Although I agree with your post about playing different genres of music, I don't think that Tony Williams could sing while playing drums or mandolin for T-h-e B-a-n-d. (I detest the effing emoji that replaced the name of the group that I typed. That's why I inserted all of the hyphens.)
Thanks for the anti-emoji tip. I kept trying to type that band name in my earlier post and just gave up and settled for the emoji.
Although I agree with your post about playing different genres of music, I don't think that Tony Williams could sing while playing drums or mandolin for T-h-e B-a-n-d. (I detest the effing emoji that replaced the name of the group that I typed. That's why I inserted all of the hyphens.)
Which was my point -being that there are many masters of drumming and that there isn't a blueprint for how one goes about mastering the drums. Levon was a master and so was Tony. Neither could replace the other...although that would have been interesting to imagine Levon Helm coming out with the Miles Davis Quintet and playing Seven Steps To Heaven! Or, to see Tony Williams playing on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, with the Band.
my take on difference in guitars & drums, i'm 70 years old, gave up the road 10 years ago, now back-up open mic's on 2 week nites, and play in make-up bands on weekends, at most of the mic nites get guys coming up on stage either run into or turn around to tell me the key they are playing? and bump their guitar into my cymbals, I used to get mad, now I just say " your varnish " they look at me like its my fault! another time sound guy is setting up system, its very cheap and lightweight, he gives the cord a yank and over goes the boom stand with mic on it, right across the cymbals & drums, make quite a noise, he & fiddle player start laughing, I run up thinking I need to change snare head to get thru nite, they pick their **** up while still laughing say their sorry, and good thing it was not some ones guitar! fiddle player reaches over and taps my cymbal with his bow that has medal end on it & says its still in tune, I explain to him the medal end on his bow could nick the cymbal and turn into a split, ruin it, I then tell him, do it again, i'll shove the bow up your ass! you guessed it, I'm now the bad guy.
The ignorant people who play other instrument (usually guitar) must think that, because we hit our drums and cymbals to play them, it's perfectly OK for them to also hit our drums and cymbals. So, I suppose it should be perfectly acceptable to them if a drummer diddled on their guitars.
Let's take it a step further, one does not aquire a great drum sound from just the drums, heads and tuning alone. There's a certain way to strike a drum to bring out the sound. And let's not forget, we are talking about an acoustic instrument vs, an electric instrument. Guitarist have far more options at their disposal to aquire different sounds without actually playing any differently, that's not the case for drummers. Some might say there are more guitarist because it's more popular than drums, I firmly believe it's because drums are a much more difficult instrument to master and it takes more effort to achieve a great sound, not to mention the physical aspect of playing the drums
I agree, drums are much harder to play, at least for me. I don't play either instrument very well but the drums do seem to be more challenging.
