Q about jazz drumming

[Rik]

I'm not a drummer - I'm a bassist. And I'm not a jazz bassist, I'm a rock bassist. However, my drummer is a jazz drummer playing with me in a rock band.

 

My question has to do with some particulars of jazz drumming that might be making it difficult for a jazz guy to play in a rock band.

 

So... how does a jazz drummer typically "learn" a song? My drummer has repeatedly said things like, "I play off the vocals/soloist." To me, this seems like a strange approach, especially if you're trying to play rock. My guitarist and I both approach learning a new song by looking at the structure of the song. We determine the key & tempo of the song, then look at how its parts are put together - say Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Solo/Chorus... whatever. Using this approach, the two of us can usually nail together a rough but recognizable rendition of the song, and polish it later. At least we know that everything is in the right order and that we've got the chords right.

 

Our drummer, on the other hand, using his method of "playing off the vocals", seems to take forever to learn a song. In many cases, he never does really "learn" the song. He ends up putting his fills in the wrong places, or forgets to switch from his ride to his hat when the chorus comes around, because he's apparently forgotten that the chorus is coming, not because he doesn't know he's supposed to switch. So instead of knowing and feeling when it's time to switch, it's as if he's waiting to hear me sing a certain word to tell him it's chorus time, and then he'll switch. Which might be fine on some songs, but too often he should have switched a few beats before I sang that word.

 

When I learn a song, I usually sit down with the CD and play along a few times until I've got the basics down, and then in rehearsal I polish it with the group. My guitarist usually waits until he hears the song played on the boombox at rehearsal to learn it, and he usually has it nailed in a couple tries. In both of our cases, learning the structure of the song is natural - most of the time, we already understand the structure after a couple listens, before we've even played it for ourselves.

 

Our drummer, on the other hand, just can't seem to get it no matter how many times we go through it. Part of that is that he's obviously more concerned about playing all the exact beats and fills that the original drummer played on the recording. Where my guitarist and I concern ourselves initially with the overall song, our drummer is concentrating on details. He listens to the singer to tell him where his fills go, etc.

 

So what happens is that my guitarist and I simply can't understand why he's not getting it. To us, it seems that simply listening to a song a few times should give you a basic idea of how the song goes. And that's all we're asking of him - learn how the song goes and worry about the details and playing the exact fills later. If nothing else, what's wrong with just laying down a plain old 4/4 beat until the structure is understood? In fact, our drummer has been in possession of our rehearsal CDs (4 CDs containing the original versions of all the songs in our set list) for months. At the very least, if he's listening to them, he should at least know the correct tempo of each song.

 

I've listened to my drummer playing jazz stuff, and he plays it well. I have noticed, however, that the kind of jazz he listens to tends to be the stuff that features a trumpet or sax or other soloist noodling around all over the place (ala much of Miles Davis's stuff) with the drummer mostly playing accents and little fills in between the soloist's phrases. Whereas my own jazz experience from back in the days when I was a sax player was based primarily in swing/big band music where there was a definite, steady meter, and the downbeat was always obvious. I guess it's the difference between "ensemble playing" and "backing a soloist".

 

Since I don't want to make it sound like my drummer sucks, because he really doesn't, I'll point out that his tempo is rock steady once he's established it. His problem is that he often establishes the wrong tempo, and once he's set he won't budge from that tempo for anything, which makes singing some songs very difficult. When he does get a song learned, he nails it perfectly every time. It's just that it takes him so freaking long to learn it.

 

So I guess my question boils down to this: do jazz drummers typically take such a drastically different approach to learning songs, as compared to rock drummers? As in "playing off the vocals" as opposed to "finding the song's structure"?

[Rod Gervais]

Nope

 

Rod

[coyote]

In jazz as in rock, there is a structure to the tune. There's a melody and an accompaniment. Any drummer's job in a vocal-oriented band is to know how that accompaniment is structured, and to lay down a solid foundation for the singer. Take a typical jazz standard like "Autumn Leaves". It's 32 bars, in A A B A format. Just like your rock tunes, it has a format that requires delineation by the rhythm section.

 

Sounds to me like he's making excuses for not doing the requisite homework. And since he believes he's coming from the high-horse position of a jazz drummer, it's quite unlikely he'll be amenable to changing his ways for the likes of a mere rock band. You need a new drummer.

[adam b_dup1]

im learning jazz drumming but im still doing good on rock and as my drum teacher Cooty Harris says someone who knows jazz drumming right that they could beat out nearly any rock drummer out there and mainly because as a jazz drummer the main fundamentals is, of course, to read! thats how lessons start, by getting able to read like mad and count out measures and timing. all i have to say is, if you "jazz" drummer is going by lyrics, i dont think he's living up to his word, any jazz drummer knows not to follow the lyrics and if you wanna know if he really knows jazz, then tell him to get a drumming songbook and use that, if it fails, hes just BSing you

 

for a drummer who follows lyrics, it just shows that the drummer needs to get the basic feel of the music, thats it, when you feel the music, counts dont matter. I played bass for a couple years and by playing bass i engraved in my mind how long a basic 4:4 measure is and when i learned drums my teacher was amazed on how on my first couple days i knew that timing. its not about drumming but about feeling it. its just whenever you play a song, even though there is no excact note changes in a verse or whatever, without counting you get that feeling to go into a chorus and once your whole band gets that feel, thats when it all starts to click.

[Tedly Nightshade]

Been through this with a hotshot who played brilliant rock drumming- he knew the forms and made them wonderfully clear- but who didn't know the forms in jazz and finally humbled himself to learn them.

 

Knowing and elucidating the form is everything, or damn near.

[D_dup3]

If I understand the consensus here, I agree.

Jazz is a more variable playing approach than rock or other pop styles but if the cat can't remember what's happening, he's just not thinking/remembering---& that would be a flaw in a jazz context, too!

[DC]

Sounds like your drummer has been in jam bands in the past where they just noodled about and never needed any sort of structure. He's gonna have to learn to think in 8 and 16 bar chunks to grab what you're doing. The best advice I could give to him is listen to those CDs over and over and over. Tell him 4 or 5 songs (or 1) you're gonna rehearse and tell him to just listen to the tune about 10 times in a row before trying to play along with it.

 

I got to the point where I could listen to a song several times, find the key and the position where the solo started (I'm a guitarist) and I was done. The listening is most of it.

[musicalhair]

I'm not a drummer either, but I've played bass in rock and pop bands with guys that were jazz and latin drummers. Here are my observations. It seems that a lot of jazzy or latin guys (but most definately not all!) have much lighter touch than most rock guys, less and way less interested in 1-2-3-4 kick-snare-kick-snare locked down predictable rock drumming than hearing where to hit from the melody or soloist.

 

But in terms of learning songs, while I can't comment on their processes, I've only seen guys that had "trouble" learning songs or remembering appropriate tempos that weren't trying or didn't take it seriously.

 

I don't think the problems your having are related strickly to the guy considering himself a jazz drummer. Like, if the guy learned the tune dead on, but no one liked what he was doing of found it weird following that might (but I'm sort of stretching here) be due to his jazzy approach, but could equally be due to the idea that in some rock bands people feel a need to "follow" the drummer, and in other types of band your all expected to be far more independant-- this don't sound to me like the problem your having.

 

It just sounds to me like the guy isn't taking the differences between what he thinks "jazz drumming" is verses rock drumming, and that he just isn't putting the time in to learn the tunes.