What's with that constant cymbal tapping in jazz drumming?

I thought I would have mentioned this above, but I didn't: I think one of the big reasons that modern jazz drumming and the emphasis on the ride cymbal developed is its sonic place in a small group.

Since it's acoustic music, the musicians have to create their own natural balance obv., and it's natural to stay out of each other's way. The horns do their thing, the piano stays away from roots and the lower register to give room to the bass, and the ride cymbal cuts through clearly and takes up a lot of frequency room without covering anything up. It's all well and good to play more time on the toms 'Sing, Sing, Sing' style in a big band, where the volume is so much higher and the low brass are playing bass lines, but in a small group it would pretty much obviate the upright bass. Playing on the hi-hat all the time creates more white-noise wash when it's open and a too-small, too-tight sound when it's closed.

I don't know, I could write poetry about a nice ride cymbal. It just sounds so RIGHT in the context of that music, like it's the other half of the basscymbal. It completes the upper half of the bass, the half with the attack and sustain and defined swing. And I think drummers SHOULD use all the sound sources they can and be creative, and I do (christ, I bring a cooking pot to all my gigs), but it all comes back to the ride cymbal beat as home base, for sound musical reasons.

When you play jazz (or really any music where improvisation is a big factor), I think you have to use the whole kit is a single instrument, rather than thinking "snare for backbeat, hihat for time, bass for bass" etc etc. You can usually spot drummers with jazz backgrounds a mile away because of this - for example, listen to Bill Bruford play. I don't even think he's that great a *jazz* drummer, but it's obvious he isn't thinking in narrow "bass + snare + hihat" terms when he plays.

In another way, I approach playing drums in jazz the same way I approach arranging a composed piece, in that there is a responsibility to "support" the music but there shouldn't necessarily be only one way of delegating the various "jobs" you are performing to specific drums, styles, accents, licks, etc. If I'm listening to a drummer, and it seems he's just staying on the ride with the same pattern over and over, then I'll think:
a) he's either playing that because the band has bad time and he has to do it, or
b) because he's got other interesting things happening elsewhere, and the ride is merely setting that up, or
c) he's playing a chart that tells him to do it that way

Or it could be that he just isn't thinking about much other than keeping a pulse (which in jazz usually equates to really boring drumming - though even then there are exceptions like Tony Williams playing that hihat thing for 15 minutes on In A Silent Way, obv a considered compositional choice rather than him not being able to come up with something). But then, I don't really have a problem listening to someone play on the ride a lot. Good musicians tend to can make almost anything sound good.

. It's still a sound that bugs me most of the time

Can't argue with that I guess.

I just have a boom-box type CD player so that might be part of the problem, but I'm sure there are many people who have equally low quality stereos for whom that sound isn't a problem.

(I shouldn't have chimed in again, anyway. It's not as if this is the only thing preventing me from loving jazz.)

Boba Fett79 (not a name I recognize) (and why am I dredging up my own old threads I know I know), I don't know who that was addressed to, but according to the experts on this thread, I don't think it was thought up in New Orleans, and whatever bad things can be said about me, I am not a fey indie rock nerd.

I shouldn't keep reviving this thread just to repeat myself. That was a bad move on my part last night.

I would definitely like to like more jazz, but I continue to just like a small portion of it.

"Believe me, all these young kids growing up in inner city schools, before they get into the rap they should know who Coltrane and Ellington were"

"I just think we don’t require skill in art anymore. That’s what perplexes me, because it’s totally commercially driven. The lowest common denominator. But we have great musicians in this country. We just need to water them, like a flower, and let them grow, and respect them and encourage them. But we don’t."

blah blah, same old shit

I resent statements like this that imply that bop is neither "thoughful" nor "cerebral." What, do you think bop solos are just people playing scales really really fast?

But:

Wynton Marsalis said on the Ken Burn's thing that his definition of jazz was music with a particular triplet-based rhythmic swing. (Despite having quoted WM twice approvingly on this thread I'm not a disciple or a particular fan). We are never going to get agreement on where the barrier between jazz and not-jazz should be drawn, but for various reasons I think this is the most practical place. The issue is clouded by the fact that "not-jazz" is too often used as a pejorative term by critics: in my view it should be a purely descriptive term with no value attached.

If you accept this definition "Bitches Brew", for example, is "not jazz" (I love "Bitches Brew" - this is not an attempt to sneak in a denigration of electric Miles).

You can see where my argument is headed: once you look at "jazz" that is influenced by Sly/JB, then if you accept my argument it is "not jazz" and even if you don't there is a quantum leap away from the jazz that went before. We are not talking subtle gradations of difference.

Looking at the characteristics of funk rhythm sections as opposed to jazz (caution: gross simplification/generalisations to follow)

- the implied triplet feel of jazz is replaced by a squarer 4/4 time where 8th beats are regularised.

- much more of the drum kit is given over to keeping time. Typically the bass drum and snare drum will play repetitive patterns as well as the cymbals. That so much more whole kit is dedicated to keeping time gives the drummer the choice of using cymbals to reinforce the regular pattern or frees them up for emphasis/decoration.

- These repetitive patterns can be extremely complex though. The mix of offbeats and on-beats is much more sophisticated than most earlier rock drumming. They would also vary between sections of the song (in some James Brown songs the tendency to stay on a single chord meant that subtle differences in the basic rhythm might be the only or main difference between verse and bridge, for example).

- Because many of the guys playing this style were virtuosi they could maintain and subtly vary these sophisticated patterns while

- The bassist will "lock" with this overall pattern (this is very different from the typical jazz pattern where, as mentioned, the bassist locks with the cymbal and the rest of the kit it freed up for more creative emphasis etc).

- The bassist will also play a repetitive rhythmic pattern, often on a single chord throughout. This has important implications:

1 In jazz the division of time into bars is much less obvious because there is a fairly even flow of quarter beats on cymbal and bass. In funk the more typical pattern is for the bass and drums to come together strongly on the "one" beat of the bar followed by the drums and bass playing divergent but complementary patterns of off and on beats. Hence in Funkadelic the constant quasi-mystical reference to the "One". (Just to illustrate how simplistic this is the repetition could be over two bars not one, so the "One" is emphasised only every second bar; and some patterns manage to emphasise the "One" even though neither the bass or drums play the one beat!

2 Funk tends to be harmonically very simple and is glued together by the bass playing a repetitive harmonic pattern. Jazz tunes tend to go on a harmonic journey coming "home" by resolving to the tonic periodically every 8 or 16 or 32 bars. Funk typically comes "home" harmonically at the beginning of every bar when the bass thumps out the root note of the chord. In any case the bass's use of repetitive patterns glues the harmony together.

One consequence of this is that extremely discordant elements can be introduced. The discordant elements in jazz tend to be "controlled": increasingly discordant harmonies are introduced as the music develops and the ear accepts these for two reasons:

1 These discordant harmonies are resolved to the more consonant tonic.

2. With familiarisation the jazz fan learns to regard these harmonies as beautiful (or semi-consonant) in themselves.

In funk the second reason can effectively be done away with: the "glue" of the harmonically repeated bassline and the return "home" to the root at the beginning of every bar means that the ear will tolerate a much greater amount of temporary dissonance, because it is so transient. There is no need for the dissonance to be controlled or consonant to the "educated" ear. This has huge implications for rap and other sample-based forms where the
samples of non-musical materials, or music from different keys can be collaged together and be made to sound congruous by the repetitive harmonic and rhythmic patterns of bass and drums.

(A similar effect is achieved in a lot of free jazz where the use of modal harmonic background means that extreme discordancy can be offset by a continual returning home to harmonic familiarity. That's why lots of listeners brought up on funk or certain rock forms can respond more easily to free jazz than to mainstream jazz: it's a smaller leap, because it's much closer to what they are musically familiar with).

-- ArfArf (ArfAr...) (webmail), January 16th, 2003 6:18 AM. (link)

best post on ILM i've read in two years

(Wish I had something of importance to add to it...)

The bass is the pulse, the drums are also to a certain extent, but they're more there to provide color and accents. There's a soloist trying to play over chord changes on top, so you can't have the drummer playing all this thunderous stuff all over the kit (at least in swing, bop, etc.) Jazz drumming is significantly more subtle than rock drums, and if you listen closely, you may realize that there's a lot more going on besides the ride cymbal than you realize (light comping on the snare, kick etc.)

If you want examples of music where I especially like the sound of the percussion and like the rhythmic approach, I would point to: most Arabic music (limiting it to styles from before the 80s) and most salsa, as well as most Sun Ra. There are some examples in rock, but not all that many really.

Granted, it was kind of a dumb question to ask, or to phrase the way I phrased it, but sometimes bluntly asking things that way can lead to some interesting responses. I was pretty impressed with a lot of the responses here.

I just don't like the sound of most jazz drumming (with the ride cymbal tapping as the ultimate annoyance) or relate to its rhythmic sense, at least when it gets into Elvin Jones territory. For color and timbre, I'll take a combination of congas, bongos, and timbales over the standard drum kit any day. Ditto for the typical Egyptian or Lebanese percussion combination (though I don't know the names of all of that).

I don't think it's right to just look at as the primitive ancestor of jazz drumming, because the style has continued to develop there for the last, oh, century or so (both on drumset and the street music bass drummer/snare drummer configuration). It's still jazz, but it's focused on the drums rather than the cymbals and it's dance music first and foremost. For modern New Orleans drumming, I'd check out:

Leroy Jones, Mo' Cream from the Crop (w/Shannon Powell)
Derek Shezbie, Spodie's Back (w/Herlin Riley et al)
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Shake That Thing
New Birth Brass Band, D-Boy
Rebirth Brass Band, We Come to Party, Hot Venom

Rockist, given what you like (Latin music, etc.), I really think you'd like New Orleans brass bands .

Yes. Ole I didn't like, but it may have had more to do with other things in the music. I did try to listen to what you or someone pointed out about Afro-Blue, but I didn't get it. I do like some Coltrane, but often in spite of the drumming.

(I do like a fair amount of traditional African drumming that I've heard, though I didn't mention that hear, but that's kind of implied in my mention of salsa, so you are right to mention Africanicity.)

Basically, brass bands and trad bands can both do the traditional New Orleans jazz/gospel thing, but modern brass band music can also have a lot more clave and r&b in it.

Great moments on the ride cymbal

xpost:
Yeah, I tink you guys are right, I just wanted to discuss the triplet thing a little and copied that stuff from some web site. In any case, on my instrument I play mostly quarter notes.