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Rarely have I struggled with a thumbnail the way I struggled this week.
It’s like this: there are images immediately evocative of exactly the type of drumming I’m referring to…
…and if I used them everybody would think I was criticizing those players. Or at least teeing them up for criticism.
So maybe it’s a generic image of a kit immediately evocative of this style of playing, only without a human attached. Surprisingly hard to find. Stock photos aren’t specific enough, any image of a specific device like a stack risks being seen as an attack on that particular maker, and any photo of a whole kit loses the specificity.
Fine. Fred Armisen. Maybe the only image of a human playing a kit that looks “modern” that won’t get me piñata’d for picking on a specific human. (Because he’s satirizing it.) But do gen-z folks even know Fred?
Boo.
Anyway, modern drumming you guys! Why does everybody seemingly hate it? At least if you look at my comments. This spring I’ve made 2 videos on modern playing - one asking why modern drummers sound so different, and another detailing this linear style playing, which I call “clave flow”, that’s suddenly dominating modern drumming.
And the comments were withering. “Not music.” “[synonym for self-pleasure]”. “What happened to letting the music breathe.” And so on.
“I guess everybody just hates modern drumming,” I told myself. But something didn’t fit.
If nobody liked it, who were all these people “liking” it on the socials? Or buying tickets?
And maybe it was like “congress”, where people claim to hate the generic concept, but not their favorite specific players. Nate Smith. Larnell. Etc.
Then there was this video of “groover-hero” Ash Soan…well…chopping out. Sure, it sounded “retro”, but that was just because of tuning and some creative muting. If I played the same thing on a “modern-tuned” kit, it sounds like, well, modern chopping.
So this simple picture became a wee bit complicated.
Anyway, today we’ll talk about it.
Do people really hate modern drumming? Do some people like it? Do the same people who say they hate it like it when it’s Adam Deitch or Karriem Riggins? Do the ones who say they’d hate it even then secretly like it, but only when noone’s watching? Would even those who don’t like it if we pulled a little ruse and convinced them that Matt Garstka was actually Ginger Baker?
And so on.
If you want to take the nerdy, deconstructive ride, I invite you to buckle up.