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Firstly, I must say I love Jojos playing ever since I heard him on Lunar Crush many years ago. I think he is one of the worlds great drummers.
But when i saw him at drummerlive it was interesting how much he is taking his lead from dance music. In my opinion this is not wise for drumming
I worked for a long time in dance music as a producer (as the Wikkamen, we released a few tracks for Island and Warner Bros in the lae nineties.)
It was jungle and drum and bass that got me into dance music,I remember seeing Clive Deamer with roni size and he blew me away (and now has my old job in Robert Plant's band!) but by I was progrmming (early nineties) drum and bass was a spent force and a lot of the producers had moved towards House and Garage.
Drum and Bass now is a fring activity at best so it is interesting that it is still alive in the world of drumming.
But I realised when working in this world that drummers were always playing catch up. A dance producer only uses a drummer because of whata drummer can do but even then only uses us for loops. But most likely they will go back to a time when men where men and drummers played drums for their loops!
Isn't it about time we stopped trying to sound like out of date dance music and played some REAL drumming! (something computers still can't do...real drum sounds in real rooms with a bit of human feel)
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Andy, "Wikkamen" sounds familiar...is the Wikkamen project the same as the Wyka Men who did a track called "Basket?" Got that track on a Terry Mullan house mix (when he was still outta Chicago) and it's a tasty one if so.
I understand your point AE about feeling that there is something lost in trying to emulate machines. Part of me says, let the machines do what they do best and let live drummers do what they do best. On the other hand, I don't see the problem with learning new things and ways of looking at playing as long as we don't kill our best work in the process.
It's well established that drum machines have foisted standards of perfect time and cleanliness--or at least machine time and cleanliness--on flesh and bone drummers, and that is not where the heart of music lives. One can get obsessed with these standards at the expense of a feel that is more human, a little ragged around the edges. But Ned's point about how vibrant that scene can be is also true. Dance music can be vibrant and visceral; at times it is moreso than other live music. There's a lot that is stale out there--in all genres--and that was reflected by the rise of electronic music in the 90s. You just don't see thousands of people slam dancing to fusion these days, and I don't think it's just all some "marketing" thing. House, trance and d&b parties weren't forced upon consumers by the industry here on the West Coast in the 90s and they blew up anyhow. People went to them because the connected with the music and scene (or wanted to get laid or high or all the things that are usually associated with partying [img]wink.gif[/img] ). Why wouldn't live musicians want to cash in on some of that vibe?
I do agree that electronic music is a little spent in general at the moment. So where is the major creative energy push these days? If it's all been done, then where is the vibrance? To quote Roberta Flack, "Where is the love?" (jk)
We've strayed a bit form the "Technical vs. Creative" thread. But maybe not so much? A machine can perform a lot of functional and technical pieces of drumming. People can make drum machines groove these days...check out some neo soul (Erika Badu, Me'Shell, etc.) if you need evidence of that.
Perhaps the question is what makes your playing, your particular music voice special or worth playing/recording/selling?
