ringo was the perfect drummer for the beatles--a tight, minimal style--no extra elements. it's not easy to play like that. try it, you'll see. and this regardless of the idiom--no extra notes requires *alot* of discipline--and no extra notes requires that you think in terms of the overall sound rather than in terms of self-assertion.
it's particularly difficult for younger players, i think--you know, the cats who play as if they believe that if the shut up at all, they will disappear and not be able to get back into this dimension. i remember seeing vernon reid play guitar with ronald shannon jackson's decoding society a long time ago...and he's a great guitarist--but during that gig, we WOULD NOT SHUT UP and was stepping all over everything because he WOULD NOT SHUT UP and that, folks, was not pretty. it didnt matter that he was doing very complex things technically. all that mattered was that he was stepping all over the band that night.
on the other hand, it was just that night. braxton is right about this: it's stupid to imagine that you understand a player as a whole from a performance, or any number of performances. this is even more true when you aren't talking about performances, but about records.
anyway....beyond a certain point, it seems to me that the main reason one focusses on chops is to enable you as much not to play things at certain moments as it is to enable you to play things at others.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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