Very occasional quote of the day: too loud

Another choice item from a 1981 column in Modern Drummer, in which Scott K. Fish talks to a lot of great bass players, about drummers:  

“Faults I hear in drummers? Mainly that they play too loud. They're too insensitive. A drummer can lead whatever band he's in. He can force himself to be the leader, just by the nature of the instrument. He can play the loudest, he can cover everybody up and he can make everybody go in the direction that he wants to make the music go. But, he should be sensitive enough to realize that if he's not the leader of the band, then he is just another member of the band. That everybody else's role in the band is just as important as his is. 

Drummers have said to me 'I can't hear you. I can't hear what you're doing.' And a lot of times I do that on purpose because I want them to stop and listen. I'm saying musically what I could be verbally saying: 'I can't hear the piano player or the horn player because you're playing so loud. You can't hear me because you're playing too loud, not because I'm playing too soft.'

I think that the greatest drummers had the ability to really burn with intensity while still playing soft. I don't say that a drummer shouldn't play loud. I remember listening to Elvin Jones with John Coltrane! To an extent it's volume but it's also space. A lot of drummers are just so busy that they don't leave spaces for other instruments.” 

 
- Carol Kaye