SEB ROCHFORD thinks a creative drummer's most useful thought is, 'What can I do around that?' He wants to make variations of his own around a basic pulse, but he has to do it in such a way that the pulse isn't lost, and the other musicians in the band know where the beat is.
At its simplest, a traditional jazz groove is a steady, flowing pattern on the main cymbal – the ride cymbal – which is like listening to somebody repeatedly telling you the time when it's ten-to-two, ten-to-two, ten-to-two. With the other parts of the kit, the drummer plays accents that sometimes sit right within that groove, and sometimes go against it. But, like anything else in music, the idea is to make something that's there to serve a purpose as interesting as possible.
