(Just thinking out loud)

You know when I was much younger I found it pretty time consuming to sit down and do my home work and learn a cover tune… The secret to it all was to not play louder then what you were listening to then when you could not hear yourself any more you were right on I had a good band leader he always said we have to play it 95% right as a normal listener would not notice that other 5 %.... He no longer with us but i guess i put this up here as I was thinking about that person fun fun together we had and the hardest person to find back in the day believe it or not was a good drummer as there were so many of them ... But hard to get that right person ..

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Plus 1 for finding a good drummer - all good bands have a good drummer - without one you have no hope but with a good one you can be pretty raw and loose. The problem when I was young was that it tended to be the drummers that had somewhere to make a loud noise and/or transport... so we tended to end up with a rubbish drummer but at least we could "be a band".

I'd go further and say drummers who didn't arrive there via another instrument tend to be the worse and the best ones only took up drumming after being frustrated playing with un-musical drummers! Guitarists make the best drummers.

I'll probably be shot for that!

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much of my music learning was from a drummer and classmate. he knew I didn't know shit about time/measures but he explained it and demonstrated it so well in way that just helped me "feel" the music (on drums and guitar, dude could basically play anything). he's currently a high school band instructor now, which is no surprise, since he was so good and explaining music, and dude could play them skins... so cheers to the drummers out there!

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I am sorry to have to contradict you but I have been a drummer for fifty years who has played the drums for a lifetime and never picked up a guitar or any other instrument. you can say that for never having picked up another instrument I am among the worst but I would like to tell you that often it is not enough to buy an acoustic or electronic drums and start hitting the drums a lot is easy and intuitive: you just need to have a sense of rhythm. I don't think so, my friend. The drums are studied and if you want to play well you have to read and write the scores suitable for percussion, while I see many people around who know how to play other instruments well and then have to call the bartender downstairs to get the snare drum tuned. This is my thought aloud and I really hope I don't get shot for it. Best wishes, Ezio

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On Drummers: I've played in bands (college) with very good method drummers as well as self-taught drummers. Method drummers certainly can rock the house in efficient manners for scooting dancers and filling steins, but for jamming, the self-taught people ,to me, have much more interesting techniques. In regards to ezio's post that drummers must read and write music, I couldn't disagree more (as a non-reader). I've played with drummers who learned only 'by ear', folks who only play along in neighborhood jams and to their favorite records, very much favored memories in regards to those jams as opposed to commercial methods. Playing only 'by ear' develops an organic sense of time, crucial to jamming. Metronomes and scores certainly have their place, but for me, too much adaptation, process juggling, and extra tools.

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Sorry Michael ... just one question: do you really think anyone who plays to music can't play by ear? After hours and hours and days and days and months and months and years and years of practice, I believe that even playing by ear is definitely possible. Try doing the opposite my friend.

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I am not a drummer, but my take on any instrument is: you got to have talent for your instrument and dedication. You can study all you want music theory, if you haven't got the talent, then it's no good. And you can have a lot of talent but if you don't practice and develop it's not good either. And I am saying this as someone without a lot of talent, who used to practice 6 hours a day and still be crap at it 😂

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I have always played by ear don't know one note from another !B)

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I don't see the conflict. Sight reading, the ability to write scores and understanding of music theory in no way contradict ones ability to improvise, to play by ear and to be led by emotion.

Rather, i would think it's limiting when you can either play something only when you have the sheet music in front of you or you can't follow the score.

In my teens I had to study music theory, learn to play exactly according to script...and yet every teacher always took the time to let me play blind to understand and apply what I had learned.

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