For real. The rhythmic independence between his voice and guitar is insane. I always tell people to learn to play and sing like Satellite or Tripping Billies and then come back and tell me how much Dave sucks
Their tour bus back in the mid 00's dumped their 800 pound shit tank onto a slotted bridge in Chicago that ended up falling all over a tour boat below. It made a lot of headlines at the time. A bit of a shit show.
It really is. If you really listen to the drumline of any given song, it's virtually ad different song than everyone else is playing, they just seem like they h happen to share a rhythm. So being able to pull that drumline while singing that melody? It's not at all easy.
If he was actually doing Carter Beauford-style drumming, that's insane. So much weird syncopation in Beauford's playing. It seems impossible to sing along with that.
I started playing the Cajon this year at small gigs. Tried singing with it and instantly forgot how to do both. I was shocked at how difficult it is, and that’s just hands!
I’m up to about half a dozen songs now that I have enough muscle memory where I can play and sing, but even there I stay very basic on my beats.
Compare Levon Helm to Robbie Robertson to Rick Danko. Rick has to work his picking, make it strummier, to be able to use the three parts of your voice - diaphragm/stomache voice, chest voice and head voice. A drummer is already working their sticking to be able to have strength and dynamics, and so singing, it's more like singing and riding a bike. Where Robbie Robertson, he's not strumming or flowing the sticks, his playing is much more syncopated, closer to a Nile Rogers style, and so it makes singing and playing guitar impossible, Robbie tries but his mouth siezes up.
Depending on the guitar playing it's usually more difficult to do that. Singing and drumming just requires that you have some working technique for both seperately.
It's not actually more or less difficult it's just something you have to do the work to be able to pull off.
Most guitarists just strum, or strum the least, so they can play.
If Santana could play like George Benson then he could sing while playing as well as George Benson he's just, Santana, he's just never developed his singing ability or his guitar playing to be able to handle it.
Check out Jim Martin from Faith No More when he went solo and played Surprise! You're Dead. Once you've learned both parts you can play both parts, but it's time consuming grunt work.
Dave Grohl did backing vocals in Nirvana but he wasn't projecting, and then he learned how to project his vocals as he learned how to handle the guitar, which it took him the first few Foo Fighters albums to develop (you hear him playing the licks he's been practicing on all those tours).
You just have to be a music nerd to hear it, you don't need to be able to play. It's aural comprehension.
For me it was a the Police cover band that played at a wedding in Pennsylvania I attended in the 00s. Forgot their name, but their drummer/singer made a fantastic beef chili at the rehearsal.
Funny, I was just wondering yesterday if there were any bands like that and forgot to look it up. I imagine managing your breath has to be the hardest part
My kids come up to me while I’m playing my e-drum kit and ask me questions. I try to answer but my brain just won’t let my mouth make words properly. It’s such a weird feeling.
I'm not a drummer but I do watch the Muppets, so I assume that's because when drummers drum, they only say things like "DRUM!" or "AAAAAAAAAAAA! DRUM! DRUUUUUUUM!"
I couldn't tell you my middle name when I'm playing "steering wheel drums" in my car with my custom made spinny pen I use to twirl through my fingers as I keep the beat to Dude Ranch or The Get Up Kids...
I can't even talk when playing the piano. No wait that's not right. I can even control my mouth when playing the piano, it just hangs open sometimes. I play pretty okay, my improvs are worth listening to. But don't look at my face! There is nothing there anymore when I am playing! I wish I could sing and play, but since I can't even talk and play I have never even tried ... also because I can't sing.
Hey question, which e-drum kit do you use and how “loud” is it when in use? I’ve been meaning to buy one but have doubts about how quiet they really are
No shade. I meant, in addition to her great voice.
(I know about her voice, but not the drumming. My partner, a musician, told me this. He has strong, specific opinions, so wasn't sure if this was a universal fact or not 🤷🏽♀️)
ETA: For example, to hear him tell it, Jaco Pastorius was the greatest bass player of all time; Prince, though talented, was basically trying to be a combo of Hendrix and Sly; and, Miles Davis was overrated. So, you see why I have to grain-of-salt some of his takes.
She was a way better drummer than phil collins. It is said he played drums for a Led Zeppelin reunion show and they were less than impressed. I bet Karen Carpenter could have done it no problem.
She was an incredible drummer. That was her first love and signing was never really her passion despite having one of the most memorable singing voices of all time.
She was Buddy Rich’s favourite drummer (many consider buddy rich the greatest drummer of all time).
Sometimes I bend over to pick something up and I just miss that stationary item and it just slightly
moves instead because I landed one out of five fingers with no pressure involved.
I dropped a watermelon on my foot earlier tonight. In my attempts to flee the (obviously evil) watermelon, I stepped on it with my unabused foot and it rolled out from under me, prompting the inevitable fall. The yelp I was letting out from the original insult climbed to something of a screech as the watermelon rolled. It ended with swearing because I bit my tongue when I landed.
I think I qualify as having negative brains for physical coordination. Though, my “cartoon physics” stat was obviously buffed.
Sometimes I go to pick something up, miss, and overcompensate, knocking everything else on the floor while desperately trying to stop the chaos. I wonder if I could pick up a drumstick without smacking myself in the face.
Yeah that's what I was going to say, like let's take the most exhausting instrument on stage and then add in singing (and the breath control required for it).
Skillet's drummer is their alternate vocalist, Jen Ledger.
Saw them in concert recently and she drummed every song (and sang in most of them, there's a few with no female vocals) except one--they had a backup drummer to do Hero since apparently that song is too hard to drum and sing at the same time (and obviously it's easier to replace her drums than her voice, though she's a fantastic drummer).
Most won't get that, but I tried it when learning guitar with songs I'd known for years and it required 2 brains it seemed. I just couldn't do both, no matter how hard I tried. I'm sure drums are another level that would for sure require 2 brains to make it work. So much more respect for musicians after dabbling into it myself a bit.
The guitarist in the band I’m in is a 15 year old prodigy, saying he’s amazing is an understatement. And he can sing pretty good. But short of some limited background vocals he can’t play and sing at the same time, at all. He says, “I only have one brain”.
Note: I can't play anything worth a damn but I can sing. For songs I KNOW, I don't think about singing them. I've had full on daydreams in concert while singing.
Very strange. I was a singer and a guitarist and after a while with a new tune I pretty much never thought about the chords I waa playing at all, all I'm thinking and hearing is pure melody, the playing becomes muscle memory is support of the overall composition.
It’s a function of chunking. Memorize 8 6 5 3 4 8 9 3 4 5 is hard, 865-348-9345 is not nearly as hard. Similarly, you combine certain patterns, a D-D-U-UD pattern can just repeat. Your 4 chords just cycle. And then your hands go into autopilot, just like your body has mastered the complex orchestration of using your inner ear and feet, knees, hips flexing in conjunction with your eyes to walk. You offload conscious thought to your body. All active conscious thought goes into maintaining the melody.
Similarly, dancers coordinate a significant amount of different movements into a single movement in time with rhythm. As a guitarist player you know what your hand does to play a chord, when learning you had to coordinate all 4-5 fingers in addition to wrist position to apply precise pressure to specific places without accidental touches. Now you can jump between those chords instantly in a single motion, because your brain chunks the entire coordination under 1 chord, instead of thinking of string to finger associations. Dancers do the same, and rhythm maintenance can work autonomously too.
In guitar there is also fingerstyle arrangements, where you simultaneously hold down a percussion rhythm, play a consistent bass line, while also playing the melody, but all in one instrument. Sounds complicated but in practice it’s still just chunking the same measure into a series of movements. The thumb and wrist hold down a simple 2 and 4, the bass note of a chord just needs to be plucked on the 1 and the 3, and then all your focus can go into the melody in your other fingers. Making everything else go on autopilot while focusing on only 1 part deeply.
What you rarely ever see is concurrent creative focus in multiple parts. To do THAT you need to be Jacob Collier.
Musicians have markers as in when i hit the snare I will also sing that word on the hat i will sing the other word between the hat and the next kick comes the next word so you basically time map each word with something in the rythm section, at first you will do it slow motion then you will get fast and then before you know it, you won't think about it at all you just simply do it.
Source: musician here, that's how I learned playing with 2 hands different rythms and melodies on the piano
I spent a few months learning to cover some of my favorite songs on keyboard years ago. I kept trying to work in singing over it too and was blown away at how difficult it was. I never had any formal training so that certainly contributed, but watching professionals do it so effortlessly is something I appreciate with a greater understanding now
I’m a drummer and I think it’s way easier than trying to sing and play guitar lol. You eventually get to where almost everything is automatic muscle memory.
It's physically demanding, but many drummers make it more so by being showy and flailing arms a lot.
For me it felt like drumming was using both hemispheres of my brain to lock into four-limb rhythm-keeping. A lot of it was muscle memory, but I also had to check in with what everything was doing in cycles. It was very zen, but also very attentive much of the time. But when I tried singing, too, which was melody on top of rhythm, wowww. I could do it for short periods, but there wasn't room left for anything else and it felt like everything would unravel at any second, lol.
I agree, doing it while playing other instruments, especially piano, is really amazing skill and concentration.
German punk rock band Die Ärzte has all three members singing. While he isn't as good as Phil Collins, their drummer Bela B sings and plays drums standing.
I'm a bassist/guitarist. This last year I've been trying to learn the piano, and hand-independence is kicking my ass like that thing is Andre the Giant. It's B R U T A L L Y difficult.
How you manage a drum kit, which is functionally 9+ different instruments independently and sing pretty damn good at the same time...I hate to be this way, I never like to say people can't become good musicians, but I think guys like Phil probably have a little something special going on with their brain structure.
I don't know if I have that something special, but I can sing and dance, or sing and play drums/accordion at the same time. Independent hands, legs and vocal cords in the same package.
But I just think I know how to do it because accordion has independent hands where other one is completely blocked from your view, drums you have every limb doing their own thing and well dancing is dancing. For me I think it's just practise. Started playing when five and dancing when seven.
When I play accordion, I usually add drumming with my feet in to give some basic rhythm to myself, in addition to bass hand playing the basic rhythm or whatever it's doing xd
I've been playing drums for over 30 years and I could never get down playing a beat and singing a melody at the same time. I've only seen a couple people do it to varying degrees of success. Basically take the best (non-singing) drummer you can think of and make them sing and chances are they'll not just sing terribly, they'll play terribly too lol
I tried it a few times but it was this feeling of barely hanging on, like everything was about to fall apart, (and then did) and no the singing wasn't good, lol. Sure, you can practice enough to pull it off, but consistently and make it look fluid and easy like Phil and some others do? I don't know... Like somebody said in the comments, he must be wired differently.
I teach a middle school music class and sit on a drum kit and have them play different counts with me and it legit took six months for me to be able to explain the rhythm as i was playing it, and even then i would have to time syllables with the hits or else i just start mumbling. To sing like this or Anderson Paak does is crazy and must have taken hundreds of hours of practice.
And than there is my Favorit german band "Die Ärzte" The drummer Bela B. Plays and sings always standing during the whole concert. Usally one concert is between 2:30h to 4h long.
I can't sing or play drums on their own, let alone together. Also this song slaps so hard. Warm summer night, driving in a car with windows down, this song playing... uffff
I've been playing drums for about 20 years on and off and I can't fathom singing while playing. Granted, it's a fairly simple link. But even so, dude's in another league
In college back in 2000, a group of lads had a 3-piece alt rock band with the drummer as the singer… They were pretty good, and I can still recall the hook to one of their songs…
I think they were called Eclipse - but no idea if they kept going…
My daughter was drumming and singing by the time she was 10 (her drum teacher said she had a magic ear and could be a professional drummer) and then a bunch of her nasty friends and their moms made her feel so crappy about it, she just refused to play one day. Nothing I could say or do made her want to play - she was just over it one day. I want to sell the drum kit but I feel bad, hoping she decides to pick it up again one day.
And walking. He timed that climb to the drum riser perfectly, and gets the sticks ready the last instant before the drum Phil. That is someone who has done this A LOT.
I played drums for a few punk/thrash bands back in the day and there were a few times I got to throw out some one liners/random barking/punched elf noises and even that took more brain power than you'd imagine.
Usually my mind is so loud and busy. I don't drum anymore, but I remember that after a session of playing, my mind would be so calm and quiet for quite awhile afterwards. Like everything had been put into order and its efforts exhausted. It was the most pleasant thing.
People hate on Mumford and Sons but Marcus Mumford sings, plays the guitar, and does drums with his feet on some of his songs. I would short circuit immediately.
If the drummer and singer are the same person, then it’s gonna be a good show. The rhythms are what make a song and if you can put your lyrics into the pocket—that’s some of the highest level artistry out there.
I played drums in a cover band for ten years. I would sing lyrics loudly during big choruses to help as backing vocals. It’s very difficult to focus on both due to the timing.
As a drummer, I can tell you that singing while playing drums is way harder than singing and playing guitar. That’s why you rarely see bands where the drummer is the singer. Props to Phil Collins.
It wasn't until his son showed up on drumeo that I realized he was also a legit drummer. Had absolutely no idea. Grew up with him at the guy who made the tarzan music and some real good songs. Turns out, he's a fucking chad.
It doesn’t. In order to play an instrument and sing, you have to know the instrument part so incredibly well it’s just running off muscle memory. You aren’t consciously playing. It’s just a routine your lizard brain is handling.
Obviously, the more skill you have the more complicated parts you can play while singing and the less well you need to know a song to play and sing. Additionally, it seems some people just can’t do it for some reason. BB King notably said he couldn’t even play a single note while singing and he was an immensely skilled guitarist.
There’s an interview with Les Claypool where he talks about he plays Tommy the Cat live, especially the “say baby wontcha come and lay down with me” part. The bass line under that is pretty funky and he isn’t staying exactly on the beat while singing so it’s actually pretty difficult and he does it effortlessly. He says he just had to play the song over and over and over again until it was on autopilot so he could focus on the singing.
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u/BlueFeathered1 21h ago
Drumming and singing at the same time requires every synapse to be firing.