"If I think of something beforehand then I should not play it."

Pianist George Colligan has posted a really great interview with drummer Jeff Ballard on his blog, Jazz Truth. It's really hard to excerpt anything from this because it's all so good; I put in a few ellipses at the beginning to pull the salient points and then gave up. Just go read the whole thing-- this is about 25% of it.


On technique:

GC: Can you talk about the difference between technique and music?

JB: I figure technique is a way to play music so it’s understood. That’s what it’s for. The technique is not something for itself. It’s something to have so you can play music very clearly. 

It’s a tool, it’s not an aesthetic [...] and I think that some folks confuse them. And I think it comes from the fact that in this day and age we have accessibility to lots of technique. It’s not something, in a way, that you kind of earned. 

Before, I think you earned technique, you earned it by discovering secrets… like how does Dizzy get some sort of fingering, or Art Blakey’s got a certain kind of flick, a certain kind of way of playing a shuffle that no one else plays. [...] And so someone has to go out and earn it [by listening and watching] rather than just get it from a book or a Youtube video. I think there’s something in the effort that you have to give to get that technique, which connects it to the making of music rather than just getting the ability to play something. [...]

GC: Do you think a lot of drummers get hung up on technique?

JB: Yeah, I think it’s kind of the nature of the instrument. Same with saxophones or the guitar, maybe, those kinds of things where the technique is not so difficult to get to. You can sound impressive just by having some technique on those instruments. It’s a hazard area.

More after the break, but really go read the whole thing.

Jazz Truth interview: Jack Dejohnette

This is unusual: an interview conducted by a non-drummer geekishly opening with a discussion of bass drum technique. Here's George Colligan of the Jazz Truth blog speaking to Jack Dejohnette. As usual, I've edited out my favorite parts- be sure to go read the entire thing:


Foot technique

For developing the bass drum technique, at least for my type of practicing, I play with ride cymbal beats, letting the right foot follow the right hand, practicing slowly, always practicing slowly and gradually build it up. You determine what speed and intensity you can do it, so you don’t overdo it. You have to develop this technique utilizing the spastic muscle. You’re doing this off of your toe, so your heel is up. You can also try and do it flat footed, heel toe heel toe heel toe, doing it that way, or doing both ways. But you get more power out of it when the foot is up, using the heel toe.

And then the other thing to do is play triplets, utilize the triplets, and then playing with accents, you can either use your ride cymbal to follow, and just play independently. Then the next thing to try is to play things, ideas that you know, between the hand and foot, or play ideas with the foot that you normally play with 2 hands, or one hand. It takes some time to build it up. I’m still working on developing it. It depends on the solo I’m doing whether I’ll utilize… sometimes I’ll take a whole solo with the foot. And you know that’s a whole other kind of concept, but doing it in the way so that it communicates something musically….


General concept

I see myself as a colorist, not as a drummer, per se… I always thought…"I wanna do on drums what somebody like Keith Jarrett does on the piano." The drum set is a musical instrument like guitar and everything else; you tune them, you tune the set, like you tune a guitar or bass, and I tune my drums in such a way so that no matter what I play, whatever I hit on it is a melody and that makes me think differently, it makes me think more melodically.


Much more after the break: