First things first - if you want the complete Playing In Time video, free to you as a subscriber, check it out here.
What exactly “pocket” is has been the subject of vigorous debate in my comments lately, with many people taking the opinion that the great drummers are simply “born with it”, and others that the only way to develop a great feel is to…”feel it”.
While there’s doubtless truth in both takes, as usual I’m approaching things from the standpoint of “what’s the most practical way to improve your pocket in the direction of a Steve Jordan, a Steve Gadd, a Jeff Porcaro, a Bernard Purdie or a Brian Blade if you’re an ‘average’ drummer like me?”
And in my experience, it’s metronome displacement. If you’re advanced enough. (Otherwise, as others have said, it’s perfectly fine to place the click on the downbeats.) It’s here that the final controversy emerges: “won’t I be all up in my head instead of feeling the beat if I practice this way?”
Precisely the opposite.
Just like practicing field stripping a weapon 1,000 times means (I’m told) you can do it half asleep, in the back of a Jeep on a dirt road, in the dark, so practicing with the metronome on offbeats means when it’s time to gig, you won’t have to think about it. You’ll train your ears to hear time more like it sounds to bystanders and on recordings, and compensate for our human tendencies to mis-perceive time in the moment, as we’re playing.
Way more in the lesson, but expect to discover:
How to work up to the offbeat exercise from the Drumeo lesson
The two reasons metronome displacement is good for an advanced enough player
The REAL difference betwen macro and micro time
Enjoy this one!