Very occasional quote of the day: technique

What if you think of something to play that doesn't have a standard technique? That's what jazz cats have been doing since jazz was born. All of a sudden, you want to play something that a flam doesn't encompass, or a paradiddle doesn't encompass, or anything else.

What is it? Maybe it's a flubadub. I don't know, but you play this flubadub, and the only way to play this thing is to use the technique you discovered to play it. So you have added to the standard technique by playing this thing. And if you can use it musically—it works!

There is no right and wrong. If it's musical, it works. So just to sit and practice standardized techniques from drum books will not make you freer. The concept makes you freer, not your technique.

- Barry Altschul, Modern Drummer interview by Rick Mattingly, November, 1982