“I think the best way to improve your time, is to play with musicians that have good time. Getting the feeling for how its supposed to be and working on it will improve time. But things will distract you from playing time. If you don’t have your mind on it, or just a natural feeling for it, certain things will distract you. You have to find out what those things are and work on them.
By making a tape with somebody you can find out, ‘Well, I played something here and I can feel myself getting faster,’ and work on it like that. But its hard to explain. You’ve got to listen to guys that play good time and get a feeling for how it’s done. Then you can hear it and go home and practice it. You can hear that feeling.”
– Jimmy Cobb, interview by Rick Mattingly, Modern Drummer, August 1979