Re: letting the drummer hear your loop live

[Travis <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

Neither.  I was trying to lead someone to a conclusion.

My position is that in most ensembles, the other musicians looks to the 
drummer to provide the tempo.  It's one of the main reasons for having 
a drummer.  At this point someone (often a drummer) usually jumps in 
with the "Oh, it's every musicians responsibility to keep their own 
tempo and drummers are unfairly relegated to this most pedestrian of 
duties which makes them glorified metronomes, and my creativity is 
being unfairly stifled, etc, etc"  to which I'd say, yeah, but still 
dude--the drummer provides the tempo.  It's a difficult job, but a 
drummer who can't keep a relatively steady tempo is going to have 
trouble finding much work, in the same way that a 
guitarist/bassist/whatever who can't play in time with a drummer isn't 
going to do well in an ensemble situation.

So, yes--I'd say that if only one musician gets to hear the loop, it 
has to be drummer (if the loop isn't just an ambient drone).  And the 
drummer has to follow the loop.  And it's difficult, and can be a pain 
in the ass, but there's nothing degrading or "stunting" about playing 
to some form of click.  But drummers are like many other 
musicians--they have problems playing to a click, whether it's a matter 
of ability or aesthetic sensibility (and usually a mix of both) and 
no-one likes to do something that they hate and aren't very good at it, 
but if you can get past all that, there's a lot of new ground you can 
cover.

TravisH


On Monday, September 1, 2003, at 07:28 AM, 
Loopers-Delight-d-request@loopers-delight.com wrote:

> Subject: letting the drummer hear your loop live
>
>
> Travis wrote,
>
> 'If everyone's supposed to be keeping time for themselves, why is it so
> particularly important for the drummer to be able to hear the loop?'
>
>
> Are you being facetious here or have you not played a lot of ensemble 
> work?