If they can't play a 6/8 shuffle. They aren't pro-ringers... CL has about a 3% effectiveness rate and I don't any pro's use it to find other musicians.
What do you need? Tracks for a demo? A live drummer for shows?
Are you approaching them as two independent tasks?
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.
What I need is a drummer with a sympathetic ear that I can use when working with independent artists, and someone to play in an indie-pop band with. These need not be the same person.
Do you have a way of programming drums? Like Beat Looper or something?
I can simply play the drums, but was told (in this very thread) that this interferes with another drummer's creative process. The argument is that I create a preconceived bias towards my interpretation of the song's drums and that this results in butthurt. Here's what I sound like.
Dan,
Pretend we play in a band together. Our singer (4 Chord Joe) lays out his new idea on acoustic and sends it it to us. I open a GB/Logic project and share it on iCloud. I start to hash out the guitar work, bass player starts hashing out the bass work, and you (the drummer) start to hash out the drum work. The objective is a collaborative ~24-bar scratch track where we sort out the feel and interplay between instruments. What you get when you open the project on day-1 is basically something like.....
A week goes by and we all get our parts together (writing/learning). The singer/producer arranges the song with a bit of copy/paste and we open a project to record it semi seriously. It sounds something like....
The problem I face is that I can't find a drummer that passes the 24-bar smell test. Either they don't contribute, lack the ability to play to a metronome despite being FAR more talented than I, or they totally miss the mark in terms of feel as if they're playing a completely different song than the rest of us. Other times, they'll pass the 24-bar smell test but "forget" the part when we go to re-record.
The real kicker is.... I began learning drums 3.5 years ago in order to avoid this exact problem.
In another 2 years, I'll probably resign to do it myself.