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Chops! What To Do With Them!

by Ray Von Rotz

Everybody wants them. Some players practicing incessantly to get them. Some can't have them no matter how hard they try. Some just have them and nothing else! Some don't know when not to use them. What I'm talking about are chops....pure technique...being able to manipulate a pair of sticks, or foot pedals good enough to express yourself musically. The question is once you get them, what do you do with them? We've all heard drummers who play everything they know all the time! What's the fun in having chops if you can't use them and show them off? That's what you practiced for. You'd like recognition for your technical achievement! The problem is most popular music does not require a lot of technique to perform it. So what you have is someone driving around in a Ferrari, but the speed limit is 30 mph! What a bummer! Some guys just can't handle it, but this is where you separate the drummers from the musicians! Here are some thoughts that might help redirect your technical focus.

The natural emphasis on technique comes from the desire to be the best, to win. It's almost an athletic goal. There have always been drum battles between great players such as Krupa and Rich, or Rich vs. Roach. There have always been drum competitions for school kids who compete for medals or scholarships, and much or all of these are based on how much technique one has. You now have Extreme Drumming competitions where competitors play on a pad with a drumometer attached that tells how many beats per minute a person hits the pad doing single and double strokes. I believe the world record is now up in the 1100 beats per minute range. That's pretty impressive! All of this is fun. I enjoy watching someone with great chops. Unfortunately, when someone spends so much time and effort in developing their technique to a high level, the natural impulse is to use it, and that's where the trouble starts!

I just heard the late Artie Shaw do an interview. He said he was talking with Benny Goodman and he told Benny that both of them played the clarinet. The difference was that while Goodman just played the instrument while Shaw used it to make music. Shaw said he thought he saw a light click on in Goodman and his playing was subtly changed after that. To Goodman, the clarinet was the end, but to Shaw, he thought of the clarinet as a means to an end! What a statement, and what a concept! Both of these musicians were great performers. Both had technical virtuosity on their instruments, but many people arguably rate Shaw's playing a little higher than Goodman's. He used his technique as the tool to create music within the band, not just to show off his own playing.

Transfer this thought to the drum set. If you start thinking of the drums as the means to and end..which is making music with the band and not on your own..you shift your focus from WHAT you can play to HOW and WHEN you use it. You need to listen to the other musicians and interact! Now there are some styles of music which require a certain amount of technique. Rock, jazz, and Latin are usually more technically demanding. Playing technically demanding stuff is challenging and fun, and if it's not fun, why do it? Not every-one is cut out to play country songs, theater shows, and society gigs, and there's nothing wrong with that! If you won't have fun playing music without using your technique, then stick to a form of music that will need it, but even in those styles, groove is essential, so be cognizant of that. The drummer is the glue that holds everything together. If all you're doing is playing for yourself, the band and the music will drift apart and you'll wind up with an acoustic mess!

And there is more to technique than just blazing hand and foot speed. Using all four limbs in various combinations is a technique of it's own, and many of these are subtle which can be used to enhance the groove. Steve Gadd's groove on "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" comes to mind. And playing a simple groove in perfect time is another technical challenge. The great Larry Londin used to say in his clinics, "It's hard to play nothing for 3 minutes!" Playing a song straight and simple and finding the one spot in that song to put the perfect fill is a technique of it's own, not so much physical as mental. Kicking a big band is a technique. Reading charts and making it sound good is a technique.

Like it or not, most of the music people listen to today is pretty simple. It's all groove with a simple fill slipped in here and there. If you're only into chops, then this is going to be very boring for you. If however you want to use the drums to make music, (and have a better shot at making a living) then you'll use that technique when it's needed. I often tell drummers that move to Nashville that the quickest and best way to meet people in this town and get some work is to sit in with groups wherever and whenever you can, and when you do, the worst thing you can do is show off your chops! Just play the deepest, most solid groove you can. If it's a country group, the music is 95% groove. Use those chops to play a solid, musical fill here and there. The established players here are suitably impressed with chops, but they won't be calling you for gigs unless your groove is there, and at least in that style of music, too many fancy fills can destroy a song!

Don't just play your instrument. Make music with your instrument. You'll get just as much satisfaction when someone compliments you on your time, musicality, taste, or reading abilities as you would when they compliment your chops. Make them a means to the end. Use them wisely.

For 25 years, Ray Von Rotz has been performing and recording with a wide variety of groups and artists out of Nashville, TN. They include Boots Randolph, The Mills Brothers, Englebert Humperdink, Al Hirt, The Jack Daniels Silver Cornet Band, The Grand Ole Opry, shows at the Opryland theme park, the General Jackson, various Broadway shows, the Nashville symphony, and a wide variety of casual and club dates. He is presently performing with 2 different shows on the General Jackson Showboat.