Drummers who don't count?

[dkelley]

This thread makes me relieved to find that my bands are not the only ones where it's historically been challenging to find drummers who can count beats and understand subdivisions of beats and triplets and that you don't count in a song slowly 1 2 3 4 and then play an up tempo (3)-E 4 intro fill right after saying "4"

 

[BarfanyShart]

It takes me an embarrassing amount of effort to "turn on" my counting brain while playing. But, you know, I've had a legit music education, so I am capable of counting when necessary. I try to exercise my rhythmic intuition by constantly counting rhythms i hear while listening to music throughout the day. I feel like that kind of does the work of creating a library of rhythmic patterns in my brain that I can recall intuitively while playing without switching to the counting side of my brain.

 

[Ewo]

Yeah, I've run into some drummers that have difficulty feeling the tempo of a tune and then counting off the start. Strikes me as very odd...

In that situation I've often counted off the tunes by thumping on muted strings. It's worked OK.

 

[jpmcbride]

I count EVERYTHING, all the time..

I never count, except in the case where something is difficult I'll count until I finally learn it, then I'll never count it again. I can feel where I'm at, and counting is just distracting to me. Not everyone works the same way.

Having said that, if the drummer is struggling, you might encourage him to try counting the part he's having difficulty with until he gets it worked out and internalizes it.[/QUOTE]

 

[mikewalker]

I've had the extremely good fortune to play with a couple of real world-class masters of the drumset - but also had the difficult experience of having really good friends who were creative musicians that 'thought they could play drums' but in fact both had serious deficiencies in keeping a steady meter.

They both took it pretty hard when confronted with the painful reality of their tendency to get carried away and 'lose it': speeding up, slowing down, occasionally just dropping a beat here and there (I can't fathom how they can actually do that, but they both did!) One of them migrated to being a guitarist, and has no problem playing guitar just fine, locking in with a real drummer. The other still keeps a stylish drumset at home, but mercifully only ever plays it in very short bursts for his own amusement. (He found his true calling as a songwriter, and is about as prolific as they get...)

 

[Maki_Randy]

I'm originally a drummer who started bass later on.
I only count difficult parts of a song. Coming from an educated drummer background this is almost never in standard pop/ rock/ blues songs. Only in the study fase. 4/4 and 3/4 need to be second nature pure on feel.
If your drummer is 2 beats behind in chorus changes he is just not paying attention or a bad drummer (you say he's a good drummer so it's lack off attention or focus). Like he says, he just wings it and comes late because he reacts to the music, instead of anticipating.
In standard pop/ rock this has to be second nature, the 4/4 feel and the 4 bar sections are so overwhelming it got to be second nature. If it's not you need to step up.

If you want to compare it to bass, missing an end if a 4 bar section over and over again is like fretting a C sharp everytime you want a C. Or riding the a string instead of the e string. You can loose your focus and make a mistake but if it happens over and over again there's something else.

 

[pepj]

He IS a bad drummer if he cant cover the rudimentals. Epic fail for bad time.
imo.

 

[Biggbass]

wow. a drummer that wings it.
IMHO any player who doesn't or can't count thru at least the important sections that could put the band out of sync, doesn't understand the basics of how math applies to music.

I worked with a drummer just like this for about a year. It became so irritating when he blew thru important sections at gigs, or missed an accent, set up, or botched the ending, that I just couldn't take it anymore. He would blow an important part of a song and then just shrug his shoulders when we looked at him with a "*** MAN!?" look. After a year of it I had to throw down the 'him or me' card. We fired him at the end of a gig where he, once again, completely sent the band off the rails more than once.

There is only one answer. Fire the drummer. Remember...there are guys who have drums and there are drummers. ANd there is huge difference.

 

[Hypercaffium]

When I play drums with my band I count before the song starts, like most drummers do to give a reference to the other members. I've never felt the need to count during a song.

 

[ToddB1963]

I used to play jazz with a drummer who'd always lose his place when trading fours and come in 2-3 beats too late ALL the time. It drove me mad. I'd often end up pedaling through the changes just so he wouldn't get lost. That seemed to help...

 

[glocke1]

No.. we aren't talking about drummers that don't matter.... in this sense I mean count as in timing.

Let me give y'all a little back story: last band practice our guitarist/lead singer (3 piece grunge/metal band) couldn't make it, so the drummer and I sat down and broke down some parts of a few of our songs that we were having timing issues on. At one point in time we were playing along to one of our recordings and I told him I needed him to crash at the end of the "4" of the chorus, not on the "1" of the guitar solo that follows, and he admitted that he doesn't count when he plays and most of the time he just "wings it". (This explains a lot about why he's often a bar or two 1/4 notes behind us, and why he doesn't always play the same fills).

I count EVERYTHING, all the time.. by this I mean every time I play our songs I see everything in numbers and thought everyone else did too. I have been trying to give the drummer hints when things are changing.. (ie with a small fill). But this conversation got me thinking about how common it is for drummers to not be counting all the time. Playing by feel is one thing, but how can you play percussion withOUT counting? Even if most of what we play is 4/4 you still have to anticipate when the changes are happening.

Am I being too narrow minded? You can play melodies without an understanding of theory.. but I still think understanding intervals is super important. I just always assume people who feel the beat are feeling a count of some kind.

I'll preface the following by saying " everything is important ":

I wrestled with counting for a very long time, thanks to conflicting advice given by instructors and different band members over the years. Some instructors said don't count, others said count....

I've come to the conclusion that it has it's place and if counting is what it takes to get someone to play a song correctly than by all means count, but ultimately you are going to want to get to a place where the counting in your head gets quieter and is replaced by " feel ", and for me I couldn't get to that place where I felt things without counting in my head so I would know where things were supposed to be. In other words I don't have to keep counting at this point to feel beat two in measure 3, I can feel it but I had to initially count in my head to get to that point. I can just feel it..

On the other hand, counting can REALLY screw things up if not done correctly. In one of the bands I am in we play a tune thats in 7/4. The drummer thinks he is helping keep us all together by counting but he isn't. He will go " 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Sev-EN "...1-6 are single syllable words, seven is two syllables and it just doesn't work.


"You can play melodies without an understanding of theory.. but I still think understanding intervals is super important. I just always assume people who feel the beat are feeling a count of some kind."

You can play anything without an understanding of theory....but just because you can, doesn't mean you're playing to the best of your ability. There are some rock/jam band oriented musicians I tried getting together with for a long time to play through jazz standards. It just simply wasn't happening because they lacked the theory and in-depth knowledge of that genre that jazz musicians have. Drummer thought bossa nova's were boring because he was only familiar with a simple bossa pattern, guitar player was a good rocker/blues player but had no clue about chord symbols and we had to explain to him what the symbol D- meant on a chart, his comment was " you can almost anything over this stuff "...you can, and you can't...thats where knowing theory comes in handy.

 

[smtp4me]

No.. we aren't talking about drummers that don't matter.... in this sense I mean count as in timing.

Let me give y'all a little back story: last band practice our guitarist/lead singer (3 piece grunge/metal band) couldn't make it, so the drummer and I sat down and broke down some parts of a few of our songs that we were having timing issues on. At one point in time we were playing along to one of our recordings and I told him I needed him to crash at the end of the "4" of the chorus, not on the "1" of the guitar solo that follows, and he admitted that he doesn't count when he plays and most of the time he just "wings it". (This explains a lot about why he's often a bar or two 1/4 notes behind us, and why he doesn't always play the same fills).

I count EVERYTHING, all the time.. by this I mean every time I play our songs I see everything in numbers and thought everyone else did too. I have been trying to give the drummer hints when things are changing.. (ie with a small fill). But this conversation got me thinking about how common it is for drummers to not be counting all the time. Playing by feel is one thing, but how can you play percussion withOUT counting? Even if most of what we play is 4/4 you still have to anticipate when the changes are happening.

Am I being too narrow minded? You can play melodies without an understanding of theory.. but I still think understanding intervals is super important. I just always assume people who feel the beat are feeling a count of some kind.

Part of me wants to say that, if he gets the job done, who cares? The other part of me - the one that cringes when I read this, wants to question HOW a drummer can get by without counting. That may not include actually counting 1..2..3..4 in his head while playing - I'm talking about just keeping track/having a sense of beats/subdivisions/the beginning and ending of measures etc.

 

[Zooberwerx]

Yeah, I've run into some drummers that have difficulty feeling the tempo of a tune and then counting off the start. Strikes me as very odd...

In that situation I've often counted off the tunes by thumping on muted strings. It's worked OK.

Yeah, and if I go to all that trouble, you damn well better be there on the 1 downbeat. Particularly challenging when the intro drops on the "and of 4".

Riis

 

[Five or Six]

Surprised your whole band hasn't addressed the issue if this is so evident. If a drummer is "consistently" off, or "any player" for that matter, it makes the whole band in general sound off. Consistently being the key word. Specifically, if any member "can't" get it together, the band in general needs to make some decisions. Every drummer has quirks, but, so does every musician. Some may think they are but, has anyone ever never met a perfect musician?

 

[LowActionHero]

When I play drums I never count unless it's a REALLY weird pattern or time signature. I can feel where I am, but I can count if needed. 7 years of school band burned it in my brain I guess.

 

[lermgalieu]

Count? It is rare that any number would enter my head unless it's an odd time signature. 4/4 should be automatic.

 

[pepj]

I played with a really good SRV guy...had him down really well, but the drummer...lovely guy...was all over the place. I didnt take many more subs, and thought the drummer wouldn't last, but he is still there 5 years later?? I don't get it.

FWIW, I've always had a good internal meter, never needed to count unless really off the wall, but I find as your hearing drops off, you need backup in certain places, like tapping your feet, which I've never had to do.
I wonder if that drummer is deaf.
It's one of those non discussed issues so you assume everyone works like that..?

 

[drumvsbass]

...are not really drummers.

 

[turf3]

Really, this discussion is just a subset of the whole subject of rhythm and timing. There's micro-rhythm, as in "which sixteenth is that hit on" that you see in Afro-Cuban music, and there's macro-rhythm as in "this is the place where you stay on that I chord for a very long time and you'd better count bars". That latter, of course, is also part of "song form" which often eludes amateur musicians.

Unfortunately, there are just a lot of people who do not have any kind of solid rhythmic feel, whether micro, macro, or in between. You should see a bunch of elderly white New England folkies just trying to manage claps on 2 and 4. I am not sure it's possible to improve this condition in adults. It boggles the mind that adults in the Western world, who surely have all heard tens of thousands of hours of recorded rock and roll, still have not internalized that "thump-WHACK-thump-WHACK" rhythm that's fundamental to the style of music that's been in their ears their entire life. There are those who just are rhythmically challenged, and (unfortunately) some of them own drum kits.

Matters become worse when you're trying to explain things to people who don't have a grasp of the common terminology - two examples are the aforementioned folkies who can't grasp that "2 and 4" relates to a bar in four-four because they think all songs are in two (except waltzes that are in three); and the other is the person I've encountered - when you play bass two beats to the bar because the tempo's fast, they say "play faster" and when you go to four beats per bar and slow down the tempo they say "now it's too fast". They don't understand that tempo is distinct from how many individual notes per minute come out of your instrument. Not knowing the common terminology is not necessarily a MUSICAL deficit - heaven knows I don't use the right terms in detailed theory discussions a lot of the time - but it sure makes communication slower and more prone to misunderstanding.

 

[neddyrow]

We don't even have a drummer and still suffer from this problem. We have a mandolin player who can't count. It causes trouble when he has to start a song. He will either count in numbers that don't match the rhythm or count at a speed that is not the speed of a song. We have been working on it with him for months! He's a great player but really struggles with timing. And, in bluegrass/Old time fiddle music, his job is to be the "snare" to my "kick drum."

The band will sometimes play gigs without me as I bartend on Friday nights and it never goes well as they can't keep time without me. It makes me feel good and bad. Mostly bad as I don't want them to miss out on gigs because of my second job.