Importance of being able to play jazz...

[electrizer]

Hello all!

They say if you can play jazz you can play everything. Not sure how scientifically sound this expression is but I guess there is something to it. It definitely teaches you independence and develops your improvisational skills. But how about if I want to get those skills, but don't really "feel" jazz? For quite some time I tried to push myself towards it, different stuff, Miles, Metheny, jazz trios, modern jazz, a bit more contemporary, and while I can appreciate it, I have to say with a blush on my face that emotionally it leaves me cold, and while listening to it Im nowhere near that state of mind as Steve when he listens to Elvin Jones play.

So how is it? Do you learn jazz purely for practical reasons and treat it instrumentally as a tool for you technical development even if you don't really enjoy listening to it?

[Gaddabout]

You just have to find jazz that you like. There are countless different kinds of jazz.

I'm not very good, but I feel it OK because I used to practice to Joe Pass solos and Take 6 records -- no drummer involved.

[Julián Fernández]

There´s plenty of successful drummers that can´t play jazz cough Neil cough
I would say, pursuit your passion... If you love big rock drums, no reason to torture yourself with music that you don´t care for...
You could still work on the classic books (Reed, Chapin, Riley) to gain more control and balance behind the kit...

[electrizer]

There´s plenty of successful drummers that can´t play jazz cough Neil cough
I would say, pursuit your passion... If you love big rock drums, no reason to torture yourself with music that you don´t care for...
You could still work on the classic books (Reed, Chapin, Riley) to gain more control and balance behind the kit...

I'm not a Vinnie Appice-kind of guy. I have a fusion-sized kit, which has actually shrunk from a Virgil-looking one (four toms + one on the left) to a 'normal' 5 piece + a piccolo snare. Very often Im frustrated with my playing while jamming particularly as I would like to move from a rock/funk type of guy to a more of an allrounder with some licks, grooves and good independence. I have been studying Chapin's book and weirdly enough I've found that it's much more fun to play jazz than to listen to it! Hence my question. Im 27 and I started playing quite late, being around 18 and after a long period of trial-and-error, this is the time of finding out what really good drumming is, being able to fully appreciate guys like Vinnie, although I've been listening to people like Dave or Dennis for years now. However, only now have I started to realise what it is to be a good drummer.

[DSOP]

Don't rush it. In time you may find that you start to love jazz, and begin really seeking it out and immersing yourself in it. But then again, you may never really love it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. You can still develop the skills you want and the facility you need playing many styles of music.

I've always loved "some" jazz, but I didn't personally immerse myself in it until my 20s and early 30s, and then didn't really get any good at playing it until listening and absorbing it for a few years. I still suck at it, but I suck less all the time, and it has easily been the biggest boost to my overall playing abilites and musicality. I think...

I highly recommend John Riley's books. You can spend a few weeks on one line, and after a while, it's almost zen-like (once you really own it).

[chris perra]

The statement that "If you can play Jazz, you can play anything" is crap in my opinion...

Playing Jazz has absolutely nothing to do with Metal, or pop music..

I think it was/is a marketing tool to sell going to a Jazz based music college,..

I do think that 30 years ago,.. pre MIT and other schools that integrated popular styles.. If you had a choice between a Jazz program and a Classical program a Jazz one would be more appropriate to being able to play any style..

Jazz programs have been developed the second longest next to classical and have it down as far as progression and a system of development...

But now,.. all programs have integrated the same 4 way coordination system ect.. and Jazz is just a part of most of them.

I think the most difficult part of learning to play Jazz, is getting to play with others that actually sounds good initially.. It's alot easier to get together with some musicians and play some rock tunes and have it sound like something than it is to play jazz for beginners.. And it's hard to build a connection with things that sound bad haha...

Being a musician and working on your craft ultimately is about musical communication and vocabulary, it's a great idea to expand your ability to communicate in any musical setting.. Learning jazz is a great thing to do,.. but to say if you learn Jazz you can play anything is a huge stretch..

[Riddim]

Short answer: it will help you think more as a musician, and less as a drummer. This attribute is transferable to other idioms.

Longer Answer:

I'd suggest that playing jazz is less about mechanics and more about playing musically, and perhaps with greater opportunity for your own input.

In a cover band, or in most pop music, we generally emulate someone else's part, or play a specific groove, and stay in the pocket. It's enough in many situations to just know the groove and play that, with nothing else.

While in any idiom, we should know the whole tune - melody, lyrics, and chord changes - in pop situations, often we can get away with just knowing the groove. If we play much more, we may get yelled at , or replaced. In jazz situations this is unlikely to be the case. You may be expected to solo or accompany over multiple choruses, in various idioms. You will be expected to be idiomatically correct, but to offer your own take on things; no one wants to hear you clone the original track. That was someone else then; the whole point of playing this music is to hear your take on what’s just transpired with the tune, now. We all have influences, but the object is to play who we are, not do what Max, Papa Jo or AT would have done. They’re not on the gig – you are.

The various idioms aspect is important; one can play with this mindset in any idiom – Afro Cuban, Brazilian, etc. It’s good to master the mechanics of being able to play spang a lang and deal with Chapin’s book – swing is an important part of our instrument’s history, and it’ll help you deal with shuffle and subdivisions in 3, which are good things to know – but just because you can play everything in the Chapin book doesn’t mean you can swing or play jazz. Having said that, as you master it, and listen to /play along with this music, you’ll hear how it relates, and hopefully be more able to play it, well.

It helps, in listening to others play this (or any other idiom), to focus less on what the drummer is playing and more on why he or she did it. Musicians playing drum set make musical choices based on the chart (if they're reading), melody, chord changes, and what the other instruments are doing.

Once you understand the why, the what, in most cases, becomes apparent.

When you get a chance, look up Ralph Peterson on YT. He has a DVD coming out which explains things fairly well (there is an excerpt on YT). Ralph is a master drummer, multi-instrumentalist, and great teacher, who communicates clearly and concisely, often with a certain amount of humor.

Think about the music first; it will tell you how to use the instrument.

Hope this helps.

[sejuba]

You just have to find jazz that you like. There are countless different kinds of jazz.

I'm not very good, but I feel it OK because I used to practice to Joe Pass solos and Take 6 records -- no drummer involved.

I do agree with Gaddabout. Me, when I first got into it, all I cared for was listening to those amazing snare rolls Gene Krupa played. I would try to mimic it as best as I could be I simply didn't
have the chops nor did I really understand the difference between playing swung or straight. I kept practicing A LOT cuz I really REALLY wanted to learn how to roll. I remember when a drummer
gave me page 48 (was it ?) of the Syncopation book and showed me how to read it and play the in btwn notes as double strokes. I was in heaven. Things started to evolve and I began enjoying the really poppy stuff like Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman
and Armstrong...simple because I loved the melody and the fact that it was either sung from beg to end or the harmony was pretty straight forward, happy and upfront. From that point on, I discovered
Brubeck...I loved his piano playing and Morelo was a monster, then Art Blakey and so on. I still can't play the damn thing but I LOVE to practice it, its a real challenge, the exercises from
the Riley books are very musical.

I listen to it because I enjoy it, although there are many many things I still don't understand about it. My advice is: stick to it. Why ? Because it won't harm you. You don't have to enjoy jazz, but if u practice it:

a) it will make your techinique better
b) you will learn A LOT about dynamics giving you awesome control of the instrument. I kinda take pride of myself for being able to "dose" how much volume I give to each of my limbs when I play...that came from studying jazz drums
c) if you do get into it, it will make you think a lot about the music
d) comping can be extremely challenging... there is no wrong or right way to do it... but the challenge comes from knowing how to react to the music and how to improvise everytime you do it again. think about it, you can't really
do that in a rigid format like playing a back beat in a rock context. its just different.

That being said, I do love pop music. Have fun with it bud !

[Gaddabout]

Was everyone like me when they first started: Did you hate jazz soloists? Just go on and on and on the same theme, lots of notes, up and down, blah blah blah. Saxophonists especially. Just made me roll my eyes. It took me awhile to warm up to that stuff listening to blues shuffles, country swing, big band, etc., until I started hearing things I hadn't heard before.

It's funny how jazz sneaks up on you like that.

[electrizer]

a) it will make your techinique better
b) you will learn A LOT about dynamics giving you awesome control of the instrument. I kinda take pride of myself for being able to "dose" how much volume I give to each of my limbs when I play...that came from studying jazz drums
c) if you do get into it, it will make you think a lot about the music
d) comping can be extremely challenging... there is no wrong or right way to do it... but the challenge comes from knowing how to react to the music and how to improvise everytime you do it again. think about it, you can't really
do that in a rigid format like playing a back beat in a rock context. its just different.

Thanks for this sejuba, and others. Just like Gaddabout said, for me it's that ability to hear things you don't hear.

I used to listen lots of rock and electronic music. Then came prog and metal, then funk, Weckl, different kinds of stuff, I can embrace good pop music. Don't get me wrong but with jazz it always annoyed me that melodically it very often sounded cold and empty. It's a lot of notes, exploration of different scales, soloing, technical stuff, but emotionally it very often left me cold, unlike rock or others kinds of music which actually made me feel a certain way, sad, aggravated, happy, whatever. Maybe as DSOP said, I just need to stick with it and wait for it to strike me

PS: Just returned from a jog and it dawned on me that I need to straighten something up. I HAVE listened to different kinds of jazz and I HAVE enjoyed a lot stuff like 'Kind of Blue', Metheny and Mehldau, Dizzy, Hiromi, Akira Jimbo (more of a smooth sort). As a listener (and probably as a musician too) I'm more melody- and harmony-oriented rather than technical. I can certainly appreciate a guy setting off on a 5 minute, intricate solo and the amount of effort he put into being able to play that but emotionally it does nothing to me. That I think is the problem with SOME kinds of jazz, but I reckon this applies to music across all the genres.