Hear the drummer get wicked
When I took up drums in the 9th grade, I had the same motivation as any other guy who took up a musical instrument from 6th to 9th grades. Sure, sure, I loved music, and that was the initial motivation, but the overwhelming desire was to impress. Girls, of course, but more than that, I wanted to be the drummer that the other drummers were in awe of. In the world of drums, first you get the chops, then you get the power, and then...you get the girls. This was before I knew that the drummer never gets the girls.
The mid and late 80's were a tough time to be a drummer, though. Neil Peart of Rush had set the stakes high, with the kit that went ALL THE WAY AROUND HIM, and long tom fills that went from the smallest drum to the largest with breathtaking speed. And there was the key: the speed. That's what knocked people out: those fills that dropped jaws and had people shaking their heads at each other in how-did-he-do-that disbelief. That's what I was shooting for.
But in late high school, my musical tastes started pushing out my desire to impress, and while Rush still had a high population in my unkept drawer of cassettes, it was bands like REM, the Smiths and the Pixies that took up more of my listening time, and I became much more interested in creative beats that served the song. I still challenged myself with the drums, but it was with funk beats or trying to play the machine beats of the Cocteau Twins or playing both drummer and percussionist parts along with the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense instead of just fancy fills.
By the time I joined my first band as a drummer at the tender age of 30, I was as obsessed with drumming that served the song as I had been with impressive fills when I was in high school. Drummers that no one noticed but the drummers are the best ones. Drummers should be felt and not heard by non-drummers, and if you want to be impressive, it's by playing those parts that only other drummers recognize the difficulty and creativity of.
But...old habits die hard, and there's still a part of me that is absolutely overjoyed when someone tells me that they're impressed with how fast I play. The new, more mature drummer in me feels embarrassed, and I kick myself a couple times, thinking, "Quit wanking, jerk!" But there's still that little bit of high school Reid in me, the one that spent hours and hours in the converted garage by himself just trying to be fast that thinks, "Well, alright!"
This conceit of a post is to thank Scott for the "fast" compliment, and to answer the question, "How do you play so fast?" All it takes is a complete sacrifice of your high school years and the desire to impress, a desire that fades with the years even if the satisfaction of actually impressing stays.
9 comments:
Wow, didn't think I'd rate an entire post for saying that, but you're welcome. And just to clarify, I never thought you were playing fast just to play fast...it really fits the music well, imho.
On a related note, I'd like to thank you as well. Turns out I can impress the girls just by playing them your CD and mentioning that I'm friends with the drummer. Thanks for all your hard work! ;)
Dig the new site, by the way.
sure, you can play fast, but can you play real, real slow?
Doug, I can play slower than you can imagine. I once went three weeks between bass drum hits. When I talk about "eighth notes", I mean "one every eight days". I'm the slowest drummer you've ever heard.
The problem with playing fast is that it's fun. Really fun. I'm fairly confident that my fills aren't stepping on anyone else, but not completely confident. Still, the point is that, even though playing fast not something I consciously set out to do, it's still nice when someone notices it.
You should install little glowing LEDs in the tips of your drumsticks. Then everyone would notice how fast you play.
Come on now...surely sometimes the drummer gets the girl?
In a way, yes. Sometimes a guy who is a drummer can get the girl, but it's not because he's a drummer. I myself have been known to keep company with beautiful, witty blonde women, but I attribute that to my other qualities and talents, like shear luck and hypnotism.
But the drummer never gets the girl because he's a drummer, unless the rest of the band is either unattractive, taken, or, in the case of Elastica, female. Point being is that the rock 'n' roll hierarchy puts the drummer dead last, so the rest of the band would have to be passed over before the drummer is considered.
There are a few exceptions. We call this the Larry Mullen syndrome, but it's freakish and rare.
Imagine how that dude from Pavement must have felt. Not only was he a drummer, but he was the SECOND drummer from the band....
By the way, I'm surprised that no one has done any drummer jokes. Here's a few of the better ones:
Q: What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?
A: Homeless
Q: What's the difference between a drum machine and a drummer?
A: You only have to punch the information into the drum machine once
Q: How can you tell when a drummer's at the door?
A: He doesn't know when to come in.
Q: Who's that guy always hanging out with the band?
A: The drummer.
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