Dave Weckl Workshop/Masterclass thoughts

[plainsman]

greetings all,

I'd just like to invite those of you who attended the workshop / masterclass and your thoughts on dave and what he shared.

I had prepared some questions beforehand, but improvised along the way if the question had been asked or he had answered it from a different angle.



one of the things I asked him was, is there an underlying theme in his drum journey? it could be a technical quality such as balance or symmetry, or a human quality such as freedom or truth.

I asked the same question to Marcus because I wanted to compare and contrast the differences.


Dave actually took about 15 minutes to explain, but he didn't really answer my question. He has a tendency to drift off, not in a bad way though. I think he's working through some stuff of his own mentally.

He did say, he's gone through different lifetimes in his drum journey, and that he's into his fifth lifetime right now.

The thing he said he was mainly striving for, is to stay HEALTHY. he said he done a number of stupid things as a young man, and thought that when he played well, he joked it might have been he had a good night's sleep or ate something right.

He said it was like that till the mid nineties, when he studied from freddie gruber and realised how important it is to have a natural body motion for everything one does on the drums.




He also said he has stopped picking up new stuff, he just works on maintenance.

I found that a little disappointing, for I thought how can a drummer stop learning and innovating as long as he lives and keeps on playing?



A few days later, I watched him with Mike Stern band.

Thats when it hit me. At the level he's at, maintenance is fine.


Just by the sheer number of permutations he's learned, the touch and dynamics he possesses. It doesn't matter if he doesn't learn one more thing for the rest of his life.

He's as close to a human metronome as I've ever seen.

For me, the dedication to metronomic pulse and number of permutations he's learned makes his accomplishments legendary in itself.


He was also one clever cat. He played a lot of stuffs he did not show at class.

He had mentioned modulation was not very useful and that he preferred displacement, yet he was modulating everywhere during performance.


Some bandleaders like drummers to play behind, others like them to be upfront. Some like the drummer to be always pushing, others like it metronomic or laid-back.

He always plays behind the music. I thought that was the prime difference between him and marcus.


I went away with many thoughts that I needed to sort out on my own.





Kindly do share your thoughts & experiences here as well.

cheers

 

[Radius_Vector]

Great write up. Thanks for sharing. Always wondered how Drum greats thought about, and approached their instruments

 

[evident]

I attended both workshops, not the masterclass. I learnt a lot more from Marcus than i did from Dave, actually. Personality-wise Baylor is definitely more humble and willing to share. Also personally Marcus Baylor and Gene Lake (i didn't get to see Jeff Ballard) were the only 2 drummers to wow me during the whole music festival (up till today). Dave Weckl is good but when he plays, somehow i can't really feel the music. He's definitely not what I call a groove drummer. But when I saw Marcus Baylor play, there was this expression and emotion that goes into every stroke and that's what really strike me the most.

I'm more of a groove drummer so to me Dave Weckl was pretty disappointing. Moreover his workshop was very much similar to the DVD and also it wasn't as interactive as Marcus Baylor's one. I think it's cuz everyone was "star-struck" by Dave Weckl that they didn't really ask a lot of questions. During Marcus Baylor's drum workshop, even though the questions were not specifically for drummers but they really engage the audience and explain what their music is all about, which i found much more helpful.

 

[BebopIggy]

Dave Weckl is good but when he plays, somehow i can't really feel the music.

That's one of the reason I've stopped listening to Weckl. Listen to people like Jeff Hamilton, Roy Haynes, Peter Erskine..... These people play from their heart....

 

[Anatomyofadrumsolo]

To me, the person who has the best interpretation and feel for songs is none other then Steve Gadd.

Yes, its true his technicalities cannot be compared to the likes of Weckl or Pert. But none will ever be able to play like Gadd.

 

[weckl-x]

Weckl was one of the first drummers that really caught my attention when I was primarily a guitarist. His work with Chick Corea especially - funky with loads of flair. Of course, after more exploration I discovered Gadd, Porcaro, Purdie, and so many others. No one drummer is perfect (except maybe Steve Godd... heh), take what we can learn and keep moving on

Thanks for sharing, Plainsman.

 

[alvinthedrummer]

It all boils down to one thing really....playing the style. I think comparing baylor, hamilton, erskine to weckl is as good as comparing questlove, steve jordan, clyde to mike clarke, garibaldi, latham....clearly different sounding drummers within almost similar family of genre...

You can't expect baylor to play like baylor (as in yellow jackets) in a Tom Kennedy jazz fusion composition for example. If you study in depth the various styles you'll understand why people like Dave Weckl, Andrew Gander, Zach Danzinger plays the way the play in the modern jazz fusion context. Who are we to say they are not playing from their heart or they have no feel if they are playing in the style of their music. I think the comments so far are really more about individual musical style preference more than a comparison of drummers.

As for the term groove drummer....how can we say weckl's groove is not as groovy as baylors? Its just clearly different. Weckl's music calls for the extreme in accuracy and precision in subdivisions etc while yellow jacket's music needed the "swinging" touch from their drummer...both drummers delivered exactly what was needed of their music and in my opinion, both their grooves are tight as hell. Again, this comment is more like a music style preference....comparing drummers this way is almost like comparing green apples to red apples...

 

[bklk]

good thought alf... =-) the whole idea is to find your style.. find what works for you and strive on it. minor tweaking can be done here and there. but ultimatlely...you have to find YOUR style. when i say style i dont mean genre of music, i mean how you play, not what you play.

there shant be any rules to it.

thee is a wide spectrum of do's and dont's explore the dont's and you might find link to help improve on the "do's"

dave said : he has stopped picking up new stuff, he just works on maintenance.

i guess thats what he means. to my interpretation.

and most importantly "push your own capabilities" ADIDAS said it right when it said "impossible is nothing"

a lot of things we do on drums links to another spectrum on drums that we never would have thought is possible for any of us to attain.

have a good one dude. \W/

 

[alvinthedrummer]

I attended both masterclasses (weckl & baylor). Although both are clearly very different in style and personality, both had one thing in common. Both believed in first studying and understanding as many genre of music as possible, especially the history of them all; in order to have a strong foundation for your own "style" to build on. Its true that there shouldn't be any rules in our own personal creative realm and its good to have that pointed out.

But my thoughts for the younger drummers:-

Although within your personal creative realm, there should be no rules per say, there should be a clear understanding of the genre you are working on before developing your personal "style" for it. A simple example why certain "rules" (for here I mean musical stylistic "structure") cannot be really broken:-

If you are playing a partido alto, there is a basic underlying rhythm that is so specific to the style that if broken or over embellished, could end up sounding like another musical style and affecting the entire musical composition. However, within your own creative realm, you could probably come up with various ideas to spread the underlying rhythm over various voices on your instrument etc. (just like how the clave is broken up and spreaded over various voices on the kit in a songo etc.)

The examples can go on and on but ultimately, a clear understanding of the fundamentals are super important. Before Weckl became Weckl, he would have studied most fundamentals that leads to his current preferred genre (and more). He has definitely innovated but it is also quite clear that most of it was innovated within his preferred genres.

Or take Vinnie as another example. He has almost done it all, big band jazz, small jazz band, modern jazz, latin, rock, pop and even metal etc...he has a very distinctive sound but within that, he still stays authentic to the various genres he plays in. But that doesn't mean he has no personal style while playing the various musical styles.

Or take Max Roach, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Tony Williams for example....all have very distinctive sound (like what baylor said, you can tell who is who by just the way they play the ride cymbal). All have innovated and broken rules...but all still kept the essence of the genre.

As for my thoughts for the masterclasses, I just thought it could've been opened up to all and the CV thingy could've been done away with so that everyone can benefit from them.