary displacement) between the 2 and 4.

Two of my favorite guitarists, Robben Ford and Larry Carlton, have been touring over the last couple of years with the same rhythm section of Larry's son Travis on bass and either Toss Panos or Gary Novak on drums. Toss has pocket. That natural inclination to push the beats around to create a feel. Gary is precise and pocketless in my book. I've seen him a bunch of times, sitting there swinging his head back and forth like he's a grooving monster, smiling at the bass player with this "aren't we grooving" look. And the whole time he is dead on the beat. Perfect time but no pocket.
 
Keith Moon? Played his way around the groove a lot, didn't he?
 
As much as I like the band and the guy, I've always thought Carl Palmer has, at least, a strange pocket.

You beat me to it, Bo. And Mikecore beat me to Moonie. With both those guys they thrash around so much there's more of a textural legato feel than a pocket, which I understand is what free jazz players are about. Not to mention classical drummers ...

Michael Giles from the first Crimson wasn't much into pocket playing either.

Davo, I think Meg does have a pocket - just a shallow one that can only hold small coins :)
 
...

..which brings me to the question, did Ringo have a pocket?

I dont ask this facetiously, and I happen to think Ringo is a great player, but would you call whatever it is that he does 'great pocket playing'? A shallow pocket, perhaps as Polly put it? I'm not sure.

Is Charlie Watts as much a pocket player as David Garibaldi or Purdie? Or Tony Williams as much of a pocket player as Peter Erskine?... Chris Adler compared or Tommy Lee?

Does pocket equal, appropriate playing, stuff that fits the music to the tee, or does it mean it in the sense of a rock, R&B, funk, hip hop, gospel kinda groove loop that give you a warm and tickly feeling in your belly?

To answer the original OP question, I think Ringo is an incredible player who created some great drum parts and played them with elan and wonderful dynamics and created music that will live forever in the consciousness of many generations, but he 'aint got no pocket.

( Forgive me, B for I have sinned. Please dont ban me )

To add more players who play the pocket only to break it, there's Mark Guiliana, Vigil Donati, Trilok Gurtu, Jim Black, Thomas Pridgen, Ari Hoening, the great free jazz drummer Han Bennick and a host of other great players from that genre..


...
 
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Now I'm really confused. I would think of Ringo as having a great pocket. Songs like "Come Together" come to mind.

Porcaro had pocket
Purdie has pocket
Garibaldi , Gadd, have pocket.
Charlie Watts doesn't... too stiff
Bonham? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Motown music has it, even though it the meter is kinda snaky.

Pocket means different things to different people I think.
I think of pocket as not hurried at all, everything is laid back.

Good pocket song...Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"? I'd say yes.
Pocketless song...Devo's "Whip It"
 
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