Art of Drumming

Written by Dan on May 4, 2009

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There’s something very peculiar about drummers compared to other members of a band. In a sense, they’re the most constrained. A basic drum kit consists of only six pieces, and even elaborate kits rarely are larger than thirty pieces. Compared to the 4 octave range (45 notes) of a guitar, 3 octave range (34 notes) of a 4-string bass, or even a very minimum 2 octave range (23 notes) of a singer, typical drum sets clearly have a constraint on their arsenal of notes they may play. However, it is this very constraint that gives drummers the chance to be the most creative member of a band.

Obviously, the basic function of a drummer is to keep the beat. Your run-of-the-mill drummer believes in order to be a better drummer he/she has to do just that… but faster and with faster fills right at the end of a bar. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach all together. Granted, playing drums is the most exhausting piece of a band, but music is not a sport. Playing as fast as possible and sweating the most won’t make you the best drummer. More so than the rest of the band, the drummer has the ability to help you actually feel the rhythm. Some drummers are nothing more than an over-glorified metronome, e.g. Lars Ulrich. I’ll admit, taking a stab at Ulrich is about as easy and a liberal college student taking a stab at Bush… but it had to be said.

The most important attribute a drummer must possess is the ability to simply play by feel. I like to see a drummer that can keep time without counting even during odd-meter. Beyond that, drummers should possess a sense of spontaneity. Actually, this applies to music composition in general. Following the canonical song structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus gets under my skin just as much as a drummer who has a one or two bar pattern repeated over and over for each section. It’s not enough to just throw in a fill. Add a dash of improvisation and syncopation. I can’t stand a constant high hat with an alternation of a bass kick and snare drum, and then maybe a crash on the first down beat every few measures. That said, flash doesn’t always appeal to me either. I’m sure there are tons of drummers faster than many of the ones I’m going to mention, but that doesn’t necessarily make them great drummers. Some drummers really add to the mood and feel to a song.

So, I’ve come up with a list of some of my favorite drummers… with a couple rules. First of all, this is not a list of the best drummers ever. That should be clear because I included no jazz drummers. Secondly, anyone who claims to have a list of the best drummers ever, has an inherent qualifier built-in to the list; namely, that everyone on that list has become famous to some extent. I’ve seen far too many phenomenal local drummers that never became famous to know that most of the best drummers out there will never be heard (the same goes for other types of musicians too). That said, most of these drummers would be obvious choices to anyone obnoxious about their music, but hopefully some you’ve never heard. Aside from the ones mentioned below with short audio clips, I’d also like to mention that Neal Peart (Rush), Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle), Carter Beauford (Dave Matthews Band), Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin) are among my favorite drummers as well. If you’ve never seen the video of Tony Royster, Jr. at age 12, I highly recommend you check it out.