In terms of music, do you ever think there's such a thing as doing 'too much' on the drums? What if the rest of the song was relatively simple, but you just had this really explosive drum line underneath, to the point where the drummer would have to learn each individual bar because nothing was repeated? Asking for a friend. (I just really want to piss off my future drummer tbh. That was the whole point of doing this.)
I suppose it depends on what kind of music you're doing. If it were still the 70's and prog rock was still around, you could definitely do it. Or if you're doing certain kinds of metal.
I preface this with an acknowledgement that I have no musical talent and play no instrument. But the drums win out for me every time. Listen to God Don't Like Ugly by Ian Siegel, the intro to Lust for Life by Iggy, Take 5 by Dave Brubeck Quarter or pretty much anything by The Doors. Maybe more rhythm than you're talking about but never too much drums.
Agreed! Some of my faves: In-A-Godda-Da-Vida—Iron Butterfly (set to beginning of drum solo) Moby Dick—Led Zeppelin And a transplant I posted to The Music Thread recently: Sing Sing Sing—Benny Goodman .. And how could I forget the legendary Ginger Baker:
Love it! Had a listen to all of them. I had the idea already, then started trying to really experiment with it (rather than just 'okay, here's four bars of the same stuff over and over again, then CHANGE, then back again' -- which is just.... ugh. My prefrontal cortex is dying. No wonder I stopped playing those kind of drums ha!). Then I went back to listening to jazz after some time away (I've not been in a jazz mood this year, ya feel?). Anyway, came back across this, which was so much more like it: But after some time working on this song, I was really starting to worry that it would become like this:
I tend to do that a lot, it seems. At this rate, my sister's the only one who might be able to do the drums, she wants the same stuff out of music as me. She's as bored of the 4/4 stuff (although incidentally, the song actually is in 4/4 unlike the rest) as I am
If it were me I'd try to give a general sense of what I want and let the drummer come up with the rest. I've played with a few drummers and they all sound very different from each other.
Good idea. I'd just be concerned about whether they're good enough to write the whole thing without it being derivative. Obviously, this is not all drummers, just speaking about the ones I know from experience. The people I know are just not good enough at the drums to do that sort of thing (as in, they're great when they play in bands, onstage, they're experienced, well-rehearsed, etc., but maybe just not a good fit for this band), which means I'm gonna have to search really hard in the meantime. But it's no big deal. The rest of the music is written really well and I don't want the drums to let it down lol. It'd be a bit like playing along to a symphony with a triangle keeping time.
That actually is a pretty tricky question. I really don't know! My only requisites are that 1) every song that I keep is really good, 2) the idea or song feels fundamental and/or classic and/or timeless, and 3) every song pushes the envelope in some way (and ideally in more than one way) - this can be in the writing, song structure, vocals, instruments and rhythm, recording technique and/or production. So I can pretty much put in anything that I want, as long as the intent is to make good music. Go big or go home, right?
Couldn't find the drum tab for this one, but the drums are basically on beat with the numbers in Pi, so nothing really repeats.
