RR: On that note, could you elaborate upon the concept touched upon in the book, DVD, and executed on the record of playing in-between the cracks?
SM: Yeah, absolutely. What that is all about is playing with a feel that’s not too straight, and it’s not too swing.
RR: Historically, between the playing styles of James Brown’s two drummers, Jabo Starks and Clyde Stubblefield, right?
SM: Yeah. Each drummer has their own way of doing this. Clyde Stubblefield plays a little bit straighter. Jabo Starks, in general, plays a little bit more on the swing spectrum. Zigaboo Modeliste [of the Meters] definitely plays in-between there. But they’re all in-between, but different drummers—and on different songs, too—apply things differently. If you try to sit down and play one of these grooves, and you’re not getting the right phrasing, the right amount of in-between straight playing, it won’t sound as authentic as what’s happening. Now, you know, that’s interesting because you can take things, and you can maybe swing it more, straighten it out a little more, maybe play it at a different tempo, and maybe make it into a different thing.
All of these guys did this very naturally and very organically because they all grew up listening to music that had a swing pulse. All these guys grew up listening to Big Band music of the 30s and 40s, and all the early rhythm and blues, jump blues, early rock ‘n’ roll—all of those things leading up to the mid- to late-50s—were all swung. And not really until the late 50s and early 60s did things start to straighten out a little bit. Once these guys—Jabo and Clyde in ’66 and ’67 started playing with James Brown, and then Zigaboo in ’69—started to play straight, they had been hearing swung music all their life. So when they started to straighten things out, they still had a little bit of the lilt in it, a little bit of swing left in it.
Now that we’ve lived through a period where things have been straightened out, we have to readdress that a little bit. It happened very naturally for those guys. But for us, we’ve had things into our ears that have been really straightened out. We need to readdress that, and that’s where I’ve come up with little things to work on to free us up from playing things just one way. Listen with your ears, and adjust what you’re physically doing on drums, so you’re swinging something a little bit more, or swinging something a little bit less, depending on the situation. And, then, you can adjust it to make it fit, musically, into what you’re actually going for. If you’re not aware of that, you could be playing something too swing, and it might not sound as good as it can.
RR: Exactly. How critical is it for a drummer to practice at a slow and precise pace?
SM: I think it’s really critical, especially if you want to refine what you’re doing. If you
want to be really accomplished drumset player, you really work out all the cobwebs by learning how to play something really slowly at first. As you gradually bring it up to speed, those cobwebs are kept out of the picture. But if you’re trying to play something without really understanding it in a slow tempo, it can be really raw, and maybe, too raw. Certain rawness is really essential if you’re playing a song, but if it’s too raw, it can be a disadvantage. It’s important to practice slowly, and then bring it up to speed. You’ll just learn things so much more quickly if you have the patience.
Now, I really enjoy that when I’m learning new things. I’ll start something off at half speed, and I’ll gradually bring it up to tempo. It’s almost like a meditative process. It’s really enjoyable for me. If I’m working out something like a new transcription that I really want to learn, like all that material in that book—that took me a long time (laughs) to learn all that stuff like the “Soul Pride” break and all the breaks for a funky drummer. You can get together the beats pretty quickly, but learning all those breaks? I had to just take them down a tempo, and work them up. It’s a really fun process for me. It’s very meditative. If you just give up on “O.K.—I’ve got to know this,” and you just get into the process of it, fall in love with the process, then it can be a very cathartic process. The result is that you can actually play it up to speed, and it can be very rewarding.
Getting to that point, though, where you love that process—a process where you’re getting something out of something for an hour or two hours a day, and playing it slowly, and increasing it gradually is like meditating with your instrument. To me, the whole process is very meditative, cathartic, and rewarding when you finally get the thing that you’re working on.
Then, what you do with it, what I do with it is that I’ll throw the sheet of paper away, and then I’ll just start improvising on certain things that I like, and certain things that I’ll remember. Then, you start improvising and developing it into your own thing. You learn the thing note for note, but you also twist it and turn it into something’s that got your own spin on it. That’s how you incorporate it into your own playing, and that’s how it becomes something that might have your own twist on it. Hopefully, it is slightly unique.
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