The Impact of the Internet on Drumming

[deseipel]

I've been thinking recently about the impact of the Internet ( as a resource/tool) on drumming in terms of positive/negative. I've been playing for 20 yrs now and part of the reason I'm thinking about this is purely from a retrospective sort of thing. Having some perspective on a time before the Internet, it's interesting to wonder if this technology is genuinely a good thing or a bad thing for us all. At first glance, the positive would seem to greatly outweigh the negative.

Let's look at the positive:
- access to a virtually unlimited supply of new music via audio or video
- access to audio or video such as clinics or live recordings (if you know where to look)
- the ability to take distance learning lessons via skype or some variant.
- the ability to have a virtual jam session via some proprietary software services (with the right equipment)
- access to social media, discussions, forums to enhance one's learning and meet new musicians = created opportunities.

All of these are what I'd call short-term benefits (most of them). This means you get what you want, right now, instantly. No waiting. Again, largely satisfying.


And the negative:

- Quality: the information is largely unfiltered. 'Everyone or anyone can be an expert'.
- Quantity: the amount of information out there is staggering. Staggering.
- Entitlement syndrome: the expectation of 'I want it now, streaming; at home on my ipod for free'. This is the worst one. The value of things depreciate. Ubiquitous information becomes disposable information. Throw aways.

What occurs to me, is that these two things (which there are surely more) have what I'd classify as a very large negative impact. And this is long term damage. I think about information (drumming skills) as a collective intelligence. I'm not going to get into the socioeconomic effect of the 'dumbing down of society', but thats what I'm getting at. The connected-ness of today's society is killing the individuality of musicians on a personal and local level. I realize it's not just the Internet, but for the sake of this thread I won't go into radio or TV either.

The point is, the lines of individuality are blurring. The Chicago sound or Kansas City sound are largely dead. I still hear the difference between NY & LA, but it's subtle.

So who cares, right? Well, the main point is that if you really want to sound original, take Gaddabout's advice and find a woodshed and do it the old fashioned way: a book, a drumset and a metronome. The Internet will probably only show you the newest 'extreme' drumming video and it will set the wrong expectations. So, 'go get some' and don't post it on youtube.

[YamahaPlayer]

I would honestly say None.

It just is. It may have allowed a visibility level to increase; IE all the kids on youtube, etc... but they were there before, just now daddy can film it and put it on the web.


Technology however has changed a LOT.

[john lamb]

The free flow of information is not a bad thing. People having access to songs is great for music.

Its true that 'anyone' can be an expert. But there is a really big upside to this. Losing control of the distribution of our ideas doesn't help, but its not like we ever actually had any real control over it to begin with. It used to be that unless the experts (read, the majors thought they could make some coin) like you, you didn't have a chance to be heard. The big labels siphon off most of the money. Eminem gets $0.12 from every song sold on friggin' iTunes. And he's got a better contract than most.


We've *always* been screwed when it comes to $$ and its no different now, The difference now isn't all because of the internet. The decline of the value of music has been going on for a long time - Its mostly, imho, because (1) musicians want to play music and businesses are more savvy and (2) there are way more way talented musicians than ever before (3) Musicians are able to travel around and play at more venues, further increasing the competition therein.

[Gaddabout]

I'm grateful for the Internet for the singular reason that I've been exposed to a much bigger world. My concept of good drumming has been expanded and my bias towards American drummers has been knocked to hell -- for the very best of reasons. All of this information and exposure has humbled me to an immense degree. That's a good thing.

I've been working with a 17-year-old a bit and it's always amazing to me how much bigger he sees the world than I did at his age. He's not insulated in his own tiny little genre. He tends to like a lot of the drummers most kids do at his age and he's not old enough yet to hear nuance -- he's still just as fascinated by notes and chops like I was at 17 -- but he's so much more aware of so many different kinds of drummers than I ever was. He will never suffer for a decade with an obsession over one drummer like me. LOL

I think John's point is a valid one, too. With so many drummers exposed to what used to be the locked up secrets of advanced drumming, we have inevitably raised the bar for the next generation and the competition will be immense. Perhaps we've come to the point where so many drummers are no capable of so many similar things that it floods the market and reduces the value of drumming in general. That's a scary thought if you play music for a living. But I also wonder if we aren't in the middle of a major culture shift in music, anyway, where killing the corporate side of things has become a necessity for our own sanity of not for our own financial health. The days of bidding wars for musical acts are on the decline and musicians will have to hustle and adapt if they want to continue to be paid to do what they love to do.

[YamahaPlayer]

Slim gets 12% ?! That ain't bad at all. Considering it wasn't that long ago if you got a "good" deal you were looking at 3 or 4 points per ALBUM sale. 12 cents out of every dollar is a GREAT deal. But of course...


Technology has definitely put musicians out of business. There's just no doubt about it. Any ol fool can turn out a decent demo with a computer and some software.

The days of the session guys are long past, not that it wasn't a good ol boy business before, but it sure as hell is now, with far less work available. I do a ton of programming (drum parts), it's faster, easier and cheaper. And nobody can tell the difference. Or is there a difference even between laying down an actual drum part and having it quantized, remapped, spliced, reordered, etc?

Heck look at DJ's these days even. They don't haul boxes of Vinyl around, just a laptop and some nifty tables that interface with the computer. I was checking out one guys rig, it's no wonder. It categorized the music by BPM, type, had beat mapping built in so he doesn't even have to scratch in time, etc... etc... etc...

Live music is the only venue left where a musician worth his salt can actually prove the point. Otherwise, nobody in the world can tell the difference between a decently programmed drum part and a drum part that was live recorded and digitally altered. Heck, I doubt few in the world could even tell that brand of cymbals, drums, etc is being used on a given recording.
It's only a matter of time til there is a plugin that translates "feel" into digital noise parameters, being able to give a particular drum groove the "Gadd Feel" or "Vinnie Feel", etc


Like Gaddabout said, you definitely have the world opening up to everyone. But I disagree about any "secrets" being relieved unless the secret is "Work your ass off".
There isn't anything that has changed the fact that, if you want clean doubles, you must practice clean doubles.

There is also a side note - Drum Set is VERY new. So is electrified instruments for that matter. So everything is going through a process of changed just because of that alone.

[Gaddabout]

Like Gaddabout said, you definitely have the world opening up to everyone. But I disagree about any "secrets" being relieved unless the secret is "Work your ass off".
There isn't anything that has changed the fact that, if you want clean doubles, you must practice clean doubles.

I get what you're saying, but just in my ten years on this message board, I've learned more about Vinnie and Tony than I did in the previous 20 years of just listening to them. From something as direct as the blushda to something as conceptual as metric modulations ... these are not things that my instructors knew much about and I was never exposed to them. I just knew Vinnie and Tony were incredible drummers who did things that were a total mystery to me. In 10 years here the mystery has been largely deconstructed. People keep saying they want a Vinnie instructional video, but we've more or less done it ourselves for him right here! Just think about Steve's videos, TerryB's transcriptions, and all the bootleg footage we have time to consume.

That's what I meant about drumming secrets. There's an intensely high level of knowledge previously only available to elite students in Boston or New York or LA, and it's being given away for free if you can find it.

[YamahaPlayer]

Oh that is totally true. Absolutely true.

But of course, look how few, respectively speaking, even browse the forum let alone post?

[Gaddabout]

Oh that is totally true. Absolutely true.

But of course, look how few, respectively speaking, even browse the forum let alone post?

This isn't the only repository of knowledge, it's just the one we're all aware of. I think the kind of high-minded nuance we discuss here will always be reserved for a minority with the strange curiosity to keep climbing this mountain. If you have 100 experienced drummers in the room, 95 of them stopped caring about continuing their education at an intermediate stage because they were able to accomplish what they set out to do -- make people dance, play music they liked, etc. We're the 5 percent that were never satisfied with the status quo. But I think the Internet expands that minority quite a bit simply because this stuff is so prevalent now.

I've watched the gospel chops drummers become an Internet phenomenon. Every young drummer with an Internet connection knows about them. That's a style that started entirely in an oral and informal tradition, but with YouTube, it's becoming a very formalized genre. Add in a wildcard like Thomas Pridgen, who incorporates a lot of Chambers and Vinnie into his playing, and the style starts to lose some of its distinction. Live hip hop drumming has forever been altered because of it -- they often end up sounding like 70s fusion gigs without the odd meter.

I believe the Internet is consolidating a lot of proprietary knowledge. Stuff we've considered privileged information is becoming institutionalized. In the near future I think we'll begin to see young drummers who seamlessly move between diverse genres, like say rock and drum-n-bass, whereas in the past each genre was left to the exclusion of specialists ... it's the age of the generalist.

[robhaerr]

For me, the impact is HUGE!!!

I can search out the quality....and the players I want to learn from by watching.

My playing has improved by being able to access this great info.

Wish I had the availability when I was younger...I am 53...so this internet is still a relatively new thing to me...even though I have been on it since it's beginning.

Hell...even the advent of drumming videos on VHS tape was HUGE to me when they first came out in the 80s.

This video alone is HUGE...by Mr Holmes that he posted yesterday...see if you spot the blushda...


...if it wasn't for the internet...I wouldn't know what a blushda is...

[deseipel]

Isn't anyone concerned about the 'Idiocracy' effect of the Internet on drumming?

For those not familiar, Idiocracy is a great and funny movie in which the future is depicted as a world run by a bunch of idiots (literally). idiots take over the world because the intelligent were phased out of existence because, simply put: stupid people had more sex and more kids. NOT what this thread is about.

This theory holds that the collective knowledge of the group becomes the 'bar' or standard. This begs the question: with the Internet, is the bar being raised by the mass distribution of pro material (audio, video ,etc) OR is the flux of amatuer and stupid 'experts' actually dumbing down the standard of excellence.