Just barely behind the beat.

Doo- wop and Motown is my comfort zone..but I,ve done country to Hungarian wedding bands...to jazz standards and polka bands!!..Its all fun.Coffee Break2

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in regard to other drummers in my home town. I've got players/friends around me that are real freak show drummers, professional clowns & jugglers, amazing jazz players, killer-solid top 40 no frills drummers, blues players with the shuffle from hell etc..My comfort zone is definitely groove oriented, Funk, Reggae, Hip Hop, groovier classic rock. Destiny also dropped a lot of world music gigs in my lap in the last decade. Now I'm much more comfortable doing Klezmer, Gypsy. Caribbean, Brazilian stuff. Sure, there are always styles that feel less comfortable to me on these type of gigs. For example, there are a few Cumbia tunes in one of my world ensembles that do not feel "second nature" to me. Not a question of being at all complicated. I just don't feel that I'm really nailing the whole essence yet.

Anything with a bluesy feel, especially if it's a little funky.

Lynn

Rock, medium tempo, swung... the record I'm most comfortable playing along to is probably Robot Hive | Exodus by Clutch. I'm constantly trying to subtly divert my band towards stuff that's less up-tempo straight 8th feel into that realm where it gets a little more swampy... The RK kit likes having a little more room to breathe between notes, plus there's a fair bit of distance between the 13" and 16" with that big ol' 26" in the middle so moving around the kit quickly is a bit more work than a 'normal' sized kit...

I must admit that I can relate to the posts about Motown and old-school R&B AND to the posts about a good bass player making the job so much easier. For me, when it all boils down to it, I enjoy playing nice grooves with a good rhythm section...if things are really grooving, I almost don't care what the style or song is.