Does a Good Musician Make a Good Band Mate?

Ego-trippers can be found in every corner of the world and, as musicians, maybe we’re the biggest offenders around (at least secretly… admit it). Launching into a nutty drum break or a show-boating guitar solo can sometimes feel irresistible – but while it might feel good, it might not actually work in your favour. Here, Guestblogger, drummer and founder of Let it Rock music school Jemy Gijsman explains why being a good musician doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a good band mate.

Sick Tricks

Everyone remembers that kid at school who was really good at football. Bump into them over the weekend and they’d always have a ball with them and, on request, could perform every sick trick in the bag. While all those artful tricks and feints were just as impressive on the field, shots on goal often didn’t hit the mark, making the whole performance feel a bit empty. If they had only learned to pass the ball as well, the school team might have come home with the win once in a while.

The Useless Musician

It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I made the step over from electronic music to pop and rock and quickly encountered the ‘ego-trippers’ that I thought I’d left far behind when I left school. I’d been drumming for this local band for a couple of weeks when our rhythm guitarist brought a new person along to rehearsal: a lead guitarist that’s still the most difficult person I’ve ever had to play with. Since we didn’t really have a lead guitarist in the line-up yet, I was really curious about what this guy could do. After fine-tuning his well-played Stratocaster he pulled out a short lick just to check the sound and, because the complexity of that short lick wasn’t lost on us, we were immediately excited. However, as it turned out – he only lasted one rehearsal. The moment I counted off, he launched into this full-on Satriani meets Hendrix thing. The hammer-ons, growls and runs never stopped and he never once looked up or interacted with the rest of the band. In fact, the only thing he didn’t do was set his guitar on fire. While he was an undeniably phenomenal guitarist, he was an utterly useless band member.

To provide a more recent example: in the same building where I run my music school, there are practice spaces that bands use to rehearse throughout the week. While I can always hear them playing from the room where I teach, it usually doesn’t bother me – with the exception of just one band. The drummer in this band plays in a style that’s so out of place with the overall sound that I just can’t ignore it. Really, to my ears, it’s like nails on a blackboard and I can’t shut it out. Just to be clear, I have never seen or met this band in person and I’ve never seen them play but I am 100% certain that it was the drummer that founded it. If that wasn’t the case, then that drummer would have been kicked out within an hour.

Does a Good Musician Make a Good Band Mate?

How Good Was Ringo Starr?

Because I’m a drummer myself, you’ll forgive me for limiting the rest of this blog to drummers. And, since I’m writing a blog about drummers, then it would be incomplete without at least mentioning the drummer from the best rock band of all time: Sir Richard Starkey AKA Ringo Starr. While Ringo has often served as the butt of many a joke, with a net worth of 300 million dollars, he’s still the most valuable drummer of all time. John Lennon was once asked if he thought Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world, to which he answered dryly: “He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles.”

While Ringo couldn’t be described as a technical drummer, during his time with The Beatles, he definitely had ingenuity. No Beatles song ever featured a beat that shouldn’t have been there – no snare or kick was ever out of place and there was never one too many. ‘Less is more’ was definitely his philosophy, which is clear on classics like Ticket to Ride, In My Life and Come Together, but there’s something else that makes Ringo so special. He’s left-handed but plays with a right-handed drum kit, which immediately made his drum patterns naturally unique, and also harder to pick up than they seem. Dave Grohl from Nirvana and Foo Fighters once said: “Without Ringo The Beatles wouldn’t have sounded like The Beatles, and if The Beatles hadn’t sounded like The Beatles, then we never would have heard of them.” And it’s true. If you think about how many Beatles songs you could name on hearing the drum track alone, it says everything you need to know about Ringo’s considerable contribution.

Does a Good Musician Make a Good Band Mate?

How Can You Be a Better Band Mate?

Not every good musician will be, by definition, a good band mate and not every good band mate will be able to bring the house down with their musical prowess. In every band, every member has a specific role, so applying a little self-control and sticking to that role is a sort of unspoken rule. You could even say that what you don’t play is actually more important than what you do play, and further from that, it’s worth remembering that as a band member it’s your job to always be working in service of the song. In that sense, you can recognise a good drummer because of their timing, their steady tempo and transitions and not because of their virtuosity.

Take a track like Billy Jean by Michael Jackson, which features one of the most iconic drum intros of all time and yet, it’s nothing more than a simple 8-count beat that repeats for the entire song. The only variations are a small fill on the pre-chorus and an even smaller fill on the chorus. The finishing touches that producer Quincy Jones added were nothing more than a drum machine shaker placed on the hi-hat from the third bar and a clap and snare on the chorus – the rest is history. So the beat itself has very little to it. It’s all about the feel of the beat. That’s what makes it so easy to recognise, even before the bass line drops. The Billy Jean drum beat (played by Ndugu Chancler who only recently passed away in 2018) is brilliant in its simplicity. The same can be said about the beat of Only Heart by John Mayer. It has a similar 8-count beat intro and, in the second bar, features an oh-so-sweet yet super-simple fill that brings in the rest of the band. Even despite the fact that the closing of the chorus almost begs for an accent, the beat just carries on unchanged, with the only variation being the addition of a crash on count four of the final bar. It’s really perfect as in, the song doesn’t need anything more.

Does a Good Musician Make a Good Band Mate?

In Practice

A few weeks ago I led a team-building workshop for 12 lab technicians from a medical research agency. I started the session by splitting everyone into two groups and gave both groups the task of studying and learning the chorus of Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars. The idea was that each group would then give a performance of the chorus as a band and the best performance would win. The designated drummer of group 1 had never even sat behind a drum kit before but had a feel for it, so I taught him a quick and simple ska beat (kick→hat→snare→hat→kick→hat etc.) and he picked it up really quickly. The drummer of group 2 was actually a really talented pianist that I had, by complete coincidence, seen perform a couple of times. He already knew his way around a drum kit and had a couple of fills up his sleeve but his timing left a lot to be desired. I had a short chat with the group 1’s drummer about this; told him not to be intimidated and showed him a way he could practise ‘dry’ by tapping out the beat on his thighs with his hands. I told him that, as long as he concentrated on playing that simple ska beat as tightly as possible, he was likely to play better than the drummer from group 2. Ultimately, that’s exactly what happened and the win went to group 1.

What do you consider the qualities that make a good band mate? Let us know in the comments!