These days it's a whole new ball game. The availability of resources online, in print and via knowlegable and experienced tutors has helped to raise the general standard of playing to unprecedented levels.
It's particularly pleasing to see and hear so many great young jazz drummers in the UK who are speaking the language in far greater numbers and with more fluency than any time in history, and believe you me they are not getting into it for the money and glamour. So what happened? It would be both unfair and impossible to point to one single reason for this explosion of talent but in 1994 the jazz drumming game changed forever with the publication of John Riley's 'Art of Bop Drumming'.
I have mixed feelings about drum books and often feel that the imperative is purely financial. There are serial repeat offender authors out there who seem to have no profile other than their name on a book cover. Just like teaching it is not a consolation prize for the lack of a playing career. Often on clinics and drum shows I joke about this by saying
"Nobody ever wrote a drum book to make the world a better place".
It could be argued however that John Riley did just that. Art of Bop does not contain a single wasted word or gratuitously hard or irrelevant exercise. This book and its successor 'Beyond Bop Drumming' will give you all the essential tools to unleash the jazz drummer within you. Equally important are the listening recommendations and analysis of classic recordings.
Working through some of the early sections of the book with an older student yesterday he asked me about the comping exercises and how I would apply them in the context of actual performance. Riley's book will give you all the idiomatic phrases you could possibly wish for, but what happens on the bandstand when the chips are down and all your drum books are at home in the practice room?
Answer......learn tunes.
Comping in the rhythm section is just as much about improvisation as trading fours or eights, taking a chorus or playing an 'open' solo. Anyone who has studied with me knows how opposed I am to the concept of muscle memory, I prefer to connect with the music and play spontaneously. Of course we all have ideas that get repeated, but that's a big part of how you sign your name when you play.
My strategy to get the ideas flowing either as a team player in the section or a soloist is to think of a melody I know well. I'll use it as a frame of reference to play off. There are many advantages to doing this.
If you are tracking the melody of a tune you know inside out it is highly unlikely that you will lose your place in the form. Singing a melody to yourself enables you to take a step closer to music whereas slavishly counting bars and beats is taking a step away from music, diminishing your attention to what is being played not just by the other musicians but also by you. Taking a chorus on a 32 bar form will be much more interesting if you are thinking about the melody of Joyspring (Clifford Brown) rather than thinking (1234, 2234, 3234, 4234).
Working with fake books and lead sheets works a treat, in addition to which you can use the rhythmic notation in front of you in a Ted Reed/Alan Dawson type of way.
Also, compose when you comp. The jazz drummer's left hand is for the most part deploying six different rhythmic motifs, so it's good strategy to practice them at a sufficiently slow tempo in order to be able to think which one you might use next. As you get better at this you will be able to raise the bar and be able to play 'in the moment' as distinct from trotting out pre-learned ideas from muscle memory. Develop the confidence to leave the toolbox in the back of the car, or better still, at home.
Even if you have no aspiration to play jazz drums at all this concept is in no way genre specific. I create grooves and fills in all styles of music by borrowing the rhythms of known melodies and orchestrating them between my hands and feet.
That said I think every drummer can benefit from studying the art of jazz. Don't forget that the drum set as we know it today was invented by and for jazz musicians, and if it hadn't have been for jazz who knows what kind of percussion would be prevalent in music today. Maybe we'd all be sitting atop wooden boxes and slapping them with our bare hands. (Oh....hang on....)
Not only that but every time I go on to instagram I see 'drum selfies' I so often see the 'one up, two down' configuration which originated with Gene Krupa.
In order to be a monster today it's well worth knowing what went before.
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