Simon Spillett Quartet | I Never Know When To Say When | Live at Dawkes

Chops With Everything

 

People often ask me about what I practise.

In short, my practice routine is informed by the music I am going to be playing, and equally importantly, the music that I have been playing. A consequence of the environment in which I was raised has made me a lifelong autodidact, which comes with a highly developed instinct for self evaluation.  In other words, if something I do on a gig or session falls below my expectations,  I tend to spot it and usually can find a means of remedying it when I get back to the practice room.

What I work on falls into three principal categories; time, technique, and improvisation. 

Time covers a wide range of musical styles, all of the considerations regarding four way coordination, and the all important dynamic balance between the four limbs, wherein lies the key to sounding authentic within any specific genre.

Improvisation is a key part of the vast majority of the the gigs I play these days, so it makes sense to work on it. A key part of practice is context. I spend a lot of time playing in the moment, although using one or more fixed elements.  The three key elements are rhythmic patterns, sticking patterns, and orchestration.  For example, I might take a syncopated rhythmic phrase,  and without deviating from it, I will constantly change the sticking and, or the orchestration. Similarly, I may take a sticking pattern and move it between every possible orchestration permutation available from snare and two toms. For those interested,  this is laid out in the form of a numerical grid on page 76 of my book, Stickings, Dexterity, and Orchestration, more details of which are available on my website.

Working on improvisation in this way I have found hugely important in developing the ability to react to the twists and turns of music as they occur, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of imprinted muscle memory, where you end up hating yourself for always playing the same old licks. Not that this doesn't happen from time to time, but it just serves as a backstop on the happily increasingly rare occasions when I can't seem to tap into that more creative mindset.

It's not for everyone,  but it works for me. I prefer it to shedding Wilcoxon solos and then hoping that something worthwhile comes out if I'm going to blow for six choruses on a blues.

Which brings me to the last, and by some distance most controversial area, technique. 

The great drummer Shelly Manne summed it up perfectly when he described technique as the means by which you convey your musical ideas.

This, then, begs the question, 'How much technique do I need?'

The answer is simple. As much as the music requires. The music is your guide, you play what it calls for. Nothing more, and most definitely nothing less. It makes no difference whether you are playing with The Mahavishnu Orchestra or The Eagles. Your input to the music should be at the right level for it to sound complete, and stylistically appropriate.

OK, now I see a problem ahead. 

If your hypothetical Eagles cover band were to suddenly rebrand as a Mahavishnu Orchestra covers band, would you be able to hack the new repertoire? Think long and hard. Be completely honest with yourself before answering.

Equally, if your hypothetical Mahavishnu Orchestra covers band were to rebrand as an Eagles cover band, would you be able to bring about the necessary stylistic revisions to retain that gig?

Each question is equally as valid and serves to underscore the global point that you do what is necessary for the music.

I've deliberately chosen a couple of mildly absurd polar opposite musical contexts to illustrate my point, but you get it don't you?

The Mahavishnu Orchestra covers drummer is every bit as much in danger as getting the Spanish Archer from the Eagles cover band as vice versa. A great prog/fusion player might not be completely comfortable with pocket, space, and simplicity.

A pocket player might be intimidated by odd times, heavily syncopated phrases with all kinds of set ups in between, and the spectre of improvisation.

Does that make one good and the other bad? Of course not.

Now we get a little bit controversial. 

As a teenager my priority was developing my playing. I also had a keen interest in going to the pub and meeting girls at discos. Playing was nevertheless my number one priority. Not everybody is the same. Often I liken practising to investing. You get out in proportion to what you put in, but the ideal strategy is to maximise the return on your outlay. In other words, work on the things you want to do well, and the things you need to do well. Sometimes they will be the same things, at other times they will differ.

In my formative years I was rather hung up on speed and facility. This is in large part due to the drummers in my Dad's record collection; Buddy, Louie, Joe Morello, Krupa and several others. In other words my yardstick for what made a drummer great was their ability to play solos. When you think about it for a moment, those drummers who became the biggest stars of big band and jazz music were often judged by the general public on those terms. The star drum soloists of the time had the bigger profiles by some distance. That's not to say that there were legendary players of that musical era who were not big soloists. Think of Dave Tough, Mel Lewis, Don Lamond and quite a few others. Loved by other musicians for what they brought to the rhythm section, these drummers were the 'groove players' of their day. But you wouldn't be likely to find them on stage for Drum Night at Birdland or a Jazz at the Philharmonic drum battle.

So anyway, by 17 I had developed quite precocious facility. There's more than enough evidence on You Tube to bear this out, but I quickly learned that facility was not the top priority when it came to advancing my career and holding down professional gigs. I overplayed a lot, like a precursor to today's Instagram drummers who embellish every available gap with the most absurdly convoluted fills. You can get away with this if you are at home, playing along to a record, but do that in a band and the musicians will likely grind to a halt. You will almost certainly get shown the door shortly thereafter. Believe me I know. I went there, did that and got the 'never again' once or twice. Backing tracks are great practice resources,  but remember they won't give you the essential skill to manage time and dynamics when playing with real musicians. That's another world altogether. 

Just as a side issue; have you ever noticed that social media comments on drummers' videos are either sycophancy or a pile-on, but never actual, beneficial, constructive criticism? I sometimes wonder why that is. Don't you?

So the acquisition of much needed experience gave me the nous to know when to put all that technique in my back pocket and leave it there. This I believe is what it's all about. The key to developing technique is knowing when not to use it. There are plenty of prominent players out there who are for the most part known as pocket players, whose facility on the drums might surprise you. Personally I am in the fortunate position where the work I do gives me ample scope to apply the things I continue to develop. My ability to improvise makes me an asset to the people who employ me.

I said I was going to be controversial, so here it is.

Lack of ability is not a virtue. Limited facility on the instrument does not afford you some sort of confected moral superiority over those with superior ability: with the caveat that said superior ability should always be applied in the service of the music. If you feel you are not attaining the level you desire, get back to studying, seek out a tutor, put the hours in and watch your standards rise, and above all, don't knock those who have taken it a little further. I can't think of any form of endeavour where lack of development is portrayed as somehow advantageous.

I remember a few years ago we took the big band to a major UK jazz festival. At that time we were featuring music made famous by Buddy Rich, and the festival organisers asked if I would do a big band drumming master class on the day of our concert. This duly went ahead, and given the context there was considerable focus on soloing, improvisation etc.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it apart from one attendee who sat there with a furled bottom lip and an icy stare of disapproval.

Afterwards he admitted that his enjoyment of the master class had been limited , and said,

"All this soloing is all very well but I play for the song".

Overlooking the fact that he is actually a gas fitter from Bolton, it wasn't the first time that I've found the use of that particular chestnut in the drummer lexicon ever so slightly passive-aggressive. Before you put down someone who has more highly developed ability than you, maybe take a look in the mirror. Maybe get a bit more focused on setting yourself some new and potentially more challenging goals. Even better, get competitive. Competitive with yourself. Why not make a concerted effort to enhance your technique, thus improving your ability to express your musical ideas, to end this blog reiterating the words o wisdom from Shelly Manne.

The means of conveying your musical ideas.

The Musical Work/Life Balance

 

What a relief to be as busy as this. After that fifteen month state induced coma, that long night of darkened venues with only the slightest glimmer of light at the end of what at times resembled an ever-lengthening tunnel.

Anyway, that's all in the past and the music industry is back. Back for good.

I know some of my fellow professionals have fared less well than others, but the overarching trend is of a return to something resembling the old normal, and the longer this goes on the less likelihood there is of the SAGE goons chloroforming the performance industries once again.

Personally I'm delighted to be what I call 'the right kind of busy', in other words, playing great music with great musicians, doing exactly the kind of things which were what inspired me to get serious about the drums all those years ago. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I am exactly the musician I dreamed of becoming when I was six years old. Not in any way do I mean to sound boastful, but this is not some kind of fluke predicated upon sheer dumb luck. It's what I planned all along; and the more things progressed (the turning point being when I relocated to London in late 1992) the more I could see pipe dreams becoming reality.

It wasn't easy sometimes, but then again every once in a while I found myself in absolutely the right place at the right time, and an important door would open. The thing with this is though, that these key milestones are almost always only apparent with the benefit of hindsight.

Earlier I mentioned being 'the right kind of busy'. What do I mean by this? Well, a full diary with pages dark with lucrative engagements is a wonderful thing, and it is what I wish for my professional friends and colleagues both here in the UK and across the continents. However, there's busy and there's busy. If your time is taken up playing music that doesn't stretch you, and equally importantly doesn't provide an outlet for all those advanced concepts you are working on, then in my view, the economic reality of making ends meet notwithstanding, there may be something missing.

I often amuse myself with moments of reverie along these lines. Imagine if Buddy Rich had been a Broadway pit drummer, playing eight shows a week of (for instance) The Sound of Music, and only taken his big band out once every two weeks or so. I'm certain he would still have been a great player, but the masterful level of attainment that those of us of a certain age were fortunate to experience in the flesh would possibly not have been so inescapably apparent. One of his thought-provoking, slightly cryptic comments, oft repeated in social media memes that "You get good by playing" reflects this, I believe.

Similarly I wonder what would have happened had the young Tony Williams accepted a lucrative mid 60s pop gig (Herman's Hermits, peut-etre?) rather than spending those pivotal years in Miles \Davis's group, in which he (metaphorically) wrote the last chapter of the book of modern jazz drumming, started by Roy Haynes and Elvin Jones.

Sometimes I think that when people say to you, "But just think of the money", it's wise counsel to consider the other side of the coin. If you can possibly afford to.

Also, in pursuance of the musical work/life balance, make sure you have a 'project', just in case you're not fortunate enough to be busy doing work you completely love. Let's be honest; who among us pro players hasn't at one time or another had to pragmatically grasp the nettle and accept jobs that don't exactly fill you with joy. I look back over my mid 1990s diaries and for every great gig fondly recalled, there's another which induces a shudder even at this distance.

Anyway, to cut a long story sideways, I got lucky. My third attempt at forming a big band (in 1995) managed to be sustainable. We got it out of the pub back rooms and into theatres and festivals. This was done by playing pretty uncompromising instrumental jazz, without going down the repertory/nostalgia route. We didn't have a singer and the band didn't dress up like the cast of Dad's Army. In the years from 1995-2006 that project pretty much achieved what it was intended to do. I was with an alumnus of that band just the other day and we were in agreement that we made some sort of a mark. I sometimes wish we might have taken it further, had a little more success and profile, but I have a fairly well-developed instinct for the shelf life of projects. 2007 saw a reorganisation and a change of direction which has been adequately documented elsewhere.

\So the moral is, keep those projects on the back burner. I hung on to mine and it became the thing for which I became moderately well-known.

So with the milestone 60th birthday just nine months hence, I find myself happier with my situation than at any time previously. Not only that, there's at least one (maybe more) new big band project in the works. I'll tell you about that a little later.

Visit my website here.

LOVE FOR SALE Terry Gibbs/Buddy DeFranco Quintet

Over the years I have had the great good fortune to play with some bona fide jazz legends during their visits to Britain. Unfortunately very little recorded evidence exists to bear this out, but here is a bit of glorious, high fidelity, BBC outside broadcast audio recorded at the Concorde Club, Eastleigh. I had only been in London about two years at this point, but had had the good fortune to come to the attention of legendary bassist Jim Richardson. Jim was a great talent spotter and not long after our initial meeting he got me roped in to play a fundraiser for Barney Kessell at the 100 Club. This benefit was organised by jazz agent Robert Masters, and some months later when a number of dates on the Gibbs/DeFranco tour needed covering, I got the call. Luckily that included the broadcast date, and I'll leave it to the dulcet tones of Digby Fairweather to introduce the band. Listening to this for the first time since 1996 I find the 'clapometer' interesting. Note, at the conclusion of my trade chorus with Buddy and Terry the truly lukewarm reception from the audience. It's not to do with the quality of the playing because it's fine. It's much more to do with the 'never heard of him effect', as my lifelong quest for obscurity was far more successful back then than it is now. More music from this session coming soon.

DRUM SOLO ON 'ALONE TOGETHER' (FEB 15TH 2022)

Drum solo from a gig on Feb 15th 2022, at the Hare & Hounds, Worthing, UK.

The 'Confidence/Self-Doubt' Balance

 This post includes an extract from my forthcoming book about strategies for performers.. Visit www.petecater.org for further details.

Poor Adele.

What was she thinking of?

Famously plagued with stage fright and yet she signs up to a lengthy residency in Las Vegas. Admittedly only a couple of days per week so really not terribly onerous. When you compare that kind of workload to what some of the stars of the West End and Broadway put themselves through in a typical eight show week (as evidenced by the fabulous cast of the Barbican's presentation of 'Anything Goes', which I had the great good fortune to see in October 2021) going on stage and belting out your greatest hits along with some hugely anticipated new material doesn't really seem like that much of a stretch. For some performers it simply wouldn't be.

 Live performance is something many of us (myself included) thrive upon. The opportunity to show our skills to an audience is, for some of us, the principal reason why we've invested all kinds of hours over a lifetime into being as good at what we do as is possible. This is an unfinishable task. You'll never know everything there is to know, nor be able to do everything that is possible in your chosen field of endeavour.

Call it egotistical, narcissistic, or just plain old showing off. It is to some extent all of those but when did showing the world how good you are at something become problematic. It simply isn't.

For me this is a huge and deeply powerful motivator. Every day of my life I strive to come up with new and better ways of expressing myself on my chosen instrument. I love it; it's addictive, and as long as I am able to play to a standard I'm happy with I shall be staying in the game.

New and better ways of expressing yourself as a musician are all very well, but the all-important issue of context plays a critical role. Earlier on I mentioned the West End. Orchestras in the West End are packed with some of the most talented and capable instrumentalists you will come across anywhere. Largely uncredited, and at best on the very outermost periphery of the limelight, theatre musicians have to get it right all the time, with absolute consistency.

Context again, in that the requirements of the drum parts of a West End show (and some of them are extremely challenging-check out 'Hamilton' from the drummer's perspective some time) wouldn't provide me with a platform to put my personal innovations to any meaningful use. So it's important to me that the majority of the work I do is of a kind where a lifetime of personal development as a player can be put before an audience, rather than never escaping from the practice room

The theatre route never appealed to me, and when some 25 years ago I was offered the opportunity to take that fork in the the road, I chose to stick with the jazz career, which by that point really started to feel like it was progressing towards the fulfilment of what I originally set out to do, and my younger self had already figured out that the endgame was to become the drummer I had dreamed of being when listening to my Dad's jazz LPs in early childhood.

.The quartet and big band gigs I do with Simon Spillett encapsulate this perfectly. As do my other projects, including a new big band format currently in development, with the focus very much on some of the greatest drumming of the greatest drummers in the history of music. Want to know more? Call my agent as they say.

This is a huge box tick for any performer. It's the reason I learned to play in the first place. It's also the reason I (at nearly 59) am still trying; trying harder than ever, and, dare I say, getting the best results I have ever achieved.

Do I strike you as confident? That's largely because for the most part, I am. Where did this confidence come from, you may ask. It's certainly not innate by any stretch, and I have had my fair share of self doubt, and in my early years what felt like a disproportionately large helping of bad luck and disappointment.

Remember, success and failure are frequently mistaken for one another.

Every time something goes wrong we often have a tendency to beat ourselves up and shoulder the lion's share of the responsibility. This is a mistake. I'm not suggesting that you blame everybody else when things go wrong; failing to own up when you've blown it is just as bad as taking credit for other people's achievements where none is due. Developing a capacity for constructive self-criticism will pay the biggest dividends.

And remember; f**k up, hands up, move on. (As Dave says).

If you're smart, adversity can be your greatest teacher. As a young player I started to see other drummers my own age get on in their fledgling careers where I seemed to be forever hitting brick walls and making no progress. It wasn't much fun and it used to bring me down. I made it a priority to self evaluate my own work without beating myself up. Knowing what you do well and knowing where there's room for improvement is a big key to progress and eventual success. Ask people. That can help, but be careful in your choice of those you ask. Not everybody will give you the most helpful advice. Not everybody wants to see you succeed. I know that sounds cynical but it's something you need to know.

Take pride in the things you know you do well, at the same time learn from your mistakes. Nothing you will ever do will be completely perfect, and  nothing completely without merit to the point of being disastrous. Outside of a few obvious and basic parameters, our judgement of musical performance is based on entirely subjective appraisal. A lot also comes from received wisdom, where we fall into line behind the opinions of those whose status we (often fallaciously) consider superior to our own. It's really, really important not to do this. A huge part of developing the kind of quiet, unwavering confidence which will pave your personal road to success, is born of trusting your own opinions rather than merely adopting someone else's. Yes, you'll be wrong, you'll make a few mistakes, and you'll get another (hopefully) free, or at best inexpensive music/life lesson in the process.

I suspect Adele is a perfectionist. When you think about it there's almost a connection between a deep seated lack of self-belief in certain areas and demanding the absolute best from those upon whom you depend (leaving the much trumpeted covid outbreak and supply issues to one side for the moment).

Personally I don't consider myself a perfectionist. A few of you reading this who actually know me personally might be suggesting that I take a look in the mirror, but the truth is that I like things to be as good as they can possibly be. that's a sort of perfectionism-lite, with a few caveats that allow for circumstances over which I have less than full control.

Shit happens. Deal with it. Find another way.

I'm sure the media will be full of all sorts of well-intentioned advice for Adele in the days and weeks ahead. Any of it written by anyone who has never stepped on stage in front of an audience can be for the most part be dismissed.

I have to say I struggle to see why someone in her position, with a well-documented distaste for live performing that has apparently increased over the years, would subject herself to something which although once a big part of an adolescent wish list has now turned out to be very much outside of her comfort zone. If I were her I would keep it to writing, recording, and releasing music. Have a sit down with Oprah is you feel so inclined (we all know how the PR machines work) but take a moment to evaluate what's on offer, and if it's no longer what you want, simply step back from it.

Goodness knows, how many performers have that kind of luxury? All professionals know the reality of earning a living from music, and the average musicians' earnings fall below the average UK wage, which last time I looked it was about £25,400. I know all kinds of professional musicians who are trying their utmost to get by on way less, particularly in the wake of some of the somewhat disproportionate restrictions our industry has been subjected to over the last two years.

I recently did exactly what I think Adele should have done, but on a microscopic scale compared to a Vegas residency. A return booking was offered to me, which I had pencilled in my diary. After some honest reflection I arrived at the conclusion that I wasn't the ideal candidate for this particular gig and politely declined. I erased the days in question from my diary leaving several blank pages. It's not the end of the world. it won't leave me financially straitened, and there's still plenty of time for other things to fill those gaps. Having the confidence to acknowledge my shortcomings enabled me to make the right decision. Once upon a time I would have done the gig, undoubtedly. Luckily I'm at a point in life where I can exercise more choice and discretion. There's also a kind of egotism at play here; I only want to do things in public that I know I can do to a satisfactory standard, so don't expect a vocal album, cookbook or grand slam tennis tournament anytime soon.

Adele can do this too. Her phenomenal success has bought her an unparalleled level of freedom and autonomy. She can do just as she pleases. Although we have several mutual friends (both inside and outside the music industry) the chances of her seeing this are virtually nil, but the conclusion is, she took a huge gig she didn't actually need to do and I turned down a small one.

Guess who's happier.

No Cover Charge

 One of the things I find most strange about out the slightly dystopian reality of the last couple of years is the never-ending march of progress in the world of drum covers. Understandable, of course. If society is locked down (and our industry was completely on ice for the longest time) musicians are going to seek outlets for self-expression.

For those of you not in the know a drum cover consists of a drummer sitting at home playing along with a well-known recording and replicating what the original drummer did note for note. 

Undoubtedly this requires talent and some of the results are unquestionably impressive. I have seen recreations of some legendary performances by some of the greatest drummers in music history across all the genres. Many, many hours get invested, but like any investment it's important to consider the likely return that it will produce. 

These achievements tend to precipitate cognitive dissonance with me. In addition to finding them impressive they also seem completely pointless. For every social media sensation there are tens of thousands of also-rans, and it's important to consider the true extent to which working up a drum cover skill set will prepare you for playing with actual musicians. 

What rather bemuses me is why would you you produce a video where you replicate a solo by Buddy Rich, Steve Gadd, Tony Williams, Vinnie, Weckl, Benny Greb, or whoever, when the end user can perfectly easily watch the original creator in the midst of the creative process. It reminds me somewhat of artists who go to extraordinary lengths to produce knock-offs of historic paintings. Nobody is questioning the skill, rather could that undoubted skill be put to better use? Isn't it an altogether better idea to take the best bits of all your favourite player and fuse them into a special blend all of your own? In so doing you begin to create your own identity, about which more later.

Don't get me wrong there is undoubtedly educational merit in copying the works of the great master players. It's a key part of how we learn the language just like any other language. As a child you learnt to speak by replicating phrases that you heard your parents use. Occasionally they would carelessly let slip some profanity or other, and you would take delight in repeating it over and over again much to their frustration and occasionally despair

Of course you have to be influenced by those who most inspire you, but what you also have to do is to get past the stage of merely copying. Take your heroes' ideas apart, and recast them in your own image. Of equal importance is to apply your freshly developed skills in appropriate musical context.

When I was taking my first steps in the profession back in the 1970s I would spend time copying ideas I heard other drummers play on records, and then take those ideas to the workplace; either the rehearsal room or the gig. Sometimes people would say 'yeah Pete, that's great', other times they would say 'don't do that that's not what's wanted here, that's not what this music requires'. Posting drum covers will seldom afford you the benefit of the wisdom and experience of other musicians; far more likely is a polarising of sycophancy or the dreaded social media pile-on, and not a great deal in between.

What I also found out pretty quickly was that in the early 80s there was no viable career path for a teenager from Sutton Coldfield who played a bit like Buddy Rich, Louie Bellson and a few others. As regards professional career advancement, what the industry required from someone like me was altogether different, so in order to progress I needed to sort that out. It took me a while, but I got there, and in a way, my playing as seen on the video below was a kind of foreshadowing of much of what characterises the drum cover mentality

As a teenager I spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to do thing that sounded like my big band and jazz drum heroes, and fortunately, courtesy of the Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra, I had an appropriate context in which to put those skills to work. I know you've probably seen this one before, but anyway......

The other potential problem for cover drummers is that when you're playing to a backing track you don't develop that all-important facility to control and direct the time and dynamics of the ensemble. Backing tracks will not speed up and they will not slow down. You can incorporate the most absurdly tasteless overplayed drum fills with all kinds of stick tricks and so on and the band will never come back in in the wrong place (or stop playing altogether) because of what you just played. This doesn't happen in the real world. Playing terminal velocity drum fills and incorporating stick spinning is not going to make you a lot of friends and it might lose you the gig altogether.

If Instagram and TikTok are your chosen pathways to success in your drumming career, and your ambition is to be the greatest 'cover drummer' ever, then I unreservedly wish you the very best of luck in all that you do. However if you want to get in a rhythm section and hold down a steady gig, enentually becoming a seriously in-demand, go-to freelancer, you might want to start looking at developing other aspects of your skill set. Have fun creating your cover versions and entertaining your followers, but don't lose sight of the necessities for maintaining an enduring career as a player, so that when the next sensation comes along, (younger, cuter, and faster than you) you'll still have some options, and you won't have been left behind by your peers who have put the hours in to develop their musical team player skills. 

Also, just lately that somewhat controversial film Whiplash has once again become a topic of discussion. I guess it must be the anniversary of its release. Where did those seven years go?

At the time I had such high hopes of that movie, thinking it might be possible to bring big band jazz to a new and broader audience. Obviously Hollywood pragmatism took hold and certain aspects of the portrayal of college band musicians bore little resemblance to reality. So my hopes that Whiplash would shine a positive light on my genre of choice were short lived, which is regrettable. However, what I found most interesting is that when one particular very well-known drummer went public with a vituperative criticism of the movie, everybody fell in behind him and agreed with his point of view. Music industry group think is very real: all too often people adopt the opinions of others without undergoing a thorough process of evaluation. Just because a famous drummer practices everything at 40 beats per minute doesn't mean that it's right for you. 

Get the broadest spectrum of influence you possibly can, and have faith in your own opinions: be prepared for them to be tested and be prepared to be wrong. Just because you haven't appeared on the cover of Modern Drummer magazine (yet!) doesn't mean your opinions are worth less than those who have.

Opinions should be composed and arranged by you; they shouldn't be word for word 'cover versions' of the views of those you most admire.

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation". (Oscar Wilde).

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