Drummers as an inferior class

Savoring the persecution

“Drummers are known to be a race on their own.”
- Joe Morello

“General Browning, I am a Pole, considered by some to be smart.”
- First line spoken by Gene Hackman playing the Polish general Sosabowski in A Bridge Too Far

Hey, let's talk about a favorite topic of drummers: why does everybody hate us so much. God, it's good, apparently; the rich liquor that is the feeling of persecution. Let us feast at that trough. Let's mix some metaphors, drummer-style, because we're so unsmart. 

Pretty obviously, playing the drums is kind of a low-prestige occupation in the eyes of much of society. Not a serious activity, or much of an art form— a joke instrument played by people of questionable intelligence. It's like telling somebody you're in motocross. 

I'm not immune to it; when asked what I do, usually I'll say “musician”, and then drummer if they ask what instrument. I'm not embarrassed about it, but it sounds more serious to say musician first. I used to be worse. When I got my scholarship to go to the U. of Southern California, I would talk to classical students there and feeling abashed that I was getting money for playing the drums, while they were taking out loans. For a time, working this site's titular river boat gig, I was embarrassed to be getting paid more to work fewer hours than most of the crew. Boy, was I dumb. 

Among musicians, the comments happen the most among students. People in their late teens/early 20s are more competitive, and have not accomplished anything yet, and tend to be overly status-oriented. They'll go at each other over the general status of their pursuits, and future prospects as they imagine them. Who goes to the best school, who has the best pedigree, who plays the biggest bulls**t instrument, and who plays a real instrument. I saw a lot of that in California, and from players from the Northeast.  

Later on the attitude comes from mediocre musicians— who don't value the drums, and/or who are mad that drums are a more attention-getting instrument than their own. They may feel bullied by the drums— their physicality, and dynamic power. A lot of players never learn to play with enough power to compete with the drums played at a normal, musical volume.  

Aside: Which is not to say that it is not still our job to accompany them and help them sound good. But they have a job too, to learn to get a sound and make themselves heard and play their instrument better. 

It is easy for drummers to feel clueless around other instrumentalists, with their mysterious “chords” and “pitches” and “fingerings” and whatnot— which they've been talking about routinely since they were children, and we mostly learned later, with less regularity, and greater effort. It can make it appear that they're doing something harder than what we do. They are not. All major instruments have a low bar for entry— people start them as little kids, without even any priors. They didn't make anyone pass an aptitude test and do four years of coursework to pick up a guitar. All instruments, and the music written for them, are designed to be playable by humans.  

In fact those other musicians are 100% as clueless about drummers as drummers are about them. That's a huge deficiency, considering how important our job is to a group sounding good. But it's normal, and fine, so long as they value us, and we can relate to each other on a purely musical level. 

Normal citizens make offhand comments because 1) they're lazy, and 2) they heard someone else say something about a drummer once. The ones that actually give you grief really want to be doing what you're doing— they hate their jobs and feel untalented, and they deal with it by trying to make you feel that way too. They were raised by bad adults who made them feel bad for wanting to do anything creative, and they are not good enough people themselves to overcome that and decide to not be that way to others. 

Occasionally you get comments from music fans and from bad, part time drummers, to the effect that you are not famous and are therefore a failure. The same type of people who also attack famous people for not being as famous as they once were, or for not being as famous as somebody else. The drummers may come at you for not being as famous as a drummer they like— thinking that liking the famous drummer gives them credit for that drummers's accomplishments, elevating them above you. 

I've seen repeatedly online part time drummers attempting to gatekeep who gets to be called professional, limiting it to people whose only source of income is actually performing on their instrument— an increasingly rare species of music professional. It's a way of dragging professionals down to their level, because virtually all professionals make some of their money doing things besides performing.   

Online trolls— sad losers who want to make other people feel bad to the level at which they hate themselves— are a very low grade of opponent. They dedicate their entire lives to that pursuit, and engaging with them is a mistake. Non-responsiveness and dismissal are the best tactics if you choose to do that. 

Troll: [makes stupid/insulting comment calculated to compel you to respond]

You: All right, good luck with that.   

You don't speak to the “substance” of their comment. To the extent that there's any substance to it, they don't care about it, it's just a hook to get you to respond as they try to string you along for as long as possible. It's a pure game, and if you're going to respond, learn to do it non-responsively, and detatch. 

More generally, being defensive about anyone's comments or attitudes is losing. You won't convince a determined loser that what you do isn't a joke. I don't defend the activity. If I feel like fighting with someone about it, I'll defend the job, and the business. Like, the IRS thinks I'm working a real job, I have several decades of Schedule Cs to prove it. In the objective sense of being an economic entity answerable to the government for your accounts, your work is as serious as anyone else's in the world. People even pay you in real currency, and everything. 

It helps if you work on having a professional bearing, and a sense of professional correctness, appropriate to the situation. That puts whatever anyone says right off the table as anything deserving an emotional response. Or any serious response. You have the choice to not participate. You have to be detached from whatever reality someone is basing their comments in. It's harder if you've put yourself in an amateur situation, so try not to do that. 

And you can't secretly believe they're right. It can take a long time in life to have basic confidence in what you're doing even without somone challenging it. If you were lucky enough to not be raised and educated surrounded by offensive people, it takes some adjustment to handle them effectively and non-defensively. 

Be clear on it: all of this stuff comes from bad-to-mediocre people, and bad-to-mediocre musicians. It's completely beyond the pale for normal fulfilled people, or for good musicians. Normal people think the drums are a fun instrument, and that anyone who can earn their living with it is lucky. Good musicians value good drummers. For someone to say something negative about it directly to you should be surprising, a sign of exceptional smallness of character. 

Something strange

This person is making a lot of videos composing accompaniment for drum solo videos by some well known players, “adding music”, as he says. The first few minutes explain this was done, then there's an extended drum solo by Simon Phillips, with his added accompaniment:

That's highly strange and ethically suspect on a number of levels: 

1. The solo was music in the first place, calling it a drum solo “with music” puts me in a bad mood about it from the get go. 

2. Did he get permission to do it? From the people who own the videos, or the drummers involved? Did they consent to having their playing used this way? There's no indication of that. Why not call them up and ask permission, and then put a big thank you in the video description? 

3. Are they getting paid for it? Well... very likely they are. At least the entity that was getting paid for the original video probably is. YouTube is good about detecting copyright violations and paying the infringed party. So if you make a cat video with Coltrane's Interstellar Space on the soundtrack, or if I sample somebody's recording to make a practice loop, the rights holder there will probably get paid, you and I would not get paid.   

4. Copyright is weirdly inverted. He's mimicking something uncopyrighted (the musical content of the drum solo) to make something copyrighted. Basically the melodic content was created by the drummer, and he seized ownership of it by assigning pitches to it.

5. He's involuntarily reassigning these players' performances to be accompaniment for his music, but those drummers would not necessarily make the same choices interpreting that piece if it had been written first— as in normal playing situations. Making choices in how we play an arrangement is a major aspect of a drummer's voice, and of how you judge someone's performance. While it is clear that the drum solo came first, by creating this context around it he's putting words in the drummer's mouth: here is how you will handle this situation. 

7. Usually you don't steal somebody's performance in its entirety. Even making a fair use legal argument, that's not fair use. 

8. Mickey Mousing is a term from film scoring, where the music exactly mimics the action on screen, and it is considered to be very bad writing. Here the added orchestration is flashy but primitive, Mickey Mousing the drum solo exactly in unison with it— drummer hits a high note / orchestra plays a high note with him, drummer plays a low note, orchestra plays a low note. There's no interaction. It does open up a bit on the groove portions of the solo, but it's 95% simple mimicry. 

Here, here's a quick lesson in doing things other than that in creating an accompaniment, and in altering a melodic line generally. 

9. If he wants to create a derivative work that is largely a note-for-note copy of someone else's improvised performance, he can do that, but his piece should be able to stand on its own. There's nothing here anyone would want to listen to without the original drumming performance. 

My complaints in rapid fire. Maybe none of it really matters. For people trying to make it in social media, whatever gets me attention = good. I expect that's the position of the person who made the videos, and maybe even for some of the drummers involved, if they were informed of it. Music has been so devalued in the last 25 years that, for many people, its major (or only) purpose may be as a device for grabbing social media attention. 

There are artistic/critical theories supporting this kind of thing— e.g. “appropriation”, sampling in hip hop— but which do not make it legal or ethical, when done non-consensually. Other artists' performances are not your found objects. You have to clear it, there has to be consent.  

Whether or not you personally agree with any part of this, there are legal issues you have to be aware of, and answer for when engaging in this kind of work, if you're doing music professionally, or want to be doing it professionally. It's going to matter to some people, possibly to the point of making your work unpresentable publicly. 

Very occasional quote of the day: getting fired

“There’s been times when I was fired from gigs because, lets say I had the ability to get my foot in the door, but wasn’t living up to the expectations that people had. In that process I’d go through a lot of reassessment and then address my weak points and make them strong points. That’s a situation that happens to a lot of musicians. 

Psychologically you can’t let that get you down. You have to use those situations as learning opportunities, not to develop attitudes about people, but to develop a perspective of your strengths and weaknesses. At those times I did a lot of deep analysis of my playing and tried to be as objective as possible. I’ve tried to address my weaknesses and really work hard to develop them into strengths. 

Over the years I’ve been let go for not having good time, not being able to play with a click track, not being a real asset as a guy on the road that has a good attitude, you know any number of things which I’ve learned from and developed my playing and developed my personality to be easy to work with and professional as a musician on tour and in the studio.”

- Steve Smith in The Psychology of Drumming by Chris Peacock

You can download a pdf of the book on Scribd— though I don't know if it was posted with the consent of the author. I believe Peacock is the author of the Drum Ninja site, so maybe you can get it through him, or at least make a donation for pirating his book. 

Pro vs. semi-pro

Another item from the archives— this is from Jack Wheaton (1932-2015), my jazz styles and analysis professor when I was at USC in 1988-89.

In some context or other he gave us this list of attitudes/characteristics of professional vs. semi-pro/amateur musicians. I imagine a few of these will be more aspirational than others, for some people. Some are certainly deliberately directed at common jazz student shortcomings as he experienced them in his decades of teaching.  

So, you read this then you know how to try to be. I put an arrow by high energy— I think I felt that was a weak spot. I was pretty intense about music, but felt I wasn't high energy enough. 

Time is money

Another funny item I dug out of my archives. I believe it's from the jazz festival at UC Berkeley in 1989— I was there playing with USC's guitar ensemble. A bassist and drummer gave a clinic that was mainly about time, and I think this was a handout. I forget their names, but they were Bay Area jazz professionals, not an 80s pop band from Indiana also called The Phonz. 

They've padded it out with some jokes, but there are some good points: 

The main thing I took from the clinic and never forgot was: 

Laying back or playing on top are confusing terms, they are a smokescreen. Time should be played in the middle of the beat by the rhythm section. 

It simplifies your thinking if you just decide to be the reference point stating the tempo, and let everyone else play ahead or behind. Which may put you seemingly ahead of / behind the beat, depending on the other players' ears / time concepts. The main thing is that you're being the reference point— you're not getting the time from them.  

What's with resting the sticks on the drum?

Item just in from the pet peeve department: there's an extremely slovenly practice, apparently done by half the drummers in the world: resting the sticks on the drum head before playing. I have students who do it, and I see it done in many drumming videos by players of all levels: they're getting set to play, and before they start, they let the sticks go drzz on the drumhead.

It's very strange— like resting your hand on a basketball on the floor before dribbling it. It doesn't compute. It's not an organic component of playing the instrument, or of being at rest at the instrument— it puts an unnatural pressure on your hand, and you have to grip the stick harder to hold it there. Can you imagine a violinist dragging the bow across the strings when getting set to perform— screet. What? Does a pianist push the keys down before playing? 

Where I come from, the sticks never touch the instrument unless you're playing it. Standards are looser on drumset, but generally, anything you do with the sticks that is not actually playing the instrument should be done silently, or at least discreetly. In all of concert percussion, and in drum corps, silence and no contact is an absolute rule. Yet I still see those guys doing it in their videos. 

Look here: a student of Buster Bailey, king of the world in concert percussion, doing it (in an otherwise very good video):



Here's an old school rudimental guy doing it. And technique god Bruce Becker— granted, he appears to be doing it silently. In a video I can't re-locate, Gordy Knutsen does it— also with delicacy, like Becker.

Often you see people doing it on a practice pad— it's silent, so maybe they're just not aware of what they're doing. But here's a pipe band drummer doing it on a drum.

Here is how it is done: not only does Shaun Tilburg never touch the sticks to the head when he's not actually playing, when he sets the sticks on the drum, he takes care to do it very discreetly. With his demonstrations here he makes some preparatory motions very close to the head, but never touches the head:



If you're Bruce Becker you can do whatever you want— well, everyone can do what they want— but if you're any normal person, try to break this habit. It suggests a lack of performance discipline, and may well bite you on the butt if you do it unthinkingly in a sensitive situation. 

Q & A: guitarist hunting

all guitarists until proven otherwise

I received this question in the mail today:

What are you looking for in a guitar player? What strengths/capabilities do you feel are the most important? Any thoughts on common pitfalls?

Most of the following applies to any instrumentalist, not just guitarists. These are all situations I've been involved in, though I haven't had to hire people in all of them.

First, at some point in your career, “looking for” becomes a different process— you know a lot of guitar players, and people who know guitar players, so finding musicians is not a problem. It becomes more about “which of these people do I call for this thing?” It's a lot harder when you're just getting acquainted with a scene, are not confident about approaching the better players, and/or don't know any players at all.

Often who you get depends on things other than musical ability: Are they available? Will they do my thing for the amount it pays? Do I like them, and do they like me? Do they present themselves professionally? Are they ethical? Will they possibly hire me for their gigs if I hire them for mine?

It's also very dependent on what I want him or her for: membership in a band, a recording project, a casual, a regular gig, a tour, a road gig, a one-off creative project? Is it a normal jazz situation with a lot of playing, or is it a genre act/project— pop, swing, bossa nova, blues, country, etc. Is it a creative project where I need someone with a strong independent creative thing, that also works well together with mine? Is it a songwriter situation, where I'm helping get musicians for someone else's project?

General baseline musical competency things include: being able to perform with minimal rehearsals, or no rehearsals, being able to read, being a strong listener, knowing a lot of tunes, having strong rhythm, being into getting a professional sound, being a strong creative player. Typically players I do anything with have to have to be strong jazz players. A major thing I look for in guitarists is that they are strong rhythm section players— they know how to be a rhythm guitarist and accompanist, not just a soloist.

If I'm looking for someone for a paying gig playing tunes everybody knows, or reading normal charts, it's very easy: with whom do I like playing the most, and who is available for the date? And keep in mind: if you have paying work to offer, you can call anyone. Your assessment of your own playing, and of how much better they are than you, doesn't matter— everyone wants to hear from you when you're offering a paying engagement.

For a road gig (I'm really thinking cruise ship or hotel), it should be someone who can do the job, who I can also live with for weeks or months. Often it's younger players who are available for that kind of work, so they may not be extremely well rounded— they may have only a college-level jazz education (or equivalent) and that's it. For a tour (say, 1-3 weeks), it should be someone I like playing with, who will represent my music well, who will be easy to travel with. It could also be someone who will help get gigs, or whose name will help publicity, or who will help with tour logistics in some way.

For genre acts, the person has to know the style, including the major repertoire, and should be into getting the right sound for it. I usually only play with jazz guitarists, and some of them are only really able to do their own thing; others will have one or two other types of music in which they're interested, or have background, and are able to give an actual genre performance.

If I'm helping a songwriter or other solo artist find musicians, I'm looking for someone polished, well-rounded, with good pop sensibilities (or whatever genre is involved), who is service oriented, and is a quick study with new material.

For my own group playing my music, I want people who are easy for me to play with, who also have very strong musical personalities, and who like my playing and my project.

Pitfalls are the opposite of the above: they can't play (they play wrong stuff, they have bad time, they get lost, they can't acceptably fake styles they don't know, they are poor rhythm section players), they can't play the kind of music I need them to, they play too loud, they're hard to be around in some way, they don't like my project, they have substance problems, they act unethically or unprofessionally, or they aren't available when I need them. Most of these never come up— people with these kinds of problems never make it on my list of people to call in the first place. Including people who are always busy.

I'm afraid all of that may not be very helpful to the questioner— as I said, just trying to get names of people and figure out who you even want to work with can be a much harder situation. The only answer to that is to do a lot of projects, play with a lot of people, try to meet everyone doing paying work in your city, and hear them play. Then you'll begin to know who can do what, who you want to do anything with. At the same time, you will be developing yourself as a player who fulfills all of the above conditions, too. 

When they say they have drums

All right dude I told ya we had
a sweet drum set for you, here you go

They don't have drums. You're going to get burned. Always.

Pardon me— I just had a couple of annoying gig and rehearsal experiences— most recently one where I was told there would be drums “aplenty.” Bad sign.

I think the worst situation I ever found myself in was on a gig in Germany, where the club was supposed to provide a nice jazz set, and it turned out the only drums in the building were part of a Sonor student set, with a 24" bass drum, a 10" tom, and a 12" tom, and that's it. Another good one was arriving for a month long engagement at a 4-star hotel in Hong Kong, and finding a battered set of Pearl Exports that wouldn't have been out of place in some kid's garage in Kentucky.

Let's briefly go over what you need to bring to situations where people claim they have drums for you. We're assuming you're bringing your cymbals, sticks, and a drum key no matter what. 

Absolute minimum, flying by the seat of your pants, rollin' the dice: 

— Hihat clutches in the two standard sizes. Odds are 50/50, maybe 60/40 against the hihat stand having a clutch. And it sucks getting stuck without usable hihats. 

— Cymbal felts, sleeves, and washers. These will be absent. We don't want metal touching our cymbals while we're playing. Wingnuts are up to you— companies have gotten propriety with their wingnuts, and whichever ones you buy probably won't work. You can play with the cymbal on the thing without a nut.

Normal faith in humanity, a tad unrealistically so; bring the above plus: 

— Snare drum
— Bass drum pedal
— Throne
— Cymbal stand (they're always going to be short one)

A sane level of paranoia. What you actually have to bring; the above plus: 

— Another cymbal stand. 

— Snare stand (extreme paranoid types will bring two snare stands in case there is no tom mount, or the tom mount is defective)
— Hihat stand
— Duct tape, screw driver, pliers, WD-40

— Rug

— Basically everything but tom toms and bass drum. 

You can decide for yourself what level of mistrust suits your personality; how important the gig or rehearsal is, and how big of a hardship it will be when they don't have the exact item you decide not to bring. It's very hard to get out of the house without cymbals, snare, and a stand case. Usually I would have to have seen the drums— recently— to bring less.

Some people get weird and panicky about having spare heads, but that's never been a problem for me. I think the only reason to bring heads is if you routinely break or damage heads, and you're going to need to leave some new ones for the next guy. 

What it is: being a professional

Obligatory Venn diagram 

One area where I see a lot of misconceptions is around the idea of being a professional musician. Usually, people seem to think it means that you make all your money from performing music; and that you're prospering at it. And that you're a really, really good at it. None of those things are necessarily the case, or there would be very few professional musicians out there. So here are some of the things that make you a professional musician:


Music is your main thing.
You don't have a full-time career outside of music. There is some wiggle room here: a lot of people— maybe even most, now, times being what they are— have to supplement. Some great musicians I can name took up other jobs at some point in their career; they didn't stop being professionals just because they gave up performing for a job as an accountant after 35 years in the business.


You have been paid for it, and are oriented around getting paid for it.
Traditionally in music the bar for admission is very low: you're a professional after you've had your first paying gig. The other things here have to be true, as well, though. Your long-term orientation is that your job is musician, even if you're not very successful at it right now.


You have professional training and expertise.
You studied music in college, or are otherwise educated in music, you have field experience, you read the professional literature.


You are able to do professional jobs in your local scene.

You may or may not be able to give Thomas Lang a run for is money, but you are able to do most jobs in your city, usually with little or no preparation or rehearsal. 

You understand and follow professional practices. 
You know how the business works at your own level, at least. You get yourself to the gig, on time, properly attired, with everything you need for the job, and you perform the job capably, with a professional demeanor. You know how and how much you are supposed to get paid, you know how to do your taxes.


You are a member of trade organizations
This one is sort of optional, as a lot of people are not members of any organizations whatever. But: you have been a member of the local Musician's Union for some period of time— with the nature of the business today, most club musicians I know are not active members their entire careers, however. You are a member of other trade organizations like PAS, MTNA, NARAS, etc. You attend trade events like PASIC, NAMM, IAJE conferences, etc.


You maintain a professional studio. 
You have a workspace for doing all your non-performance musical work: practicing, rehearsing, teaching, writing, and office work. You have a collection of instruments adequate for the work you do. You have a computer with whatever software and peripherals you need for your music business. You have a library of recorded music, drumming books, and general music books. You have archives: recordings, published works, recorded masters, other written works. You have a certain amount of AV equipment: stereo, audio and possibly video recording capacity.


Professional does not mean successful
Vincent Van Gogh was a painter who happened to be extremely unsuccessful during his lifetime— his business was a total failure, to the point that it killed him and his agent, his brother Theo. But Vincent was a professional: he did nothing but paint, he had professional training, he was recognized as a peer by other professionals, and was represented by an agent for the purpose of selling his paintings. He was a professional, but he never sold a painting. And the fact that his pictures now are valued in the hundreds of millions is irrelevant, actually— he's just a convenient example.

A waste of time

Here's a good video in case you ever wonder “Am I wasting my time geeking out on this drumming nonsense? Does anyone really care if I get such-and-such particular little drum thing together?” The answer is: yes, you are, and no, they don't. But everybody who's any good at anything wastes vast quantities of time on things no one is really going to ever fully appreciate. It's just what you do. For example:





You'll also enjoy the movie Comedian, which follows Seinfeld through the process of developing a new stand-up act, after some years away from that medium. It's really about the professional ethic of comedians, which is not that different from that of musicians. The full movie is after the break:

Bears

Not quite the sense of menace I was
hoping for, but that'll have to do...

One of the effects of this new Internet wonderland of information is that now everyone feels they are in competition with everyone else, everywhere in the world. It's as if every famous drummer who has ever lived, and an endless parade of seeming child prodigies, are now poking their fat noses into your studio and saying “Yeah, but can you do this? Or this? How are you going to make it if you can't do this? Or this? All of us are doing this— why aren't you doing it? What about this?”

The reality is, it's just you, the gigs available to you, and the other people already playing those gigs.

There's an old, dumb-ass, redneck joke about two men in the wilderness, who encounter a bear. One of them begins preparing to do some running— in the usual inane telling he puts on running shoes. Whatever. The other says “Bill, are you crazy? You can't outrun that bear!” To which the first guy replies, “That's OK, I only have to outrun you.”

Haw haw, that guy's going to get mauled by a bear! It's easy to mock the savagery of these frontier people, but now imagine the bear is Vinnie Colaiuta... no, imagine the bear is the abstract concept of career opportunity... no, imagine the bear is a call for a gig. The non-running redneck is “eaten” by the call for the job— he gets the gig in other words— while the other, who has been wasting his time learning to sprint (which, it turns out, is not a primary wilderness survival skill) ends up alone, naked and afraid...

That's not it, either.

It's more as if every bear/drummer in the world has been air-dropped into your back yard, and whatever you thought was your life/career has been instantly transformed into a frantic, futile, and very short, scramble for your life, before being engulfed and ripped quite literally limb from limb. But what they didn't tell you is that the bears are all holograms piped in from zoos around the world, and none of them can actually hurt you.

Grasping that, you go about your business building a shelter, finding a water source, and gathering pine nuts, and are able to survive quite comfortably. Our character with the running shoes thinks this is the way the world actually is, and now puts on a bear costume in hopes of blending in and moving up the bear hierarchy; but since the bears aren't real, and himself having no actual survival skills relevant to his true environment, he soon starves to death.

...

Yeah. This bear thing was just supposed to be the preface to something else, but it kind of got away from me. We'll delve into this subject with a little more discipline soon...

VOQOTD: the drummer's job

I just try to play the compositions, not so much imposing any particular kind of rhythm on any particular tune or composition—but to try and interpret the composition as if I’m an accompanist, fundamentally. And in addition to that, I’m responsible for the consistency of the tempo. And in addition to that, one has to try to give impetus and support and dynamic support to the different soloists and not to overwhelm them in some way that would make them uncomfortable with themselves and with the music in itself.

— Elvin Jones, interview with Chip Stern

“When in doubt, groove.”

Branford Marsalis's drummer Justin Faulkner gives a drum clinic at the Seattle, and says lots of great stuff:




Part 2 is after the break:

VOQOTD: Elvin's advice to young drummers

“PRACTICE, and play. Play any kind of music anywhere, weddings, carnivals, dances, circuses. Play and make sure that you give it your best. Be the best out there. I've played burlesque shows and recently I played a parade, right down Broadway in New York. Get a job, take it, be there on time.”

—Elvin Jones, 1974 clinic Q&A

The Joe Brazil Project blog has shared the entire interview, which is worth reading.

“Amazing” vs. “hired”

Received this in my email without comment from Portland drummer Ron Steen. Ron is an accomplished jazz musician, and has been running jam sessions locally for decades now, and has been the first gatekeeper encountered by many, many young would-be jazz drummers in the region, myself included.

I'm not sure if this went out to his entire mailing list, or if he's trying to tell me something:

The thing illustrated here is never far from the mind of anyone who has spend more than a couple of years in the field, though as the professional situation has gone full rust-belt in recent years, you get the impression that a younger generation of players is less aware of it. For them, there's nothing to be hired for, so all they're left with is:

End of story. I think the amazingness problem is worse out in drummer-land than it is among jazz players— most of the under-30ish jazz guys I know are taking advantage of the freedom of unemployment the same way I did, by making “artists” out of themselves. But I also paid a decade of dues living on a boat, playing 30's tunes, among other things, and I think these players would be better off if they did some of that, too— you can hear its absence in their playing.

To be clear, nothing we do on this blog is about being amazing, or about working on complicated things because we like being fascinated by them. On the whole I think we do a good job of keeping things real.

The club scene

Here's a great piece on understanding the, well, near-dead state of live music in clubs (professionally, anyway), and what musicians can begin to do about the situation, by LA pianist Dave Goldberg.


It opens:

AS I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR GIGS LATELY, I’ve never seen so many free and low paying gigs. Well the economy is bad, so I can understand that a little bit. However, it is no longer good enough for the musician to be willing to perform for little compensation. Now we are expected to also be the venue’s promoter. The expectations are that the band will not only provide great music, but also bring lots of people to their venue. It is now the band’s responsibility to make this happen, not the club owner. 

Just the other day I was told by someone who owned a wine bar that they really liked our music and would love for us to play at their place. She then told me the gig paid $75 for a trio. Now $75 used to be bad money per person, let alone $75 for the whole band. It had to be a joke, right? No she was serious. But it didn’t end there. She then informed us we had to bring 25 people minimum. Didn’t even offer us extra money if we brought 25 people. I would have laughed other than it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this proposal from club owners.

Much of the focus is on educating club owners, but musicians also need to internalize concepts like this:

If you want great food, you hire a great chef. If you want great décor, you hire a great interior decorator. You expect these professionals to do their best at what you are hiring them to do. It needs to be the same with the band. You hire a great band and should expect great music. That should be the end of your expectations for the musicians. The music is another product for the venue to offer, no different from food or beverages.

He makes this important point, on something which has long baffled me about the expectation that musicians to bring their own personal flash mob to each and every gig:

When a venue opens it’s doors, it has to market itself. The club owner can’t expect people to just walk in the door. This has to be handled in a professional way. Do you really want to leave something so important up to a musician?

And even when an amateur group is able to pack the place with friends and family:

The crowd is following the band, not the venue. The next night you will have to start all over again. And the people that were starting to follow your venue, are now turned off because you just made them listen to a bad band. The goal should be to build a fan base of the venue. To get people that will trust that you will have good music in there every night. Instead you’ve soiled your reputation for a quick fix.

Every musician should read the entire piece and reorient their thinking about their relationship with clubs.

(h/t to clownbaby90 on Reddit)

Cruise ship pianist!

Here's something from Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency (usually dedicated to hyper-well-written humor): a straightforward interview with a cruise ship pianist. Good straight info for anyone considering that line of work.

You must hack

That imperative comes from Running Linux, a classic manual on the use of the Linux computer operating system. What it meant in context is that to take advantage of the full power of the OS, you can't just be a passive user, you must apply some ingenuity and use it actively and creatively, with a programmer's mindset. I was reminded of it when I was noticing in practicing and teaching just how little I use my materials for their intended purpose, and how much information I apply that is not on the page. I dove back into some of the old literature- I read a lot of this stuff when I was a daily Linux user from about 2000-2005- and was surprised to recall just how much it has influenced my thought process and writing style, and how well it applies to learning music and being a player in general. In fact, you could substitute "player" for hacker, and equivalent musical/musical community terms for much of what follows.

First, what hacking is and is not:

The terms cracking and hacking are often confused in popular usage. While cracking involves immoral or illegal behavior (such as compromising the security of a system), hacking is a generic word meaning to program, tinker with, or have an intense interest in something. The popular media often uses the term hacking to refer to cracking; the Linux community is trying to reassociate hacking with positive connotations.

The definition from the venerable Jargon File, a collection of hacker speech/writing conventions, terms, and slang:

hacker n.

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.

Much more interesting stuff after the break:

Dispatches

Not that easy a life.

Here's a note I received from a British drummer currently working on a ship in the Mediterranean:

"I’m presently doing a stint as a cruise drummer in the Med and stumbled across your page.  I’m 8 weeks in and the life is interesting!!!  Parties, people, places and lots of performances.  I’m playing in one of the lounge bands doing 3-4 45’s a night.  7 nights a week.  Haha I’m sure you can appreciate that my body seems to be taking a bit of a pounding.  I was just wondering if the creeping sense of lethargy is normal!?

 I’m feeling pretty bushed most of the time,  I’ve not got cramping issues but I’m certainly noticing that the later sets and the louder sets outside on the pool deck are getting harder.

 If you’ve got any advice – or can think of any pad routines to help me keep a lighter dynamic I’d be really grateful.

 Keep up the great work on the blog, you’re keeping me sane!

 Kind Regards from another drummer in the high seas

 - Edgar in Livorno"

What you need is a month in the Mediterranean. It's hard to think of recommendations that don't involve me flying to Rome, taking a week or ten days- two weeks max- to get "acclimated", renting an Audi and driving to Livorno- via Orvieto, Firenze, side trip to Siena so I don't wear myself out driving- and relieving you for a month or so, but let me see what I can do.

First, you  may want to read my cruise ship drummer survival and playing quieter posts, if you haven't already.

Survival tips for cruise ship drummers

My man Willie Blair, the only person
I know who could get away with
flouting most of the non-musical rules. 

I guess I had to actually write about drumming on cruise ships at some point, hey? Here are some tips for not getting fired, for not hating your life, and for generally acting like a pro when working that kind of gig.

Keep a positive attitude. Many if not most of the people around you are going to be really negative about the job, especially if they've been doing it awhile. It's important to not let their misery effect you, otherwise your contract can start to seem like a prison sentence. Keeping a positive, professional attitude will make you more attractive to people you are working with who may want to hire you or refer you for non-cruise ship jobs. And remember that you are getting paid to play the drums, which I thought was supposed to be your life's dream, or something.

Be easy to live with. Be reasonably quiet, clean, tidy, non-smelly, and non-funky, but don't be over-fastidious, either. Be aware of your habits and how they effect the person or persons you will be sharing a cabin with.

Learn to keep a low profile. Stay out of people's way- passengers, crew, staff, ship officers, security. If you're a loud talker and/or dresser prone to a lot of public clowning, change that. The crew should not notice you sunbathing eight hours a day.

Adapt to the situation, but not too much. Check yourself if the tacky/skeevy gold chains and silk shirts for sale in the ports of call start looking attractive to you. Usually this starts happening after a year or more  on  the job. Question the wisdom of the whole band buying custom golf clubs or bowling balls because there is an opportunity to use them a couple of hours a week. This  over-adapting to overseas postings is what Marines used to call "going asiatic"- adopting native behavior/dress, becoming over-reliant on houseboys to do things like polish your boots, becoming addicted to opium, etc.

Much more after the break: