the worst drummer you've ever worked with?

[laCherry]

Yep, the texting drummer I played with was in his mid 30's.

...texting while drumming ...why i oughta...

And then he has the gall to say, "So what are we doing next ?" after the rest of us have been discussing it whilst he's been texting and we're looking to him for a count in. FFS !
Although this is the guy who needs audio descriptions of songs, for example, "the one that goes boom tish de tish" or "the four count then boom, boom te boom." He doesn't know any of the names of songs (we do classic rock and blues covers.) But he is pretty solid and can often be pretty damn good so compared to some of the jokers talked about here, I'm glad to have him.

 

[middlebit]

Played (briefly!)with a guy who'd been playing drums for about 4 years. Every time he played a half-bar fill (like once every 8 or 16 bars), he'd flip the beat, switch the snare and bass, and not notice it himself. So he'd be playing this completely generic beat:
Dum-cha-dum-cha (hey, I didn't write it) and then in the third bar of this he'd play Cha-dum-cha-dum...
Eventually he'd flip it around again, but those were awkward times!

 

[bobunit]

Although this is the guy who needs audio descriptions of songs, for example, "the one that goes boom tish de tish" or "the four count then boom, boom te boom." He doesn't know any of the names of songs (we do classic rock and blues covers.) But he is pretty solid and can often be pretty damn good so compared to some of the jokers talked about here, I'm glad to have him.

I worked with a guy like that. Excellent drummer, but didn't know the names to songs. 'Baka Chaka' was code for 'I Love Rock N' Roll'. He also had a tendency to be a bit of a tempo freight train when the breasts were bouncing on the dance floor.

 

[busmandan]

That reminded me of my current drummer that I've been jammin' with for over thirty years. Whenever he counts off a song to start it, he uses the same tempo, NOT the tempo of the song, if you catch my drift!

X8

Sad to hear there's more than one of those. I played with one several years ago.

Then there's what I call "uni-tempo" drummers - drummers who take every song and gravitate it to "their" tempo, regardless of how slow or fast it's supposed to be.

I just left a band because of a drummer who simply wasn't musical. We were doing all original material written by the singer/guitarist, and this guy lacked the ability to hear where accents should be, how and when to change the beat to complement what the other instruments were doing, etc. He only had one fill pattern - quad rolls, like you hear on the intro of "Brick House" - and put them in every song. While the two guitarists and I all agreed we'd be a better band with someone else, neither of them had the stones to fire him. Why the singer/guitarist/songwriter would stand by and let someone do that to his songs is beyond me. He's still in place, and they're looking for another bass player with no success.

 

[mpdd]

guy didn't play fills at all, and he always tried to screw me on the studio rental, needless to
say he was replaced last friday

 

[Kimsallabim]

I was doing som rehearsals with a punk band. it is really not my music. they had one good guitar player, that kind who plays everyting, and the other who only tuned his four lowest strings becaus he didn't use his highest. but the drummer, man, talk about living in his own bubble. sometimes we were the first to arrive and a jam was in the right place, i started whit an upspeed funk groove, like jaco's song "kuru/ speak like a child" and he went right in that punk drum style like sex pistols. he just did'nt hear that it was wrong. luckily it was only four rehearsals or so.

 

[Chuck King]

Maybe not the WORST drummer I've played with, but the most annoying one recently:

The guy was brought into a start-up band by a guitarist who had never actually heard him play. His gimmick was, he used this electronic keytar-type thing to trigger samples. That is not in itself a problem, but, it gave him the ability to play things that nobody with sticks on a regular kit could do, and he felt some sort of driving need to do so, all the time. To the point that he would write parts that he couldn't physically play, even on his gadget. We were playing pretty straightforward pop music, nothing that required ridiculously complicated or involved drum parts, but he tended to make everything about what he was doing. He wasn't as bad as some people described in this thread, but a rehearsal didn't go by in which he didn't lose he beat at some point. And it was almost worse than if he'd been really awful---he got close enough that it was hard to just fire him, but the drum parts always fell a little short of being good.

And, his trigger gadget seemed to break down all the time, leading to down time while he plugged and unplugged various things and replaced various batteries. One time I died and he couldn't get it working again, which necessitated him playing on an acoustic kit. That prompted lots of pouting and whining.

 

[deanokane2k11]

god where do i begin, played with this guy in college, he couldnt keep a rhythm if his life depended on it, he has put me off soo many songs because of his drumming, he claimed that he was doing the drum beats "his way" and im standin there, amp humming away saying but dude your way is WRONG!!!!!

 

[noworreeze]

Played with a girl who kept time ok, but never fell into a consistent pattern. I couldnt stay with her. Finally just played the rhythm patterns i wanted to and pretty soon she got the idea and played with ME! It worked out...sort of.

 

[cracked_machine]

Same with my band, when we try and talk he keeps playing. Now I just take one of his sticks and hit him with it, Shuts him up until the end of the next song.

Oh man. Our drummer does that as well. I don't think they realize that after straining to sing AC/DC or whatever all night, the last you want to do is shout over the drummer dicking about in between the songs.

I have considered throwing stuff at him, but it's usually when I'm holding a glass. That might be a bit OOT.

Thankfully he doesn't do it at gigs. I guess he just gets bored when we start discussing the song layout at great length.

 

[cassanova]

Worst for me was a guy I grew up with that I'm no longer friends with. His tempo was horrible, would rush/drag material, couldn't wing it on songs he didn't know that were in 4/4, even if he heard them countless times, his improv skills overall stunk, most of his fills and beats were lame, and he'd hone in on what guitarists were playing rather than that of the bassist, he never looked like he was enjoying himself when jamming, and considering he had decent Ronald V drum kit, his drum sounds didn't sound all that great either. But what I think really made him the worst drummer I've ever played with on a serious level was his ego, he thought he was all that both as a drummer and a person and everyone else was second rate. You'd honestly never know he'd been playing for (at the time) 11 years. Looking back on it, it's no wonder that none of the bands he ever tried to get off the ground failed.

 

[LoYoYo]

I did a few fill-in gigs with a guy who would play a fill after every two bars, regardless of the song. All his fills were four-and-a-half or five beats long, and he'd usually come back in on the off-beat. He also insisted on singing harmonies, even though his sense of pitch was totally missing. He used to book gigs that paid really well, but we never got repeat bookings!

 

[pbd]

I had a female drummer that I formed a band with because I wanted to date her, the date nor the band worked out real well lol

Todd

 

[Waffles and Scotch]

Our last drummer was by far the worst drummer I've ever played with. Horrible equipment, his toms were tuned (if you want to call it that) to all sound alike - which ended up sounding like tupperware containers, and timing? None. At all. If you gave him a click he'd swear it was wrong. He'd come up with something that worked with the songs, the lead guitarist and I would write solos to match his fills, then he'd forget it. But that wasn't the worst part. When we were trying to explain what he had changed he'd say "Listen. I NEVER played that, I played this:" and nail the part/fill note for note! Then we'd say "Yes!! That's it! Do that again!" and he'd play the same messed up part that caused the discussion in the first place! Of course then he'd swear up and down that he'd been playing the same thing the whole time and we were all crazy.

But here's the kicker. We were a brand new original rock band finishing our set so we could start booking shows, and he suggested we stop rehearsing together. Why, you ask? Because bands like Rush and The Rolling Stones don't need to rehearse - they just practice on their own and they're great when they get up on stage, so we should be able to do the same thing. When we said they've been playing/touring for decades he just said we weren't confident enough. The ironic thing is if we hadn't had such a terrible drummer, we might've been able to pull that off...to a certain extent...

We got rid of him and started playing to a click, and eventually found a very good drummer. Now when I go back and listen to the live recordings with Trash Can Man banging away, I find it both hysterical and sad. Can't believe we sucked that bad for that long. Never again.

 

[Rockmusician]

Believe it or not, the worst was actually a guy who graduated from Berklee. The only way he could play was if he wrote out the drum charts. He would hang them on a clipboard on the side of my amp. He was fine as long as we didn't deviate from the way he wrote the charts. If the guitar player did a longer or shorter solo, or if the singer forgot a verse, the drummer was lost and had no idea what to do because what we played didn't follow the chart.

 

[MrTAteMyBalls]

Believe it or not, the worst was actually a guy who graduated from Berklee. The only way he could play was if he wrote out the drum charts. He would hang them on a clipboard on the side of my amp. He was fine as long as we didn't deviate from the way he wrote the charts. If the guitar player did a longer or shorter solo, or if the singer forgot a verse, the drummer was lost and had no idea what to do because what we played didn't follow the chart.

Funny! We just auditioned a drummer last week who graduated from berklee. It went terrible. He asked us for drum charts. Seriously??? It's 4/4 rock....pretty simple. we also gave him several songs to learn about a week before the audition. when he showed up he hadn't listened to them even once. i guess he thinks he's good enough to not even try. he's not. =).

 

[xk49w]

<snip>He could play the drums OK, but man he would rush EVERYTHING and it drove me nuts.<snip>

I have been fortunate that most of the drummers I have worked with have been excellent. Though I have worked with the rushing drummer a bit also.

There seems to be two types of rushing drummers, the ones that continuously push the tempo and the ones that rush when they do fills or solos. The worst for me is the first type. I have to close my eyes and my drummer ear and concentrate on holding back the tempo regardless of what he does. There was one song though, I decided to follow him instead of ignore him, just to see how fast the song would go. It became crazy silly fast. The singer finally gave up in disgust - too fast to sing.

 

[Tupac]

im thinking all of us who played long enough has to have a dix come in to our life lol

Must... not... say... that's what she said...


Dammit, too late.

 

[nickbass79]

I tried out for a band and I'm pretty sure the drummer thought he was Neil Pert, Herb Alexander and Danny Carey, but he had ZERO tempo control. Lots of beats and lots of different tempos going on, REALLy hard to play with. After the third song I told them I wasn't interested.

 

[pepsiblue32]

Yeah...been there. Done that.

In between a transition of music leaders at my church, we ended up with this guy who pretty much a horrible person and musician. I won't get too much into detail, because that's not relevant to the topic (though, I'll try to sum it up at the end.)

What is relevant was his son. He appointed his son as lead drummer in front of the guy we've had for three or four years, who by all accounts is probably the best drummer I've ever played with.

Back to the kid.

First off, this boy played everything fast. Ballads were done double-time, he had no sense of rhythm and he had the worst attitude when our old drummer came by to try and give him some friendly advice. He just didn't listen (or maybe he didn't care?)

As a bass player, I couldn't do much. 2 services and I called it quits.

A month later, the music leader leaves, and takes more than half of the church with him.

I come back, and along with the drummer, his wife, and my cousin...we establish a new band.

I hear that old music leader just did it again to another church and he had a history of doing this everywhere he went.

The sad thing is we had another drummer who was just beginning and was really getting good. She ended leaving with this director too. Unfortunate that things happen that way sometimes. I don't think she plays at all anymore...