“Feel over function.” “Ahhha!” “Whoa” indeed! Groove over pattern. “Relevant to the moment.” Wherever Quincy places the skip beat is exactly where you want it to be. Masterful.
Timing and time is an absolute, meaning we all agree on the metronomic point such as e.g. 90 bpm. Within that however, my very first teacher said, “Think of the metronome as a willow tree where it’s roots are firmly set, but feel is the sway of its branches and leaves. It moves and breathes the pulse, the essence of the music.”
Love hearing nice ride cymbal playing! To me time can come from a metronome. A machine. It’s the human, the heart, the emotion of the player that gives it the feel. Makes it special. The time may move a bit, but the feel makes a person smile and move.
Thank you for what you do. Time is a clock. A precise measurement. Feel is the human that is playing the times ,emotional response. I play in a situation where the backtracks are a full band. Including drums. The band leader does solo gigs with the same tracks. My job is to add human feel. To bridge the gap between the time, the drum machine, and feel. That’s my humble opinion.
A beautiful lesson as usual. For me, Time is the eternal movement of the universe, which can be divided in bpm or any other mathematical fraction. Feel is the Space. Our job as humans (as well as drummers) is to define the Space we live in. By the way, Quincy, I was listening to your gig at Smalls in May 2021. You play so beautifully. Thank you for everything you do, man.
My personal example of an extremely nice ride feel is on Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers album The Big Beat (Rudy Van Gelder Edition) track 4 named Dat Dere. Especially when on 5:16 the piano comes in with an epic solo on the perfect and also very clear drum & bass feel.
Hi Quincy! Ben Riley mentioned something important once. He said find whoever in the ensemble has the best beat or feel, and the whole group goes with that. Maybe it's me, maybe it's someone else. Find the spacing that fits the music.
I love ❤️ your ride cymbal. Love the stick sound and the shoulder crash . I have many ride cymbals, but haven't found that yet . The ones I really like start at the 5 hundred or 6 hundred dollar range to a thousand, and my pockets aren't that deep . Only hope is to stumble across an old Zildjian K. Until then, suffering with what I have . Champagne taste and beer money . Thanks for a great feel .
This is great. My fascination is somewhere between the straight chop and the swing. Jim Keltner, Zoro, Tommy Ardalino, a kind of flat-tire 1/8 note, back and forth, triplets/ 1/16 note fill.
Another great lesson! Man I’m getting tired of making that comment, but it’s true. To me time is the tempo, the dead center of the beat. Feel is how we interact in and around the beat. The beat to me is just that, the dead center of the tempo. I think of the ride “pattern” as the groove. I find myself moving the skip note closer or further from the number notes(3 or 1, and others) depending on the tune. The feel or groove should change depending on what the music demands…I think.
As a rock drummer who fantasizes about playing jazz...I define time in music as objective and quantifiable. Feel is how a player interprets the time. A player can be slightly behind or ahead of the beat (not to be confused with dragging or rushing the time). The feel of the time can also be expressed in a way like - for example - a punk rock drummer playing straight 8th notes literally - (imagine just straight up and down - like someone jumping with a Pogo stick). This will be a great exercise for me to work with - definitely will help me discover the nuances within the swing time feel - which will help my overall feel for anything I play.
Time is your sense and therefore the bands sense of the signature you’re playing on. Feel is how the notes you’re playing span across the space that the time provides. You can play two grooves in the same time with much different feels, even something as simple as hh on 1234, kick on 1&3 and snare on 2&4, making it funky, swung, etc. loved the lesson Quincy! Thanks for sticking this through the summer (pun intended)!
Great lesson, thanks. Love my ride, finally found a Zildjian A 21” Sweet Ride and boy it’s lovely‼️Playing to a bass line is much more fun than a metronome for this emerging drummer ✌️🌻🇦🇺
To me, Feel is the placement and dynamics of the subdivisions (microtime and microdynamics) and how those elements stay consistent to create a style or attitude...
Time is a Musicians internal Metronome.Not speeding up or slowing down unintentionally. Feel is how they Interpret the Time in terms of Straight or Swing. Great Video as always. Thanks.
great video and great Ride lesson! oh also i'm a Texas drummer too mainly live on tha outskirts of Houston! i still have quite a bit to still work on i got started as a gospel chops drummer but lookin' to expand further
Great lesson! I also like to think of feel as a kind of a mental/spiritual energy that comes across when a musician plays (maybe at a deeper or different level).
Great lesson, thank you! If time is th language than I think of feel kind of as the accent .. The subtle placement and dynamics, ebb and flow creat the feel
Love this and previous lessons on playing the ride cymbal ❤️ I also like to let the sound of the ride speak to me....And I have several rides I use for different musical settings... One cymbal I particularly like for light bluesy playing is a 20"80s Zildjian Pang...It has great feel
Beautiful lesson, Q! I love this exercise! (& all the famous drummer ride beats you hear as you turn the dial haha.) Thank you 🙏 :) I suppose “feel” is a result of the choices you make while playing in time (e.g., sub-divisions, dynamics, etc)
I prefer more of a triplet ride pattern for swing. In this example, both the triplet and dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythms work because the bass line contains only quarter notes.
Time and feel? I'd say That time concerns the tempo or the speed limit.Let's say we have to keep a good and solid time. The Feel is more about the way you do it : Straight eights notes, straight triplets or the feel ding-ga-ling (more triplets feel or sixteenth feel)
Haha that is my driving exercise. Could you go a bit deeper in to the skip beat please? The good quarter allows other players to choose their positioning and subdivision, but are there theories of when to mimic and when to contrast. Also I wonder if some songs on records are maybe skip beats based off five or seven, or should we just feel it. You the best! Thank you
I did exactly what you said with the recording.. sadly, I was exposed immediately on track 1, 60bpm. The hardest tracks for me are the slowest and fastest…. Then it becomes a matter of management of how much practice time…. Anyways, “time” is a linear division of time, such as minutes or seconds. Feel has to do with creating mood with dynamic choices. Those are the most fundamental elements of rhythm based music. Being able to play accurately at all dynamics…
Dear Quincy, thanks and congratulations for the video, useful and interesting as always. I understand what you mean by "it works for me" referring to the design of the skip note. It is often argued that the skip note is very personal if not a drummer's signature. But I want to ask you: could we say that, apart from the drummer's personality, it is also the tune that suggests the design of the skip note, both in the swing and in the shuffle? It seems to me that sometimes the tune itself and even more the interpretation rendered by the other musicians (the spaces they leave or do not leave between the notes, the way they stay around the beat, the elasticity with which they use the subdivision,. ..) takes the drummer to adjustments that also include the skip note. What do you think? (sorry for the too many words!)
I am left handed, but many years ago I was taught to play right handed. In my opinion, a big mistake. I've had a hard time tryiing to play a French style grip with my right hand. Is it absolutely necessary to use that grip to play ride cymbal or high hat with any kind of feel or speed?
Quincy, you didn’t mention accenting the second beat of the pattern like Elvin used . I’m sure as you already know, it pulled the feel back of the pattern just enough to make sound likes it’s not going forward in the same way, it feels like it’s pulling it back a little, do you agree? Chuck C
Yeah I didn’t get into bringing certain notes out of the ride be like different drummers would do. More just concentrating on the spacing of the skip beat. I agree and disagree about alvin‘s beat. Somehow he was able to create forward motion while also making the time feel like it was almost going backwards. I think it has something to do with obviously his ride beat but also his heavily tripletized comping. Thanks for sharing your thoughts as always Chuck!
@@drumqtips That’s exactly what I was trying to say , but you said it better. I like mixing the ride cymbal pattern, and I work on making it sound not too obvious , but just enough to keep it still sounding like it’s moving forward. The learning process never stops for me as old as I am, and I’m old now, but that’s ok I’m not too old to keep on learning. I enjoy watching your video lessons and get great info from them, thanks.
I choose my rides for the most 'musicality' - being able to get 6 or more distinct tones out of them depending on the all the sweet spots between bell & bow. This way you can suggest a melodic figure that compliments the bass or main riff. Adjusting the skip beat will be in reaction to how the bass player is laying out his groove, either pushing it up or laying back, This keeps your ride patterns from sounding monotone and boring.