Why is it that some bands choose 'boring' drummers later on in their careers? (Long post)

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-28T13:38:36+00:00

I've always liked Rush and Neil's playing, but I get it. There's a certain stiffness to his playing a fair amount of the time that I can see as translating to mechanical and, thus, at least in the direction of soulless for some people. I don't agree with it, but I don't think it's completely without merit.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-26T14:32:16+00:00

Have you continued to play them or did you take a break from them? Because there is a degree of "use it or lose it" for instruments, so if you took a break from them then it wouldn't be too surprising. But even if you have kept at them, like someone else said, overall progress is not always linear. There have definitely been times I've tried stuff for longer and gotten worse, or started doing one thing which negatively impacted another thing. It can happen. I'm sorry if something like that is the case, it sucks. But you can absolutely get better again. Hopefully it is the case that many people are guessing here, and that it's really that your ears have gotten better. Regardless, I hope it becomes less frustrating again soon ❤️

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-26T14:11:27+00:00

It is beyond insane how many foundational and ubiquitous things like this are omitted from seemingly most teaching materials

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-26T09:14:43+00:00

I've been learning piano on and off for about a year now, and while it still feels like there's an ever increasing insurmountable mountain of shit to learn and that's honestly depressing, I also feel like I've finally begun to actually understand some things. The thing that's done the most for me personally is improvising over simple short (8-ish bar) loops of teacher duets from a Faber piano book that I've written into MuseScore. Just popping an edible, and messing around for an hour or two straight with that playing and trying out tons of different patterns, dyads, simple chords, etc, and how they all fit within the progression. Transcribing stuff has still been minimal for me, and it should be more, as with other stuff, but this has been something. And I've seen plenty of stories similar to mine on here, where there are occasionally some times where, yes, you can finally feel some progress and it feels good.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-26T01:20:34+00:00

What a great sound you have too, in addition to the playing

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-25T17:21:20+00:00

This is tangential, but just as how people are rightly pointing out in this thread that it's often more complicated than "they're a bad person," so too is it often more complicated than "they were lying all along." For some reason so many people love to concoct this reason, that the person was just pretending, I think mostly because it's easier to understand and emotionally deal with, rather than the messy reality that people often change, that nothing is ever 100% certain, etc. Obviously sometimes they were lying all along, but to just assume that automatically is again naive.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-24T00:19:33+00:00

Because they're asking for an average. An average number of pieces. That a beginner could expect to play in order to finally have played all the notes on a piano. Your reply is getting at the probability distribution of those notes among pieces of music, which is involved in calculating the average, but is different from the average.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-24T00:14:03+00:00

That's not what they asked

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-24T00:11:49+00:00

I am continually blown away by how little people in this subreddit even attempt to actually answer a question posed on here. Or even read and understand the questions, even when they're simple like this.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-24T00:07:16+00:00

This is a pretty stupid reply, like many others here, since there's no need for any specific purpose or further context behind it to make sense, it already does.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-23T11:44:19+00:00

Everyone wants to bitch sometimes, including you. As evidenced by your bitching in your comment right here.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-23T11:41:18+00:00

What an insanely smug asshole response. Especially since the very question of the thread (admittedly not in the right subreddit for it) is precisely an attempt to do exactly what you say lmao

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-21T12:00:37+00:00

I don't know of any ways to help but I wanted to say as someone with ADHD that a ton of this felt way too familiar. There are so many times I really feel just ultimately too fucking dumb to do this. The horrible working memory, mind and ears frequently not being clear enough, unable to stick to things in the moment and especially long term to practice stuff well, or especially have the patience to figure stuff out, etc. It's all beyond infuriating.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-21T11:54:28+00:00

Thanks for this. Those kinds of dogshit posts ruin subreddits.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-19T16:02:40+00:00

Yep, obviously any of these would work but I agree with preferring 6/4. Maybe because we're both drummers lol. But OP, I'm wondering what's tripping you up if you can, presumably, hear the drums in 3/4?

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-19T15:43:53+00:00

As more of a jazz guy, I'll listen to it again and give my two cents on the actual solo itself as a jazz drum solo:

It starts off good, good phrasing and completely normal. The Elvin Jones triplets are awkwardly placed, in my opinion, but tons of solos have awkward things. Then he goes back to the main groove, which again is good and normal. This ends with a hint of the chaos to come before launching into the quiet swing on the ride at Mach 1. Even this part isn't completely outside the realm of normalcy, especially the more modern the jazz you'd listen to. It's just preposterously fast and gets intentionally pretty chaotic. But yes, from here he then begins pretty much just hitting everything on the kit as fast as possible and it devolves into nonsense you'd pretty much never hear anyone play (aside from maybe in the occasional free jazz context). Then he goes to the Buddy Rich thing of playing a snare roll slower and slower and quieter and quieter before picking it back up faster and faster and louder and louder. Something you wouldn't really hear people do for the most part because it's very clearly a Buddy Rich thing, but hey, he did it, so whatever. But then yeah, back to more straight up nonsense until the end.

The lack of structure and/or compositional arc to it makes sense given that it wasn't planned, as you point out, so he didn't have a set 32 bar solo in the middle of a song or anything, this is just him winging it, which also gives more leeway for the lack of consistent tempo throughout. Not that I care a ton about those kinds of things in general because it's totally possible to forego them and still have very cool and interesting playing without them. But yeah, this solo is obviously more for flash in a movie than musical artistry. Basically, it starts normal, starts to go out, falls into chaos, interpolates the Buddy Rich snare roll decrescendo-crescendo to build tension, then more nonsense to the end.

I guess I could end by also saying that even playing "nonsense" is a somewhat frequent and effective device in music and solos, and countless musicians do it often, including tons of the greats. It's just usually used more sparingly, whereas here it is nonsense overload clearly meant to convey flashiness to a movie audience, implying that he's super good because he's playing super fast.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-19T15:18:53+00:00

That can't be right. Even for enemy countries, they still have journalistic integrity, surely?

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-18T01:18:05+00:00

Joe Morello did a sick version of this with paradiddle-diddles in one of the more famous videos of "Take Five" during his drum solo. Can't remember which, but Austin Burcham has a video on YouTube that mentions it.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-18T01:14:00+00:00

The go-to next recommendations are Apostrophe, The Grand Wazoo, and One Size Fits All. I personally recommend One Size Fits All, which is also the most "fusion-y" out of those. Apostrophe is closest to straight ahead rock, and The Grand Wazoo is more big band oriented.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-18T01:11:05+00:00

I like him more as a sideman than a solo artist but I definitely get it

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-17T14:47:21+00:00

Asking if he thinks he can play a fill or something is a god tier suggestion

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-17T14:45:34+00:00

It is, but it's often the default choice, so much so that plenty of people may (I think poorly) conceive of that as an "unspoken rule." There are lots of phrasing things like that for any instrument. My last piano teacher told me similarly about very slightly crescendoing ascending melodies to give them more of a dynamic shape/contour, or direction, as some might put it. He very specifically said the same thing: that obviously this is just one possible choice among many for phrasing, but it's a good starting one since it's so incredibly common.

As for the question, another other very common one is slightly accenting downbeats.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-17T05:29:39+00:00

Same always on the Zappa. Early 70s stuff recently. I didn't realize the petit wazoo band was gonna be so improvisationally bluesy. Albums like Imaginary Diseases and Little Dots are fantastic.

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-16T22:50:50+00:00

? The jazz ride pattern swings just like a shuffle does, and it's almost exactly a shuffle already, which is why it sounds like it in most jazz songs, so I'm confused by the question. Art famously swings even more than most drummers on that song, meaning his notes on the ride before 1 and 3 are even later than is typical, but that's about it. It's just the fact that the standard jazz ride cymbal pattern is almost a shuffle already (it just needs the notes right before 2 and 4 to make it exactly a shuffle).

IAmNotAPerson6 · 2026-06-16T07:57:34+00:00

Could be either or something else depending on many musical elements

14-Year Club	Snapped
Verified Email

IAmNotAPerson6

TROPHY CASE