Does anyone feel they can't play with oth

I usually jam with a drummer that ive been friends with for a while and a horn/syth player that knows whats going on and really charismatic guitar player. its easy for us to make music....but if go outside that realm....i pretty much have to play what THEY want to play.

i completely agree with u SA, nice word!

Lost Chord, it sounds to me like you don't want to play with a band, you want a band to play for you. That's fine, but you have to make sure the other players all know it, and most of the time you'll have to pay them. You can't just dictate to other musicians how to play if you're not clearly the leader of the group.
Also keep in mind that some of the best bands in history came from very different musical backgrounds and it was because of that that they were able to create something unique and wonderful.

rileydog22 wrote: Drumming has actually become a highly specialized thing.  Many are only good at one style.  You have fusion drummers, prog drummers, pop drummers, punk drummers, metal drummers, etc., and they often don't cross styles very well.

That's pretty sad, but true in a way.  While it seems that any drummer worth their salt is familiar (on one level or another) with drumming styles/techniques outside their "preferred" genre, very few drummers will actually play something other than what they're into-- unless it pays, of course!  

On a somewhat related note, I can't help but notice that two genres which were originally notable for their flexibility and assimilation of disparate stylistic and musical characteristics-- Prog and Fusion-- have crystallized into their own little spheres, each with its fairly rigid conventions and expectations...

Sasquamo wrote: Certif1ed wrote: Sasquamo wrote: But they are still both rock.  A drum beat that works in stereotypical rock will most likely work in prog too.  It's not as if a rock drummer is jamming with a jazz band, where the way everything is played is entirely differently.   That's a very broad generalisation - and in fact, I would posit that the opposite generalisation is true - Prog Rock is notable for NOT utilising basic rock beats, and, in the best prog, the drummer has to interact more closely with the musicians as a jazz drummer would. Phil Collins, Barriemore Barlowe, Robert Wyatt, Pierre Moerlen and Pip Pyle spring to mind.     Prog Rock is reasonably close to jazz in principle, hence the fusion/prog crossovers. Since Prog Rock rarely usese 4/4, it is highly unlikely that a drum beat that works in "normal" rock will work in Prog - I thought that much was obvious to any Prog fan. Prog uses 4/4 a great deal, and while prog drummers might listen and interact "like" jazz, playing rock is still a lot different than playing jazz.

StarsongAgeless wrote: Morbix - I know what you mean... but I wouldn't exactly call Incubus, Underoath and Slipknot bad music... there's certainly a lot of music out there that's less complex and interesting.  For example... the dreaded boy-bands. :)

Those words sting my nose and throat like ammonia.  But the point is that yeah, I went a little overboard. It's not so much the music (hell, Jordy Jordison is a psycho drummer), but the people that listen to it. It just seems like if you can't express any emotion but anger, it just feels like they're a little locked up and alienate themselves except for other miserable people.  Gets to you after a while.

Sasquamo wrote: But they are still both rock.  A drum beat that works in stereotypical rock will most likely work in prog too.  It's not as if a rock drummer is jamming with a jazz band, where the way everything is played is entirely differently.

Drumming has actually become a highly specialized thing.  Many are only good at one style.  You have fusion drummers, prog drummers, pop drummers, punk drummers, metal drummers, etc., and they often don't cross styles very well. 

Sasquamo wrote: Getting someone that's into "normal" rock to play prog doesn't seem like it would be that much of a stretch.  If you think about it, prog's not that much different, it's not like you're asking them to play a completely different style from what they're comfortable with.

Sasquamo, it may not seem like it, but the problem is often someone who likes mainstream music doesn't like what they hear when they hear prog... so asking them to play something that's progressive or even just prog-related can be like pulling teeth.  They try to change it to make it sound "better" in their opinion, which means making it sound like mainstream rock.  So the band either loses one member or the other, or at least one member is unhappy with the music.

Morbix - I know what you mean... but I wouldn't exactly call Incubus, Underoath and Slipknot bad music... there's certainly a lot of music out there that's less complex and interesting.  For example... the dreaded boy-bands. :)

Actually, avoiding ordinary, boring drummers is part of the reason why I don't listen to a lot of non-progressive rock.  I can't stand it when a drummer is just slamming on his snare drum every beat, or every other beat... or... even worse... every 1/2 or 1/4 beat.  Aaargh!  The sound cuts right through me.  I enjoy complex drumbeats that accentuate the song rather than just keep time.

This is why I actually loved the drummer from my band that I was talking about earlier.  He almost never played a straight rock beat - he took his cues from the music.  But if the time signature wasn't 4/4 he had trouble, and he didn't like time signature changes, tempo changes, or long songs.  The reason that didn't work therefore was because he didn't like what I was doing, not because I thought what he was doing was bad (I actually thought he grew to be quite an excellent drummer... as long as he was in 4/4). ;)


Edited by StarsongAgeless - May 01 2007 at 13:46

Sasquamo wrote: But they are still both rock.  A drum beat that works in stereotypical rock will most likely work in prog too.  It's not as if a rock drummer is jamming with a jazz band, where the way everything is played is entirely differently.

Edited by Certif1ed - May 01 2007 at 06:47

I was lucky enough to find a drummer who is really into prog and a keyboardist who is a big Yes fan who I can almost definately convert to a full-fledged prog fan.