Marco Minnemann vs Gavin Harrison

Gavin - the one-stage jokes during technical breaks edged it for me! Young Craig Blundell is catching up to these two gods though......

Gavin  

Guldbamsen wrote: Well mistakes are not exactly mistakes when played right Think of Jimi Hendrix who is playing all the wrong notes at the wrong time...yet making everything sound utterly fantastic. Machine Gun is a fine example methinks....anyway that also exist in the drumming world...but it takes a man/woman who is nonchalant enough to utilise his/her “mistakes” (see what I did there...again ) and make something wholly different out of them. ...

Well mistakes are not exactly mistakes when played right
Think of Jimi Hendrix who is playing all the wrong notes at the wrong time...yet making everything sound utterly fantastic. Machine Gun is a fine example methinks....anyway that also exist in the drumming world...but it takes a man/woman who is nonchalant enough to utilise his/her “mistakes” (see what I did there...again ) and make something wholly different out of them.
It’s actually very hard to explain, but when I hear it, fx through the drummers I mentioned earlier in this thread, it takes the music into another gear - changes the interplay in such a way that every musician involved has to step up their game and listen and do things...erm slightly different in order to make it fly...yet when it does it exceeds every firework-fill imaginable...again to these ears
When great drummers are merely timekeepers they don’t add any ‘music’ to the music...they become metronomes that count out the time on which the other musicians can fiddle around with melodies and such...but the rhythm remains that: a rhythm..instead of something musical that can egg on the other musicians involved to do something extraordinary and..gulp..dare I say it...progressive.
Doesn’t have to be avantgarde or crazy either - I’ve heard this in oh so many styles of music by now, so I know it’s not something that only exists in weird and purposely ‘difficult-music’....but when all that is said and done, I DO hear it mostly in jazz. Also the reason why I think that many musicians tend to think of the great jazz drummers as being the absolute bee’s kness regarding human beats delivery...they just don’t know what the final ingredient is...and if you tell them it has to do with playing the ‘mistakes’ - actually seeking them out and just going with them...well they’ll look at you with a slightly contentious look, methinks.

Another way of looking at it is this: play around with yourself for too long and all your left with is “perfection” - the ‘right’ way of following a beat/playing guitar/sax/bass/flute...because there are rules and meters and stuff that goes together in ways that have been written down for centuries. You just can’t unlearn that, when it first is in your head. Impossible. No you need to out and hit your head hard and discover that some of the most beautiful things in life...stem from mistakes. Nature’s like that too - all the really orgiastic over-the-moon-beautiful things in life...tend to happen on a fluke - a sudden julp in the old heartbeat. All it takes is a musician that can take hold of that - harness it - and let it lose within the framework of the band. Then it becomes something wholly other than a ‘mistake’. It becomes otherworldly music.
Alright enough of the mystics in here. Like I said, go listen to some of the cats I mentioned earlier or just Maghine Gun off Jimi and apply such frivolous activities to drumming and it’ll probably far better explain my point than me going on and on and on until I get sucked up by a musical black hole (should be interesting nonetheless)

Edited by Guldbamsen - August 20 2019 at 22:39

• Marco over Gavin
• Buford over Peart

Edited by axeman - August 20 2019 at 11:11

Marco but it's a matter of opinion. They're both amazing!

^ it is Paul Gilbert on guitar

A video showing Marcos playing in full form and glory https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yfXeO_Ff_Wc

Edited by Icarium - August 19 2019 at 10:37

I must admit I do not know much of their material. Have seen Marco in the auditions for DT and also in the video of the UK Reunion in Japan. As for Gavin I have heard quite much of his stuff with PT and seen him live twice with KC.

What about a Steven Wilson vs Paul Gilbert poll, that would be interesting.
As Paul has played with Marco on some ocations