Quote:
|
Originally Posted by !@#$%!
oh lucky
his drumming actually reminds me of peoplie like bill bruford maybe-- you know what i mean? you are the more musically adept here, if i say he sounds to me like a prog-rock drummer, would you say i'm talking out of my ass?
|
Sure, there's something progressive about it. It's pretty jazzy and tricky, but not as ostentatiously tricky as a lot of other prog drummers. Bruford might be a decent comparison, but I can't say I've listened to much of his drumwork in years. Probably been 15 years!
But what's so interesting to me about Greg Saunier's drumming is all the little rolls and fills he does around the edges of a straighted rhythm, and yet that straighted rhythm is always very sturdy and played with convincing power...or gravitas if you will.
The drummer of US Maple also did a lot of nifty stuff around the edges of his beats. But it's a pretty rare sense or skill that these guys possess.
When I had him in the studio here at KDVS a couple years back, I complimented him on it, and he explained how he developed this sense of how to play drums, and it was a pretty great story.
"You remember how in 3rd grade, your teacher would give all the kids a little introduction to music education, just to see if you might be interested in music?" he asked.
"I remember," I replied. "I was given a hand-me-down flutophone, better known as a recorder. I sucked at it and became frustrated. So, is 3rd grade when you first played drums."
"Yes," he said. "I was in a little drum corps, and I was on a snare. At first we were just learning how to read sheet music for drums, and it took a while for some of the other kids to figure it out, so I was
really bored. But once everybody had a handle on reading, we began playing as a group, and it was more fun. And then it became
even more fun and I was
really getting into it and thinking, 'Wow! This sounds totally awesome!' But just then, the teacher was like, 'Stop! Stop! Gregory, what are you playing???' And I showed her my parts, but she said, 'OH! You're on the wrong page. We moved on to the next page.'
"And that's when I knew that I liked to play rhythms that sounded weird."