by Rob Brown
Occasionally I get very nice compliments on my ‘pocket’. Pocket is sort of a universal term among drummers that I’m still actually not quite sure how to define accurately. You can’t really explain it. Drummers that have great pocket make you FEEL something when you hear them groove. Dennis Chambers. Steve Jordan. Steve Gadd. Bernard Purdy. Keith Carlock. Teddy Campbell. It’s groove that ‘breathes’. It’s a groove that sit’s nicely in a bed that the everyone in the room can comfortably sit in and makes the whole song feel better for everybody. It has just the right amount of space and movement in the time, yet not so technically perfect that it’s a tight as a machine. The pocket is a zone. A sweet spot. There are plenty of drummers out there that are technically perfect, so much to the point that you feel nothing when they groove. So technically perfect – that they’re almost useless. There’s not enough natural and human element to make that emotional, human connection. It’s the difference between drawing an almost perfectly straight line freehand, and drawing a perfectly straight line with a ruler. But again. It’s hard to explain. There’s a YouTube video of the recording session of Zepplin’s track ‘Fool in the Rain’ with the drums isolated in the mix. So it’s just Bonham. When you listen to it, your almost instinctive reaction is to just smile and shake your head through the whole thing because it’s probably one of the best and most perfectly pocketed shuffles you’ve ever heard. Yet you can’t really explain why. It’s just – SO GOOD. Listen to any John Mayer track with Jordan on it. Same thing. So….how do you develop your pocket?
Honestly? I don’t know. At least not in the sense of ‘go home and do this for 30 minutes a day’ kind of thing. Because in my opinion, pocket ain’t ALL technique. It’s a combination of a few things, most of them mental. It’s an awareness of what to play, what not to play, dynamics, feel, consistency. There’s also personality in pocket. When you hear a Steve Gadd groove, you just know it’s him. When Vinnie plays a groove on the rim, for some strange reason, you just know it’s him. When you break it down, all the drummers I’ve mentioned off the top of this blog use ALL the same techniques. But it’s their personalities that naturally make them sound different. Put all these drummers in the studio with Toto’s track ‘Rosanna’. They’re all going to play a shuffle. But I guarantee you that you’ll still be able to tell Gadd’s pocket from Carlock’s. And Carlock’s from Jordan’s.
Your groove can either enhance the music of the artist you’re playing with, or at best, it’ll just get the job done. This is why pocket players stand out above cats that simply just play the time. Now sometimes just getting the job done is enough to satisfy the artist. But people like Steve Jordan don’t get calls from artists that just want a drummer to ‘get the job done’. He gets called because they want what he’s got. They know what his particular pocket will do for that song.