How Do You Develop Your Style on the Drums?

Somebody recently emailed me with the question, How do you develop your style on the drums? This is an excellent question, and replying to his message made me think a lot about this topic.

Many of us have had questions like:

• How can I find my personal style or voice on the drums?
• Should I intentionally try to create a style?
• How do I become truly creative enough to really have a style?
• Does your technical ability influence your style?
• Is this even important to begin with?

I hope to answer some of these questions today, because I believe every great musician has some sort of style. Maybe it’s a certain feel they have where you always know it’s them when they’re playing. Maybe a drummer has certain licks he likes to play. Maybe he has a sort of “signature” groove you always hear from him. I think we can all agree that the best players out there have unique styles. You hear Bonham, you know it’s Bonham. You hear Ringo, you know it’s Ringo. I feel the same way with my personal favorite drummers who played on several of my favorite records. I hear them and I somehow know it’s them.

So how can we achieve the seeming level of greatness where you have your own voice and vibe and cool style?

I’ll do my best to explain my process of thinking about and practicing these things over the years. By no means do I feel like I have fully developed a cool style, nor do I feel that I'm a perfect example of the culmination of striving after this. I’m still growing as a player, and I’m still working on really finding my voice. I think most guys are. But some of the best compliments I’ve gotten from other musicians are observations about my overall “touch” or “feel.” Any time someone compliments this in my playing, I’m honored and thrilled to know I’m doing something right on the drums. ;) I do somewhat equate this to “style,” so I’ll elaborate a little more.

If I had any kind of style in high school, I’d describe it like this:

Slightly sloppy grooves with fills made up of too many notes, with a constant tendency to rush and an inability to play what the song really needs.

If every drummer of every level has a style, that was mine. But as I gained experience and cleaned up my act, a more musical style began to emerge. I believe you have to strip your playing down to the bare bones, getting rid of all the frills, mess, and nonsense, in order to find your true style. (Try doing this yourself!).

I think I started finding my style when I started really listening to music. Unfortunately, critical listening didn’t really happen for me until I started college. I’m talking about the kind of listening where you’re digging in through headphones, really paying attention to all the parts going on. Going to music school really forced me to do this, where in one class we were even writing reports about things we’d hear in recordings. When you do this, you start picking up on nuances. You go back and listen to your favorite songs from high school, and you start hearing things you’ve never heard before. You start noticing the hihat accents within the drummer’s timekeeping. You start realizing you've played that kick pattern wrong all this time. You start hearing how the drums were tuned on that recording. You begin to notice all these musical details that are really “stylistic” details from the recording.

When you make a practice of emulating these things on the drums yourself, you begin to find your style. Chances are, you’ll be drawn to a particular style of drumming out there. Maybe it’s light and flowing jazz or funk drumming. Maybe it’s heavy-hitting hard rock. The trick is that you have to listen to all of this and practice all of it on the kit to really find what attracts you. It doesn’t take long, though, before you find common threads in your favorite types of music.

I like music that has great groove and great melody. These two things usually go hand-in-hand since melody influences groove so much. The more I listened to my favorite artists, the more I found this to be true. I then started looking up these albums on AllMusic where you can see credits. I found who played drums on them, and I found that the same drummer played on several of my favorite records. Common threads. Once I found a couple of favorite drummers, finding more music that I gravitated toward became even easier. I just looked up what other records they played on. Since I loved listening to this music, I loved playing it too. These kinds of melodies and drum parts naturally floated around in my head all the time, and this developed my natural style.

Personality can certainly play a factor as well. I’m a fairly introverted person, and my playing was very timid early on. I had to learn how to really hit hard when needed in order to bring the appropriate sounds out of my drums in a rock setting. But I naturally gravitate toward a less heavy style of playing. I’m not a loud, gregarious person, and I think that comes out in my playing. If I played in a metal band, the drumming you’d hear wouldn’t REALLY be me. I’ve had to learn how to be versatile, but I gravitate toward a type of playing that is really an extension of me as a person. I think you’ll find the same to be true for you. I was also a piano player before I learned drums, and that could have easily influenced me as well.

Technical ability can even influence your style, too. It’s interesting to propose the question of would Ringo have sounded like Ringo had he had insane chops? Also, would Jojo Mayer have the feel that Jojo Mayer has if he DIDN’T have his insane technique? I think our technical abilities on the instrument do affect our taste.

So to wrap all this conceptual stuff up, what are some steps you can take to develop your personal style, sound, and vibe on the drums? Here’s how I’d sum it up as best I can:

Clean up your playing. Be able to play simple well, but be able to maintain a technique ceiling high enough for what you play.

Have a genre, artist, band, or album that you just LOVE digging into and nerding-out on.

Find a favorite drummer or two who thinks like you do and has similar taste. Listen to records he plays on and practice emulating his parts.

Practice, practice, and play, play, play as much as you can. A style will emerge, whether you realize it or not.

Also, there’s no shame in intentionally trying to find your style. I do think that mine has gradually “happened” and will continue to “happen.” But I’ve taken many of these intentional steps to help me grow in that area.

When it comes down to it, be more a musician than a drummer. Dig the music, then let the drumming follow.

I hope this lesson-style email gives you some useful pointers! I’m eager to hear your replies.

God Bless,

Stephen