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The above paragraph is not unrelated to today’s subject, because I consider him one of the good things that’s resulted for drummers due to the internet.
This is a subject everybody has an opinion on, which I don’t think anybody’s addressed head-on. We touch it through proxies, like “modern drumming”, and “how to make a living as a musician these days”. But it’s engendered such strong opinions, I thought it deserved a video all its own.
Part of the reason is I want people to own “the internet has made the world worse for drummers” if that’s what they really believe.
20 years ago - heck, 15 years ago - we had a world in which if you wanted to watch a great drummer play, you needed to rent a DVD of them, or go see them live. In which if you wanted a lesson with a great teacher, you needed to travel to them, or go to music school. In which if you wanted a career in music, you needed to impress a gatekeeper, or several gatekeepers.
In was a world in which sponsors, drum magazines, music schools, agents, and record labels held most of the power, and could name their price.
But did all the work required give us something in return?
Did we appreciate those performances more if we needed to pay for a CD or a live concert in order to hear them? Did we appreciate the lessons more if we needed to pay an individual? Did the small number of “anointed ones” in the orbit of the gatekeepers enjoy better careers than most musicians have today?
Now, of course, we have a world with everything at our fingertips. Any video of any drummer, any lesson on any subject, and also access to an audience for anybody willing to put in the hours “getting good” - or at least getting entertaining - and has that made things better?
Has it made the world more “fast food”? Where instead of whole performances we appreciate only isolated solos, and it that warping the musical instincts of young drummers? Are the algorithms that show us more and more cool solos once we watch one contributing to a flattening of musical variety?
Are the ubiquitous impressive physical feats, like one-handed single strokes and impossible blast beats making everybody feel worse about their own playing?
And has the move from record-based payment to sponsored posts and patreons pulled the rug out from under the working “journeyman” players, forcing them to either “eat tide pods for views” or get a job for Uber Eats?
It’s far from a simple “up or down” picture. And in today’s video, I’ll do my best to give both sides a fair hearing. They you can decide!
Hope you enjoy!