When I think of a group of folks moving and grooving together, I can’t help but think of drummers. The creators of space. The keepers of time. The backbone of the band.
Drums were something I was always into, but never properly got into. Guitar was the path I chose twenty years ago. But every once in a while—like right now as I type this—I catch myself “practicing” in secret: right foot quietly stomping out a kick, fingers tapping a phantom snare, hi-hat, crash. Some generic 1-and-2-and… backbeat looping under the noise of my thoughts.
---
Sidenote: If I really count it up, I’ve probably done this little air-drumming ritual at least once a week for... twenty years. Twenty years! And I still can’t nail the pretty simple syncopated beat within the verses of Metallica’s “One.” Sigh. It’s fine. Back to the post.
---
Rhythm
I never became a drummer. But I became a fan. A listener who notices the moments when a drummer drops something subtle, even if I don’t know the technical name.
Like the transition in Dream Theater’s “Home.” Mike Portnoy slows everything down until it almost collapses. That breakdown. And then—like a magician with a purple sparkly drumkit—he sneaks in tiny flourishes. Breadcrumbs that progressively pulls you deeper. That Pulls You Under.
The part that hooked me wasn’t the beat itself. It was the decision. The courage to not fill every second with fireworks. To hold space. To create air for the rest of the band, and the song, to breathe.
Where the pause matters more than the fill. Where the air matters more than the flare. Restraint as performance. Simplicity as flex.
Tempo
Once you hear that kind of discipline, you start noticing it everywhere.
The way baristas ricochet off each other at a busy Starbucks—hands darting, cups stacking, milk steaming—but rarely colliding. Each movement landing on some invisible downbeat.
The way Costco checkout lines surge and stall, moving like a crowd under an unseen conductor—underscored by the scan-beep chorus and the clerks shouting “Next!”
The way teams at work either move in sync, in pocket, or stumble over each other’s timing until the whole song falls apart.
When I’m leading, my job is to set that beat. Not by dictating every note. But by doing three (seemingly basic) things:
- Understanding the project.
- Looking at a calendar.
- Getting to know the people.
That’s it. That’s the tempo map.
If the project is the length of a song and the people are my bandmates, then my role is to shape the rhythm. Adjust for the ebbs and flows of their energy. Keep us together enough to make it sound like music—not just random noise.
Flow
Every project is a different song.
You can’t just copy-paste the last beat and expect it to work. Well, you can, but that’s how you that stuff that feels generic.
Some songs demand straight 4/4, all drive and force. Others slip into strange time signatures, off-kilter but compelling. Some need to explode. Others need to breathe.
The trick is to feel it. To know when to drive hard and when to hold back. To accept that there will always be missing pieces—gaps in clarity, resourcing, communication—and still give everyone a downbeat to lock onto.
Without that? People flail. They rush. They drag. They step on each other’s toes. The whole thing collapses into noise, punctuated by the groan a sad trombone.
The real skill isn’t replicating. It’s translating. Feeling the song you’re in, not the one you wish you were in.
The drummers I admire most aren’t just technicians. They’re translators. Drop them into any genre—jazz, metal, funk, pop—and they’ll find the pulse. They don’t just play the song. They reveal it. They make it.
That’s why I’m obsessed with Drumeo’s Hearing Songs For the First Time series. They drop a drummer behind a kit, mute the original track’s drums, and hit play. No prep. No chart. Just raw instinct. And then you watch magic happen.
he best moments are when the matchup feels comically contrasted: a jazz drummer suddenly handed a death metal anthem, or a pop player forced to stumble through relentless blast beats. It’s chaos. It’s surreal. And somehow, it almost always becomes music. Somehow, these folks make it work.
One of my favorites is Domino Santantonio. They threw her into a metal song and she didn’t just survive—she thrived. Joyfully. Effortlessly. Like she wasn’t keeping up with the song, the song was keeping up with her. That’s what it looks like when someone sets a beat so good it makes other people want to play.
Resolve
This is what I think about when I work.
When I’m in a meeting. When I’m mapping out a sprint. When I’m just standing in line at Costco.
The beat is always there. It doesn’t matter if it’s a five-piece band or a cross-functional team of twelve. Someone has to feel it first, set it, and hold it down—so that everyone else has something to build on.
But when the beat is there? People lock in. They stop guessing. They start playing. The energy shifts from scattered effort to shared momentum. What was a mess of disconnected motions becomes a groove. What was noise starts to sound like music.
And that’s the thing about any team, any project, any song: the beat doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it has to be felt. It has to be claimed.
Because once the beat is clear—once there’s something steady to hold onto—everything else starts making sense.
And it doesn’t just make sense. It starts to feel possible.
Because perfection doesn’t make music. Presence does.