Liebman Quote on Innovators

[tnsolt]

Originally posted by Flarobstix:
I personally don't think of chops and technique, as simply speed. I include touch and sound. Jack has tons of speed. His approach is unorthadox, but technically, he's a master like anyone else. He simply has his own take on it.
After having seen Jack play up close dozens of time, I feel that you can't play drums the way he does unless you have amazing technical ability. To get his sound, and phrase the way he does, you need chops. It's just that his usage is so perfect and so musical that your mind doesn't go there. Watch him next time. It's pretty sick.
I think of ocean waves when I hear Jack.
Also, please tell me how Tony Williams raised the bar technically.
Do you really think everything he played was technically original? Not in my opinion. People in the middle east were playing groupings before Tony was born. People in this country were swingin' and playing rudiments at lightning speed before he was born. What was so original about Tony?? In my opinion, his approach. He didn't have more chops than Buddy or Philly, and technically didn't play anything more difficult. To me it was unorthadox musicality. His drop outs, his phrasing, his sound, his ride cymbal playing. Not his hands or feet.
The reality is that music is what it's all about. These people make amazing music. 2% of all professional drummers are actually musical in my opinion. If it weren't for clinic tours, 50% of the big name choppers would be out of work. It's about the music. Drummers that work in a high level ensemble setting everyday of their lives are the real drummers for me.
When was the last time you Bill Stewart in clinic?

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ July 21, 2005 01:02 PM: Message edited by: Flarobstix ]</font></font>

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ July 21, 2005 01:04 PM: Message edited by: Flarobstix ]</font></font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">good point. stewart is insane

[Jonathan599]

Originally posted by Flarobstix:
I personally don't think of chops and technique, as simply speed. I include touch and sound. Jack has tons of speed. His approach is unorthadox, but technically, he's a master like anyone else. He simply has his own take on it.
After having seen Jack play up close dozens of time, I feel that you can't play drums the way he does unless you have amazing technical ability. To get his sound, and phrase the way he does, you need chops. It's just that his usage is so perfect and so musical that your mind doesn't go there. Watch him next time. It's pretty sick.
I think of ocean waves when I hear Jack.
Also, please tell me how Tony Williams raised the bar technically.
Do you really think everything he played was technically original? Not in my opinion. People in the middle east were playing groupings before Tony was born. People in this country were swingin' and playing rudiments at lightning speed before he was born. What was so original about Tony?? In my opinion, his approach. He didn't have more chops than Buddy or Philly, and technically didn't play anything more difficult. To me it was unorthadox musicality. His drop outs, his phrasing, his sound, his ride cymbal playing. Not his hands or feet.
The reality is that music is what it's all about. These people make amazing music. 2% of all professional drummers are actually musical in my opinion. If it weren't for clinic tours, 50% of the big name choppers would be out of work. It's about the music. Drummers that work in a high level ensemble setting everyday of their lives are the real drummers for me.
When was the last time you Bill Stewart in clinic?

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ July 21, 2005 01:02 PM: Message edited by: Flarobstix ]</font></font>

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ July 21, 2005 01:04 PM: Message edited by: Flarobstix ]</font></font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree with much of what you say in your post (e.g. "Drummers that work in a high level ensemble setting everyday of their lives are the real drummers for me." -- Not too many kids these days are aware of a lot of these players, such as Bob Moses, for example (of whom they should be aware). However, there's a bit of hyperbole, in your post, I think (e.g. 2% of professional drummers are musical). Setting that aside:

Our disagreement (re: Jack) may be semantic. Going back to the original quote: Liebman said that innovators tend to raise the bar technically. If we understood him to mean by "technique" something like "mastery and control of the sound produced by one's instrument", then I would agree with you re: Jack's raising the bar in that respect. However, that's not the way I understand Liebman's statement. I think he's making a point about only one narrow aspect of control of the instrument when he talks about technique and virtuosity. If read that way, his claim is more interesting and provocative.

I take it that you construe his words differently? (I realize I still owe you a response re: Tony -- I'm mulling it over...)

[Jean-Paul]

Can you both quote that again? [img]wink.gif[/img]

[Andy Edwards]

This is a question of chicken and egg

Does innovation (new musical language, ideas, sounds etc) naturally require new techniques or is it that the development of new techniques begats innovation.

I think that DL focusing on technique negates the power of the innovations in themselves.

Also he narrows the argument down by mentioning musicians who's innovations come from the development of high levels of motor skill.

Could the same be said of The Velvet Underground or George Clinton?

in other words I think he's talking pants

[got_a_matchgrip]

[....] [img]wink.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 21, 2005 03:43 PM: Message edited by: got_a_match_grip? ]</font>

[Riddim]

In reply to Flarobstix's query:

?Also, please tell me how Tony Williams raised the bar technically.?

If you haven?t already, sit down with Emergency volumes one and 2, and play along with it. No one else whom I had heard was doing what he could then -- consequently he was highly emulated.

His use of Swiss triplets and pedaling quarters or eights on the hat hats complicated things for most of us in the 50s and 60s who may have gotten through Chapin with the hat on 2 and 4. And then there were those splashes, which may have come from Roy Haynes and Jo Jones, but which he seemed to place differently.

?Do you really think everything he played was technically original? Not in my opinion.?

On can argue that nothing anyone has played is technically original, since everything is merely combination of doubles and in or pou8t of phase singles. Having said that, some folks seem to have done things that many of us have adopted.

?People in the middle east were playing groupings before Tony was born.?

True. Tony was on of the first to bring these groupings to the kit and the jazz idiom, however.

?People in this country were swingin' and playing rudiments at lightning speed before he was born. What was so original about Tony?? In my opinion, his approach. He didn't have more chops than Buddy or Philly, and technically didn't play anything more difficult. ?

From my experience, it?s much harder from an independence and conceptual standpoint to cop a lot of his stuff than to cop a lot of BR?s.

?To me it was unorthodox musicality. His dropouts, his phrasing, his sound, his ride cymbal playing. Not his hands or feet.?

It was what he heard and how he integrated things. Technique is just a means to an end, the end being to make music. It doesn?t matter how fast or controlled one can play if one has no musical message.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 22, 2005 01:46 AM: Message edited by: Riddim ]</font>

[troutbrooke]

Originally posted by Flarobstix:
The reality is that music is what it's all about. These people make amazing music. 2% of all professional drummers are actually musical in my opinion.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I would have to agree. Although I hope it's more than 2%, that's probably a good guess.

[Jonathan599]

"In fact, near virtuosity is mandatory. Every succeeding generation throws down the gauntlet as far as raising the bar in this way. What was innovative and new becomes standard and required. In the past few decades since Coltrane the level of proficiency on the instrument has risen dramatically. Now everybody is a speed demon. If you look at the true innovators, the first observable level is often technical. In general, the innovators definitely raised the technical level on their instruments. Louis Armstrong, Bird and Coltrane all did that for sure. Alongside this contribution, they added something musically, not to mention spiritually which became transferable to all instruments and the music itself. That is true innovation."

The above quote is taken from a Dave Liebman article that can be found (amongst other great articles and interviews with Lieb) at http://www.upbeat.com/lieb/Feature_Articles/index.htm.

I post this quote here to invite discussion as to whether Liebman's statement that innovators tend to raise the technical bar for their instrument is true with respect to the drums.

Did Paul Motian (clearly an innovator, in Liebman's sense of the term) raise the technical level of his instrument? Jack DeJohnette?

Obviously, there are examples of drummer-innovators who did raise the technical level of the instrument: Kenny Clarke and Tony Williams come to mind. But it isn't clear to me that Liebman's generalization holds true.

Thoughts anyone?

[Flarobstix]

Jack Dejohnette raised it, yes. Both technically and musically. No one plays like Jack. Both technically and musically.

[Jonathan599]

No doubt he was a musical innovator. But how did he raise the bar technically? I thought he served as a fair counterexample to Lieb's generalization. Please explain.

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ July 21, 2005 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan599 ]</font></font>

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 21, 2005 12:43 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan599 ]</font>