When we play with a drummer, we often obsess over where we are in the beat. Am I on the back of the beat? Is he on the front? Do we have to meet in the middle? If you want to know how to lock in with a drummer, start by letting that go. We tend to get too in our heads about it, and that can often be a distraction.
Quick answer
To lock in with a drummer, stop analyzing where you are in the beat and share the time: create a pocket of space between your placement and the drummer’s. Don’t follow the drummer. Build independent time by walking a chorus alone and checking that it feels good, then stay put through fills and keep your own pulse.
What does locking in with a drummer mean?
To me, locking in isn’t about analyzing where you are in the beat. It’s about sharing the time and creating a pocket of space between where you’re placing the time and where the drummer is placing the time.
You can both be on top of the beat and create that pocket of space. You can both be behind the beat and create it. Just listen to hip-hop records where the bass player and the drummer are both playing behind the beat. That pocket of space is where we get the term pocket from, and locking in means sharing that pocket with your drummer.
Aaron Seeber, the drummer I made The Locked-In Bassist with, calls it a partnership: two things coming together and working together as one. You can hear a drummer and a bass player sit in different parts of the beat, then hear that same bass player with a different drummer play a completely different way, and both of them feel good. What really matters, he says, is that the music feels good. You want a beat people can dance to, and a foundation that makes the soloist want to play.
Don’t follow the drummer
The most important thing is to not follow the drummer. Everybody always talks about how the drummer is responsible for the time. That’s not really true. Everybody’s responsible for the time. You don’t follow the drummer and hope it’s going to lead you to the pocket or the groove or the promised land. The drummer has their own problems. You don’t need to follow them and give them more problems.
Ray Brown talks about this in a great video about the idea of independent time. You need your own time as a bass player. If everybody plays in the same grid, along to the same beat, it’s going to sound like playing along to a metronome. In my opinion, drummers adjust to bass players more than bass players adjust to drummers. That’s been my experience, and it’s what I’ve noticed listening to lots of live shows and records.
Aaron hears it the same way from the drum chair. “To me, the time comes from the bass player,” he says. A great bass player is creating the time, but listening to everything the drummer does without necessarily playing exactly what the drummer is doing.
It’s like a pianist who plays a bunch of substitutions. They don’t want you trying to figure out what those substitutions are. They want you to play the roots, so the substitutions sound like substitutions. When John Coltrane superimposed a bunch of stuff, did Jimmy Garrison play those superimpositions with him? Of course not. He played the roots, and that’s why it sounded great.
Or think of the six in soccer, the defensive midfielder. Do they run after whoever has the ball? No. They stay where they are and create the movement. Their positioning is what’s most important. You’re creating the offense too, but you’re doing it while you maintain your position and don’t follow anybody else.
Build independent time first
The way bass players adjust to drummers is by developing independent time. You can do that with the metronome, and you should also do it by playing without the metronome. One thing I have all my students do is walk a chorus of any tune unaccompanied and see if it feels good to them.
If it doesn’t feel good to you, it won’t feel good to anyone else.
Cole Davis
That’s what I mean by independent time. I have my own time: I can play without anybody else and make it feel good. Then all you have to do is apply that to a drummer, without following them. When Aaron and I play that way in the lesson, it feels good precisely because I’m not following. It’s easy to follow the drummer, especially a drummer as good as Aaron. You want to follow them, but in reality you have to do exactly the opposite.
What should you do when the drummer plays a fill?
So many times the groove is lost because somebody, usually the bass player, drops the tempo when the drummer plays a fill. I mean a little fill, like a press roll, a Blakey thing or a triplet fill.
This was my problem when I was coming up. The drummer would play something, I’d get so distracted by it that I’d lose the time, and then it would take me four, eight, sixteen bars to find it again.
You need to be confident in where the time is. Go back to the midfielder: the offense is flowing through you. You’re not going to follow the fill, play all over the fill or let the fill distract you. You’re maintaining your position. From the drum chair, Aaron says the bass player could do very little and just keep doing what they’re doing, or feel the direction he’s going in and react to it. He doesn’t know if much has to be done, as long as everyone’s listening.
In the lesson, Aaron plays a blues with a bunch of fills, and I stay put and let the time flow through me. It still felt good. Those fills aren’t a distraction to me. I’m hearing the pulse the fills are being played in, but I’m maintaining my own pulse. That goes back to independent time.
Give it a bar, and don’t play like a click
When you’re thinking about locking in, it might take you a second. You should lock in right away, and that should always be the goal. But if it takes you a bar to find the pocket, that’s better than getting in your head and feeling like all is lost because you didn’t get it right away. There are so many great recordings where it doesn’t happen within the first two seconds. That’s why they call it finding the pocket. Even a great string quartet is finding the pocket, finding how they can share the time.
In the lesson, Aaron and I play right to a click first. We didn’t rush or drag, and it was just correct. It doesn’t make you want to tap your foot. It’s two musicians not even really playing with each other, just playing along to the metronome. Then we play the same tempo, let the music breathe and create a pocket of space between our beats, and I didn’t want to stop playing, because it felt good.
Even if we rushed or dragged, nobody cares, unless it speeds up a lot. There are so many great recordings that rush or drag, and you don’t notice until you compare the start with the end. Art Blakey’s “Free for All” speeds up. Miles Davis’s “Milestones” slows down. (On the copy the blog’s jazz tempo drift study measured, “Milestones” ends about 8% slower than it starts.) Jazz doesn’t record to a click, or at least in my view it shouldn’t, and the fluctuation is what makes the pocket and the groove happen.
Here’s how to practice locking in, straight from the lesson:
- Walk a chorus alone. Pick any tune and walk one chorus with no metronome and no track. If it doesn’t feel good to you, start there.
- Skip the count-off. When I was in school, one thing I used to do with drummers all the time was get together and have one of us just start playing. With no count-off, you can’t know whether you’re behind the beat or on top of it, so it’s on you to create the pocket.
- Ask for fills. Have the drummer play a blues with a bunch of fills while you stay put and keep your own pulse.
Walk that chorus tonight, then take it to a drummer. If you want the whole conversation from the bass chair and the drum chair, it’s all in The Locked-In Bassist.
Go deeper
The Locked-In Bassist: Swing With Any Drummer
Every lesson filmed from both chairs with drummer Aaron Seeber: fills, drags, the nights it won’t lock in, and record play-alongs.
FAQ
What does it mean to lock in with a drummer?
To me, it’s not about analyzing where you are in the beat. It’s about sharing the time and creating a pocket of space between where you’re placing the time and where the drummer is placing it. You can both be on top of the beat or both be behind it, like on hip-hop records, and still create that pocket. That’s where the term pocket comes from.
Should a bass player follow the drummer?
No. The most important thing is to not follow the drummer. Everybody’s responsible for the time, and the drummer has their own problems, so you don’t need to follow them and give them more. In my opinion, drummers adjust to bass players more than the other way around. Drummer Aaron Seeber puts it this way: “To me, the time comes from the bass player.”
How do you develop independent time on bass?
Practice with the metronome, and also play without it. One thing I have all my students do is walk a chorus of any tune unaccompanied and see if it feels good to them. If it doesn’t feel good to you, it won’t feel good to anyone else. Once you can play alone and make it feel good, apply that to a drummer without following them.
What should a bass player do when the drummer plays a fill?
Stay put. So many times the groove is lost because somebody, usually the bass player, drops the tempo on a little fill, like a press roll or a triplet fill. That was my problem coming up: it would take me four, eight, sixteen bars to find the time again. Be confident in where the time is. Hear the pulse the fill is in, but keep your own.
Is it bad if it takes a few bars to lock in?
You should lock in right away, and that should always be the goal. But if it takes you a bar to find the pocket, that’s better than getting in your head and feeling like all is lost. There are so many great recordings where it takes the band a few bars. That’s why they call it finding the pocket.
