Playing in the Crease

          This explanation is kind of long winded and takes the long way around to get to the point so stick

(pun intended) with it! It is necessary to understand how to play authentic American drum set grooves. There is a very special drum set time keeping feel. All the great drummers have it whether they play jazz or rock, blues or funk, etc. Just about every classic American hit with a drum set track has a touch of it to some degree,  but as music became more and more heavily produced which is to say, playing with a click track, dubbing, punching in and out, and various recording studio tricks designed to tighten up the time, music became more mechanical .We can all easily identify a pure undoctored  drum machine rhythm track just because it is so flawless and inhuman. A lot of this engineered approach had some advantages because the musicians were not playing together, due to overdubbing anymore and the natural give and take which   kept things cohesive wasn’t there. The solution was to develop a kind of engineered lockstep within which very little timing deviation was allowed. These days much tightening up of the time  is done in post production. There are some amazing recordings of performance/engineering done these days and the engineer is really another player except he is working on all the notes up to one at a time for timing placement, pitch, tone, dynamics and balance.  It is not unusual to spend hours planning, recording, mixing and mastering what ends up a three minute tune. It is an art in itself and I have enjoyed many hours engaged in this kind of musical creation.

Let me illustrate. I think Donald Fagen  and Walter Becker of Steely Dan   hold the record for hyper engineered recording. One album Gaucho, has 42   musicians,  11 engineers with 46 takes ( by Jeff Pocaro, RIP) just to get one  drum track right on one tune or at least be what they wanted. Kudos!

Why am I describing all these technical productions details when the fact of the matter is the best way to learn to play is to play with other musicians (at the same time).  Certainly learn as many tunes by as many great songwriters as you can, and play them a lot.  Music is a language and just like any other language and  its purpose is to communicate and that takes at least two people. I don’t doubt that all the players that contributed to Steely Dan did  much playing with others musicians  at sometime in their development otherwise   they would not have been able to zero in on the right notes in the studio.  When musicians play together in any of the great American music traditions, Jazz, Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Rock, Funk, etc. and especially where the drummer has to groove, the magic feel is sometimes known as the   “Crease.” or Second Line   Drumming. In a New Orleans funeral parade the first line is the dead guy. The 2^nd Line  are the musicians.  The  Second Line Beat  is  used to describe a way of playing with the timing of a song and  originally from New Orleans where the drum set was born. This feel is really global and ancient, but we are examining  drum set performance.  Many great drummers latch on to the “Crease”   intuitively without thinking about it, just by listening and playing.  If you gig in New Orleans and you can’t do it, you aren’t going get too many gigs, actually none. After all   the drum set was born in New Orleans as I said.  It is important to listen hard to some of the masters. Just a few of my favorites New Orleans born and  bred, listen to  jazzers James Black, (N.O 1940-1980 RIP)  Johnny  Vidacovich,  Herlin Riley, Funk, Joseph “Zigaboo” Modiliste or  Rhythm and Blues, Earl Palmer, Rock, only one  John Bonhom(England 1948-1980 RIP) who certainly understood and played the concept. 

 Very important jazz drummers who would be the first to acknowledge their debt to the New Orleans style are   Max Roach(1927-2007) and  Elvin Jones(1927-2004) and they said as much to me, and who also  generously shared their ideas  with me. The best lesson any drummer will ever get is to play dual drums with a true great. Kind of a Vulcan Mind Meld! Ha! Ha! I have to thank Bob Yeager founder and owner of Pro Drum Shop in Hollywood LA, Ca. who introduced me to Elvin and Max. Art Blakey and Tony Williams set the standards for drive and creativity.

 I played dual drumming gigs   with Billy Higgins and for joyful melodic drumming Billy was the best.  I knew Ed “Boogie” Blackwell too and listened to him play a lot. It wasn’t until he passed on that I realized he was stone cold genius. He had a New Orleans feel that was very independently complex and

worked  just as well with Ray Charles as with some very heavy abstract jazz.  I can’t leave out Vernal Fournier whose legendary drumming on the jazz/R&B hit Poinciana with the Ahmad Jamal Trio was a

brilliant use of the basic New Orleans Parade beat and he said so too, . Hearing him for the first time is the reason Jack de Johnette picked up a pair of drumsticks. I played drums behind Charles Moffet on Vibes

( Ornette Coleman drummer. Billy, Charles, and and Blackwell  all played with Ornette and they all absorbed that nugget of moving the downbeat on one around. Usually a No No, but when done together after a phrase that asked for it just made sense. Totally unrehearsed,

             So many drummers   play Elvin Jones triplets rolls and many drummers sadly   have never heard of him. I am getting sentimental and dating myself, but you better understand you are standing on the shoulders of giants. There are an extensive number of drummers om you to to study and listen now.

Such was not the case when i started ,but I am certainly exploring it now.

            Hal Blaine the prolific studio drummer from the Wrecking Crew   said there are two grooves,

The shuffle which swings   and the eighth note groove which is straight  on top of  the beat which is defined as straight up.. Everything else is derivative. The   shuffle   has a triplet quality, which flows very smoothly   Halves, eighths, and sixteen note rides have a duple quality  which hammer the time out. Think about it. There are only two numbers. The odd one  and even one. All rhythms are combinations of odd numbered and even numbered patterns that are used to subdivide the time so sometimes there is a triplet feel and sometimes there is a duplet feel.  A   swing jazz tune uses the odd, 3,   triplet   swing feel. A steady eighth note medium rock tune is an even, two, duplet feel.  So how do you learn to play in the “Crease.”  It is usually defined as playing somewhere in between swing and straight.  I have heard that all my life. I get it, but I don’t totally agree with that description altogether because it implies there is one special timing right in the middle of swing   and straight. With all due respect the “Crease” is a very elastic flexible feel which varies from drummer to drummer but has certain elements in common.  It’s   hard to describe, easy to hear and not so easy to play.   I can explain the concept and also going to show you where it came from.  Music is very ancient and you can bet the “Crease” by any other name has been around for a long time.  It is very much related to danceable tempos. If you are properly obsessed with the drums as you should be if you are  a serious drummer then you will want to know how  the” Crease” evolved  and how it ended up on the drum set. It is a fascinating story and will convince you of the importance of the importance of learning how to play in the “Crease.

 Recall in the earlier part of this study Jelly Roll Morton’s   the “ Spanish Tinge” which from a rhythmic point of view is the use of the clave and clave like  figures.  As we have already seen syncopation

 ( Cinco  Pasos) in it ’s simplest form is 5 steps in 4/4 with 4 beats and an accented off beat, the  weakest offbeat, the & of 4 which just happens to be a tango.   The all important 5 note clave can written in two meters

    and shows  how the same rhythm can be written in either 4/4 counted as 1/8ths

    and 16ths so that the feel is even or written in 12/8 or  two measures of  6/8  so that

     the feel is a  triplet feel.  This   clearly   indicates that the feel is entirely internal

 In principal if the internal sense of time is 3/4 and 2/4 simultaneously in 6/4 It is possible to change metric subdivision in the middle of a   note.   Reading   notation forward to the last note of a triplet  and starting with   that same note as the first note in even notation after  that is effectively  metrically modulating in the middle of the note.

Multi-meter or Poly-rhythm is a very important element to understand in the development of playing in the “Crease.”   It is actually an essential aspect of music theory in general but for our purposes we are going to use it to give you rock solid internal time, hearing the  distinction between the shuffle/swing feel triplet timeline and straight up duple time.  That is essentially internally hearing or feeling   three  separate  clocks ticking at different rates, hence a Poly-Metric Tri-Nome. If you wish to determine the location of a plane in flight you have to measure it by three angles longitude, latitude, and   altitude times the speed of the plane. The tip of a drumstick arcing through space and striking a drum skin at a   precise moment is no different. You’re the pilot and the navigator.  Being able to shift on the fly (pun intended) between the different clock rates or beats per minute (BPM) metronome setting is the first step in playing in the crease except that the shift is precisely from one rate to another. You have three choices 2, 3, and 6. That is not a change in tempo!. It is a shift in sub division of the core common meter.  Initially focus on two Poly Rhythms: 2 against 3, and 3 against 4. because   to strengthen   playing deep  in the “ “Crease.” 

The additional timing expressiveness   which is the essence of the “Crease” is not just jumping between 3 meters. It is the ability to slide, glide,  float a timing curve between all three meters or timelines   very subtly across the groove. This flexible timing should be very subtle and almost   imperceptible, but it is obvious when it is missing as that special feel is gone. 

 Nevertheless rock solid internal time that is clearly stated or at least implied is there as an outgrowth of having internalized the Tri-Nome.  Nothing sloppy about that.  So how the heck do develop the ability to handle time that way and begin to learn how to play in the “Crease?” Here is the best   metaphor I have been able to   come up with in describing playing in the “Crease”

 You're on a tightrope over a canyon. Each step is precisely placed on the tightrope . That is the core meter and time, the six count: You lean to one side, the three count shuffle/swing side while waving your arms about to keep your balance, and then lean over to the other side, the two count.. That is the   straight up side and   without ever missing a beat as you carefully place your feet right, left.  Is that an exact science. Nope! It is an art. If all of this makes sense to you, well good for you, but if not completely, the proof is in the playing and to do that you have to work through these fundamentals and then play the musical ideas as well to begin to develop the feel. Usually this is when the ideas really begin to make sense and the  light bulb goes of in your head. First its I think I can kind of  hear it, and second  its oh  I’m playing it, I  think,.  Your only other option is to grow up playing in parades in New Orleans That’s just my opinion. 

If you are thinking that doesn’t seem to keep a very good way   to keep time. Rock solid time is first totally internal, can be stated, implied, and totally abandoned and returned to dead on if your internal time is locked.  Secondly the typical approach of keeping time on a hi hat or ride cymbal is what we call top ((hands) down. The New Orleans approach is so connected to parade drumming. so with all due respect to Hal Blaine there is a third beat coming out of the New Orleans parade drumming based on a repeating rhythm, the clave(s) and the steady bass drum beat that it is bottom up  (bass drum)  time keeping freeing the hands to play more flexibly in the crease,… what is known as a greasy feel. Joseph “ Zigaboo” Modeliste, the drummer with the Meters is the master at it in a very groove oriented way but Tony Williams could bend the time like no other and fortunately the Miles Davis Quintet with Herbie Hancock, and Ron Carter could handle Tony’s gymnastics with the time by either setting it off or just going along with it when it really was no  fixed time feel. That mostly happened live when their was no time limit on the length the group could play but you can catch a bit on some live recordings.   

Okay, if all this discussion about poly-rhythms, meters, tri-nomes, claves , top down, bottom up, 2^nd line

drumming and  playing in the “Crease” has got you confused, not to worry. If you study and work through the incredible examples on you tube your understanding should become clear when you can hear and play the ideas in your own playing. Even though they are discussed and learned separately, they are played in combination as a whole with

Their are so many great 2nd Line drummers especially in New Orleans that I never get tired of all the people playing 2nd line in the crease, plenty all over the world now. But you might as well start with Johnny Vidacovich, Secrets of 2nd line drumming. You tube. He just dances on the drum set.

You know there is 2nd line tapdancing and knee slapping Hambone.