This is an interesting thread. I hope my comments on the video thread didn't open an old rotten can of worms!
Anyway, when I said "I'm quite a snob when it comes to jazz, and unless I played jazz for a living or at least taught and played jazz gigs weekly, I would never call myself a
jazz drummer" I guess I didn't represent my true feelings very articulately. I certainly know fabulous jazz drummers who don't make a living playing music. And Lord knows making any money at all by creating art of any kind is a crap shoot at best!
However, having (a) studied jazz in an academic environment for awhile, and (b) played jazz with some great players who could play rings around me, and (c) watched at close range the way that someone with great facility can communicate through his/her instrument in a jazz environment, has helped define my feelings in this area.
The concept of jazz is fundamentally built around improvisation. And I think to be able to improvise on your instrument not only takes some amount (a lot?) of technique, but it takes an understanding of song form, tension and release, good time and rhythmic creativity, etc. But jazz is not just about improvising. If you are talking about swing-based music, the quarter note pulse on the ride cymbal needs to have a certain "forward motion" feel to it in order for the music to "swing" IMO. If you can't achieve this (and this is no small feat), then the "jazz" feel just doesn't groove for me. And if the music/groove doesn't feel good, then it gives me a visceral stomach ache. The moral of this tedious story is that, to me, there is no harder music for me to listen to than jazz that is not swinging, or "bad" jazz. A very mediocre rock band or lounge act, even with a sloppy drummer or out of tune voices/instruments, is much easier for me to tolerate for some reason.
Perhaps this is because I have seen first-hand from others and from my own practicing, the incredible dedication that goes into having the technical facility to just play the music so it is at a minimum grooving and feels good, even if it is not really creative improvising. And this is nothing to speak of the variety of latin/world styles that are incorporated into jazz like bossa nova, samba, afro-cuban, etc. which need to become part of your arsenal and which require very different feels.
And to better refine what I originally meant about my own playing, to even feel comfortable playing a "standards" jazz gig, I need to practice playing jazz for several hours
the week before, just to get that feel back in my limbs. I don't need to do this with rock, funk or blues. This is probably because I came to know jazz only after I'd played back-beat music for 10 years and while I've worked hard at it periodically over the years, it's very much like trying to speak a second language that you ignore for too long and then need to get reacquainted with.
When Kelly said "I don't think Jazz drummers are any kind of special or elite drummers" I might have to disagree with him somewhat on a big-picture level. While there are incredible drummers in all facets of music, I think that most drummers who are "good" jazz drummers can also play most other styles very convincingly if needed (rock, soul, funk, blues, reggae etc.) However, many good (even great) rock drummers don't know how or have the technique to play a decent swing, blues or reggae groove. And maybe that doesn't mean anything... they never wanted to and will never have to. But to me, being able to play and internalize many different grooves and musical styles informs your musical expression and allows you to draw on all that for creativity. And that puts the "good jazz drummer" a little higher in my book.
- D.
Certainly a lot of interesting information in here, David. In fact, more than I can coalesce, if I may use that verb incorrectly. The body of jazz is nothing like the body of rock. The only thing that rock really requires is that the drums hit on 2 and 4. If you can keep to that, you are better than 96% of rock drummers. Jazz doesn't have that kind of simple urge. I played rock for forty something years, and so I can relate to what you say, when you talk about having to get in form to play jazz.
What really troubles me is that I still struggle with liking jazz, which would seem. at a bare minimum, a requirement to being able to play it. But even as I say that, I know that jazz, in some form or other, is what is calling me as a drummer. Hard to describe this state of transition, but I'm going through it because there is no option in my musical life. I mean, I won't be trying to play Palestrina on the kit anytime soon.
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