It's kind of what you think, but not exactly.
Quite often I'm helping students to work on their time, but they don't ask me to help them work on their time by asking "Can you help me work on my time".
The question gets asked a few different ways
"Can you teach me how to swing"
"Can you teach me how you learnt how to play hip hop"
"Can you help me with my pocket"
"Can you help me sound legit in xxxxx style"
More often than not, without them knowing students are asking me to help them with their time feel. But they don't look to the music and the records to help them work on their time because from day one we're taught as drummers that the click is the be all and end all of learning how to play good time.
Now if that were true, then this guy
Or this guy
logically would never sound as someone who programmed a bunch of beats into Garageband.
What gives the great drummers we love their magical timefeel?
I would argue that it is their ability to manipulate rhythm, to create a feeling. The problem with believing that being able to bury a metronome is the be all and end all of timekeeping abilities is that being able to bury the metronome means you are able to play right in the middle of the beat and everything that you're playing/subdividing lines up right with the middle of the beat. What more, when we're playing with the metronome we don't have any other instruments that are playing that are putting any inflection on the time so to rephrase, being able to bury a metronome when you're playing with the metronome alone only means you're able to play down the middle of the beat as long as there are no other instruments playing that are NOT playing down the middle of the beat.
The issue is that being able to do this is just the BEGINNING of being able to play good time. It's a great reference point for us to start trying to understand what is going on in the music and what our favourite drummers are doing with the time IN RELATION to what the rest of the musicians are doing. Sometimes we spend so much talking about playing ahead, behind, or on the beat, but I truly believe the better way to learn these concepts is through listening to the records, playing along with the drummers we love and making those drummers into our metronomes.
What does this mean? One of the best examples I like to use for my students who want to learn how to play a jazz ride cymbal and make it feel right is the great Kenny Washington's ride cymbal beat when he plays with Melvin Rhyne.
I make my students play along with the record, and at first just play along with Kenny Washington's ride cymbal and trying to bury it in the same way that they would try to bury the metronome. It takes a bit of time at first, but after a while they're able to zone out the rest of the music and only focus in on the ride and they're able to get their ride cymbal phrasing and placement to be right on his (at least to some degree). The next thing I tell them to do is to try to keep their ride cymbal beat right on Kenny Washington's but to also pay attention what is going on with the rest of the music. Inevitably many of them feel that to keep their ride cymbal right on top of Kenny Washington's, it almost feels like they're pushing forward against the music constantly.
It's at that point that they've learnt what it is to play the ride cymbal "on top", which is what we theoretically use to explain the feeling that so many great jazz drummers have been able to create. I use this exercise to get students to understand the real difference between playing time in a musical setting and simply playing their ride cymbal and trying to play along with a metronome. The physical and aural sensations are completely different. But when we we use recordings and play along with the great drummers in this way, we get to first learn from the best, and also play along with the best! It is so important to remember the PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL FEELING of putting ourselves into the shoes of our favourite drummers, and understanding that it is that tension in the music that the are able to create at a constant throughout the whole tune that gives them their great time feel.
Once they're able to play the ride cymbal along with Kenny Washington, I then get them to start adding some comping figures with their other limbs. 99 percent of the time on their first attempt, once the other limbs start playing, they immediately lose focus on keeping the ride cymbal phrasing where it's supposed to be, and immediately the pocket and feeling of their beat changes. It's at this point that I get to show them the importance of making sure that everything that they play, comping figures, fills, ride cymbal patterns, they all have to line up with the POCKET that was initially created at the beginning of the tune by the drummer (this is assuming that at the beginning of the tune the drummer was playing something relatively simple with great time feel to begin with).
It is of course, a very common thing for drummers to rush fills. But there is another phenomenon that happens which is that when drummers are playing simple time (like a jazz ride cymbal pattern), they are able to get the placement of their notes right where the music needs it to be to generate a great feeling. However, because we practice all our fills to a metronome because we want to get them PERFECT, when we play something complex, or something we think of as a fill, we revert from playing the time feel we've established and go back to sounding like we're playing right down the middle of the beat in the context of the music. But the problem is up until that point we weren't even playing down the middle of the beat in the first place!
How then do we learn to not to do this? I encourage my students who are trying to learn jazz to try making sure that after they are able to get the ride cymbal to match up with Kenny Washington's, that they also try to phrase all their fills to match the phrasing of Kenny Washington's ride cymbal ... in short to make his ride cymbal their "new metronome". In that way students learn to make all their phrases, comps, fills and patterns "on top of the beat" and in the pocket in the context of the music.
The same concepts work in almost any style of music. Play along with a hip hop record (Q tip's the rennaisance is one of my favourites). I believe that with a smallamount ofpractice, you should be able to make your beats 2 and 4 on the snare match the "behindness" of the backbeats on the record. Now try playing some fills, but making sure when you get to beats 2 and 4, you're hitting beats 2 and 4 right where the backbeats on the records are. Now try out that spanking new gospelchop you've been working on, but make sure that no matter what when beats 2 and 4 come around in the fill, you're pulling the beat back JUUUUUUST enough to match the pocket you've set up so nicely leading up to it.
The first few times you do this (if you've never done this before and you've always only practiced to a metronome) you will feel strange and almost like you're doing something wrong. But keep working on it and record yourself and I promise you'll find that as long as you remember how putting yourself in the exact shoes fo your favourite drummers feels both emotionally and physically, and you are able to bring that and replicate that with your bandmates while you're jamming/performing, they are going to love you for it.
CAVEAT - do NOT apply the timefeel from hiphop/rnb that you've been working on if you happen to be playing with a country and western band. Context is everything.
All My Best
Wen