Even though being a musician and being a drummer are not at odds, plenty of people think they are. If you'll allow me, I'll run through the questions I'm asked most often at my clinics, which, given how often they come up, I think are the ones that worry drummers the most. But first I'll tell you what being a musician means to me. And so that everything is spelled out, I'll interview myself.
What do you think it means to be, or to feel like, a musician?
I've sometimes imagined how the very first musician on earth came about. I think it may have been a singer, because the voice is the instrument nature built into our bodies. We communicate with our voices and express our emotions through them. But right after that, rhythm must have emerged spontaneously, since the sense of space and time is also with us from the day we're born. I suppose the first musician tried to imitate some sound, and chanting appeared. The voice expresses what human beings feel by way of their ability to create melodies. It's a pleasurable release that also spreads to whoever hears it. The voice, together with rhythm, would have been the first thing the musician used to express emotions through sounds and beats. Even today, there are primitive cultures on the planet whose only musical instruments are the voice and percussion. After that, I think we can easily say what a musician is: a person who can convey their feelings through an instrument. So if someone conveys and expresses something when they play, whatever instrument they choose, they're a musician.
How do you convey something through an instrument?
That would be the logical question after the last one. For me it's essential to feel passion for music and for the instrument you choose. Passion is the force that makes you fight and progress along the way. It's the driving energy for reaching goals: passion and emotion. When you play, you have to feel that emotion, which is nothing more than loving what you do. Everybody needs to work, but very few people love their job. In music it's essential that you enjoy the act of playing, that you don't care about the hours or the effort, because playing is already an incentive that makes you happy. In short: to convey something when you play, you need to feel that passion and emotion every time you sit down behind the drums or any other instrument.
Is technique important? How much time should you devote to practice?
Technique is important so you can “speak,” because music is a language. Mastering the instrument is a necessity, especially at the beginning. A musician's first stage is the most delicate. I think that's where we need outside help, meaning schools or teachers, to acquire a good foundation so we can grow without lacking the fundamentals. The foundations of everything must be solid so that everything is built on them in the same way. At the beginning you should devote a lot of time to studying the instrument to get to know it and master it. Once you've done that, I think we enter another point in the musician's evolution, which is the search for your own personality. If we think the essence of the musician is to express, we enter another world, perhaps harder than acquiring good technique. It's about being yourself, so that people recognize you when you play. But if from the very first moment we're honest about choosing our instrument, if we love what we do and give ourselves over to it with passion when we play, all we need is time to become ourselves when we play. Practice never stops; what changes is the content. For me, practice is about staying in touch with my drums and not losing the sense of freedom I need to express what I want. This practice isn't just about studying technical concepts, but also about finding motivation, concentration and relaxation when I play. How many hours you put in depends on the individual. What matters is that you feel comfortable with the instrument and do whatever you enjoy most on it. If problems come up when you play, technical or not, your practice should be about solving them. Sometimes you may have a personal block that keeps you from playing freely. In that case your practice would be to fix that block, not to keep playing more or less difficult technical exercises in the rehearsal room. Hang-ups and problems of that kind aren't solved from the instrument, but from within ourselves.
Can a musician be good if they lack technique?
Drummers who are a bit “lazy” usually ask me this one. I tend to answer it the other way around: there are musicians with excellent technique who nonetheless convey nothing when they play. They may not be geniuses, but they can be good professionals and make an honest living in music. I also have to say that some people are born with the gift of communicating, and whatever they do, whether they study a lot of technique or not, they will always be worthy of admiration. Perhaps they give the impression that everything is easy and no sacrifice is needed, but the vast majority of us have to work hard to reach our goals, technical or otherwise. We all know drummers who can talk through the instrument and have very good technique, and others who manage it too with a less sophisticated technique. I think it's clear that the difference between being a musician or not doesn't lie in being more or less technical, but in how much you convey when you play.
Why do we feel we have to prove we're good when we play?
It's true that it's a very common hang-up. When we get on stage, we believe everyone is watching what we're playing. All the more so if colleagues from the trade come to see us. Egos tend to come out in any situation, and on stage especially; just ask actors. I think the problem starts with how we approach music. These days, we're sold the competitive image of the hyper-prepared musician who plays a ton and blows everybody away, whether audience, friends or enemies. What I mean is that if that's your idea of being a musician, it may be far from the definition we gave at the start. Some people are competitive by nature, and up to a point that can be motivating, but from my point of view you don't need to be better than anyone or beat everybody, because in music you can only win against yourself, by managing to enjoy every day you play and wanting to hold on to the feeling of freedom you get from being exactly who you are and expressing it fearlessly behind your drums. If you achieve that, you can consider yourself a winner, and you can keep that moment to get the spark you need each time. That is much harder to achieve than impressing folks with technical showboating that ultimately doesn't make you as happy.
Is it good to learn a second instrument?
Of course it is. We sit at the back of the band, and as drummers we have to leave space so the other instruments feel comfortable. Knowing about the others will help you understand better what they expect from us. It's not just that learning a second instrument is good for us; I think it's good to broaden our “hobbies” too. People have this image of the drummer as someone who spends all day banging on things and, when he isn't, thinking about picking up girls. If we widen our range of interests and feed ourselves with other things, all of that turns into richness that comes out in the way we play. Watching a movie, seeing a play, reading a book, traveling and so on are just as important as going to a concert or having a few “brews” at the rehearsal room. The richer your life is, the more you'll have to say when you play.
What does it mean to be musical?
I think that for some drummers, musicality means knowing other instruments or, perhaps, having listened to a lot of music and knowing every band and artist in history. For me it's something else. Being musical is as simple as getting inside the music you play and letting yourself be carried along and interpret it from there. You need to listen to all the other instruments in the band and, above all, to the melody. If we don't know how to listen, we can hardly be musical. Musicality can be acquired, but not as just another technique; rather as an ability we develop from where we sit. For a drummer, it depends on our attitude toward the rest of the band when we play. You have to open your ears and give the music what it needs. You should think about the result, not about your instrument as something individual. You're in a band, and the “whole” is what matters. The more you care about the overall result, the more musical you become.
Which drum brand is your favorite, setting aside the ones you endorse?
Since I started, quite a few brands have passed through my hands. If I asked you which of all the girlfriends you've had is your favorite, what would you say? The latest one, I guess. I'll be honest with you: any drum kit that lets me get the sound I like with ease can be my favorite. Every brand has models that can get you to that goal, that is, to finding your sound.
So, is any drum kit good?
Any drum kit is good if it lets you get the sound you like. The difficulty is closer to the musician than to the instrument itself. You can tune your kit any way you please and end up sounding great or sounding disastrous; it all depends on the musician and his experience. The search for sound is a long, individual road. Every drum kit looks for the sound it carries inside, and if it's going to bring that sound out, it needs time to experiment and to get to know the instrument and itself. Only after many years do you learn which sound suits you best and helps you express yourself naturally. Knowing your sound is knowing yourself.
Are styles important for getting a sound on the drums?
Obviously a particular style makes your tuning different. In my case, I've played everything and have learned to move comfortably between different tunings. In the studio, for example, being versatile with sound has served me very well. Sometimes producers ask for a certain sound and you have to know how to get it out of your kit. That means that when you play, you'll have to feel comfortable and change the way you play. You don't play the same with a very high tuning and lots of overtones as you do with a very low, muted one. This ability to transform is highly valued in the studio.
Which do you like playing more, live or in the studio?
I like playing in both situations. They're quite different, and they require different approaches from the musician. The hardest thing about the studio is feeling relaxed and motivated, with the emotion you get so easily live. In the studio you feel inhibited because everything is colder. There's no audience, and you're doing it for an audience that isn't there. Playing separated from your bandmates, you don't feel their support the way you do live. It's easier for me to get motivated live, but once you learn the rules of the studio and relax, the possibilities it offers are many and very interesting.
How do you learn the material?
On tours I usually write up charts for rehearsals. My charts are very simple. They usually have the sections and the ideas for playing them. Then, in rehearsals, I make a few tweaks, and once the tour starts, I naturally keep refining the ideas as the band settles in. On many tours I start out playing some songs one way and end up changing them over time because they don't work the way I want. Ideas and suggestions can also come from my bandmates. When it's studio work, sometimes they give me demos of what I'm going to record, and then I prepare my charts and, as on tour, jot down some ideas. Generally I go in blind, with no reference. In both cases everything gets defined once we're there, by the whole team: the musician, the recording engineer and, above all, the producer.
If you played another instrument, what would you ask of your band's drummer?
The drummer in a band is like the engine of a car. Everything depends on him to keep it running and to keep the music relaxed. A mediocre drummer can sink the group, and vice versa, a good drummer can save a mediocre band. If I were a singer, or a guitarist, or a pianist (I won't say bassist, because that's the instrument we feel closest to), I'd ask for simplicity, solidity and space. I'd need to feel comfortable, without having to worry about the tempo, or the groove, or how much energy to give the parts of the arrangement. From the drums we can let the others play the way they want and only worry about contributing what their instrument is supposed to do. Everything has to move along perfectly, with energy, with space and with dynamics. The drummer has to clearly deliver this from his seat. Once in a while, just for fun, I've played guitar at a rehearsal or soundcheck, and I always turn toward the guy who sat down at my kit, and I feel all those needs I'm telling you about, and I admit they're hugely important to the result of the whole group.
I could keep adding questions, the ones you put to me, and we could go on talking about this instrument for pages and pages. Music is my life. I'm a drummer, and that means belonging to a very special caste, for better and for worse. But I want you to know that you can't be a good drummer if you don't feel like a musician inside and out.
Best wishes to all.
Pedro.
