I hope we’re all thinking people who use words deliberately, and not as the common citizenry does: as vibe-based idea-smears. Words shape your concepts, insidiously at times— you try to do a thing based on the implication of the word, but the thing doesn’t work that way, and you waste your time chasing an imaginary idea of what you’re even doing.
The following are so commonplace it’s almost silly to quibble with them, except they’re clearly influencing peoples’ thought about what they’re trying to accomplish on the drums, and how. And since they were brought into the drumming lexicon exactly because someone chose them to help make sense of the activity, let’s consider whether they’re really accomplish that, and think about using some more helpful words. And about the real concepts the bad words/concepts are hiding.
Feel
Meaning, a quality of your timekeeping, like your own personal “groove”— it’s a distracting concept. The whole mission is to play solid time and state it clearly for the other players; you’re always thinking how do I do that better. The “feel” is what will be perceived by the audience as you do that job with other musicians, it’s a by-product.
Feel is a real musical term, meaning a way of playing time, especially as an interpretation— playing a swing interpretation of a standard tune is a feel, playing a ballad in 4/4 as 12/8 is a feel, playing a half time groove on a fast 4/4 tune is a feel. It may also be used as the category of types of groove generally: Q: What’s the feel on this? A: Bossa Nova [for example]
Style
Usually people mean “my cherished awesome personal way of playing”, which is, again, a distraction from your real job. Performers who basically do everything one personalized way, that they’re known for. Like the singers in the video below— they are given one line to sing, and to sound like themselves. it’s not a desirable thing for players. Playing is an act and a process, it’s not a style. As a player you may have a sound or a voice, which is not the same as style. And it’s even a little precious, if you’re appearing purely as a sideman. The first thing is to be able to play jobs appropriately and excellently. You will have a finite vocabulary for doing that, but that also is not style— you’re not playing it to express a style.
Style is also a real musical term, meaning “type of groove”, a la the Q&A example above.
Muscle memory
Fairly harmless, except for the suggestion of a promised land in which “muscle memory” will do your work for you, once you’ve practiced enough. So you can think about how good you look being so awesome. Maybe it’s a thing and maybe it isn’t, but how does the idea help us?
Autopilot
A lot of these seem to be about relieving the player of the burden of responsibility. People have larger things on their minds than what am I playing, what is this music. I think it’s good to purge these kinds of words altogether. The goal is always better focus, more productive focus creatively, it is not to check out and go on autopilot.
Except: a certain amount of autopilotness may be the end result of very serious practice— working the way you have to with The New Breed, for example— but it is arrived at through an extremely demanding regimen of hard core awareness.
Independence
This is not a thing. Your playing limbs are not independent entitities, they all have one controlling person, coordinating them to play in unison, or opposite each other, to make a single combined rhythm. You’re one person doing one thing. On this site we say coordination to describe the skill involved. Some people say interdependence, which… OK, whatever.
There may be an independent part that expresses a rhythm different from what you’re doing on the rest of the instrument, but coordination is the skill we use to execute it.
Ergonomics
Indicates a person who needs to stop screwing with their set up and practice more, play more. Artifact of someone having their drums set up in one place for too long, and deriving too much pleasure from looking at them. Just set up your stuff so it’s easy to hit junk, you don’t have to advertise how much science you used doing it.
Having fun
Two trivializing words forming the one internet commandment of drumming, that you have fun the whole time you do this. I don’t know. Is doing anything well simply fun 100% of the time? Are there other worthwhile motivations for doing something?
Internal clock
A clock is a machine that keeps precise track of time automatically, so we humans don’t have to. An “internal clock” suggests a similar kind of unconscious, yet reliable, function internal to individual human beings, and it’s not real.
And people do try to make their bodies into mechanical clocks (“bio-mechanical”?), keeping track of time by expressing it physically, dancing the time, essentially. A lot of music has been made, and is made, with people dancing the time, or vibing it. Most music. It’s not reliable, but it’s often good enough.
In music using the drum set, modern professional standards have evolved so drummers are often expected to play and hold any tempo exactly. It’s a tall order for a player accustomed to dancing time, as more demands are placed on them— unconditioned tempos, differences in volume, complex improvisation.
To do that, we have to regard musical time as a concept— a function of developed, continuing awareness, that is in no way an automatic thing— and train our technique to follow it.
Random
Often when something improvised or unplanned is introduced to someone’s practicing, people will call it random, and it isn’t. Randomness has no part of any of it, ever. Mistakes are not random, movements aorund the instrument are not random.
Whatever you do, there’s supposed to be a reason for it, like I wanted to play it, I heard it, it seemed like the right thing to play. It was possible. If you move your left hand to the tom toms, there is a sound there, there is an order in which things can happen. It’s not random, the musical effect is not of randomness. Learn the sound of it and do it for a reason.
I also have no use for randomness in materials— random patterns, random rhythms. I think people have the idea that unexpected things come up in your playing life, so I’ll test myself by doing something for no reason. It doesn’t really work that way. Know what you’re trying to do, and use your knowledge to choose things to support it, and deal with the surprises in the real world when they happen.
All superlatives
Let’s stop selling. Just say what you like, and why, and stop trying to excite people into liking your thing.
Personally, I limit myself to the very mundane good and great, and use them so frequently that they become more mundane than that. I’ll also use excellent. That’s all we need— an indication that something is real, worthwhile. Others getting excited about it is their job. You’re not going to be able to force them to get it.
Like I said, these are everywhere. This is a young enough instrument that people still largely on their own figuring out how to play it, not least because a lot of teachers and enthusiasts still talk about “independence” and an “internal clock.” People waste years of their lives trying to make those ideas work, if they’re lucky ending up with some kind of acceptable way of playing in spite of it. Mostly not.