Next time you want to tell me I’m a bad time keeper…

Sometimes it sucks being the drummer because everybody thinks you are the time keeper. Just so everybody knows, we’re not time keepers. It’s been historically shown that percussionists were time keepers, but that was back then. Drums have evolved so much over the years, you put them in today’s environment, where drums are in a band, and that’s a totally different story. You’ll notice that drums aren’t there to keep time anymore, but to provide dynamics. You’ll notice the song sounds “louder” when playing with the cymbals or a open hi-hat. And you’ll notice the song sounds quieter when playing with a closed hi-hat.

It’s not like I can talk though. I don’t have the best time in the world. After five years of drumming, I’ve only started to take drumming with a metronome seriously now. That’s a lot of time wasted not playing along with a metronome. Imagine if I had started playing with the metronome straight from the beginning. Imagine how good my time would be now? But I digress.

It’s a music industry secret that drummers are not meant to keep time. It’s actually everybody’s duty to have their own sense of solid time; everybody should have their own internal metronome, and when everyone locks with in each other, the music sounds good and the time is solid. The reason why you can sometimes hear huge jumps in tempos in bands is because everybody follows the drummer. Having said that, listen to any song. Any song. You’ll realise that instruments that play in treble (eg. guitars) are accented by the snare drum, and low range instruments (eg. bass) are accented by the bass drum. So the guitar is played on the two, and the bass guitar is played on the one. And then, let’s remove the drums completely. All you would hear is the guitar on two and bass on one. So speaking from another perspective, it could also be the guitar and bass keeping time.

So if you want to tell me that I’m a bad time keeper, then you can fuck off. Especially other musicians who don’t play the drums. If you’re so fucking good at it, then why are you following me? Bitches.