Drummers from every style of music have been interviewed in this magazine, and while they might express widely different philosophies or advocate various techniques of playing, they all seem to agree on one thing: the importance of keeping good time. Bandleaders and bass players have also been quoted as saying that good timekeeping is their number one requirement in a drummer. For a show drummer it is important; for a club drummer in a dance band, it is critical. I define good time as the ability to control the consistency of the tempo within a song; either to keep it rock solid (against the tendency of a soloist to rush or drag, for example) or to engineer deliberate shifts in the tempo in order to achieve an intentional effect. But having the best time in the world won’t help if the group has difficulty establishing the correct initial tempo for […]

January 1983 Issue