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Did Bonzo read and write music?-


boylollipop

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I can´t help but think that Bonham´s plalying in Zeppelin, reflects a musician, who knew musical structure in a theretic sence. He understood form!

Especially with regards to his breaks,

I think he must have known very precisely what he was doing to avoid turning the beat around. He did´t just improvise on the spot.

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By most accounts Bonzo was a self taught musician with no formal training except maybe a few pointers here & there from other local drummers in and around Birmingham. What he had, though, was a peerless musical instinct, killer groove sensibilities, and a rock solid internal clock.

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I agree Bonzo is the best!- However there are many myths surrounding topdrummers.

Buddy Rich would never practice, and Bonzo was just this God-given talent.

I don´t agree w/ that.

Bonham is beyond words, but he must have practised! A LOT! And I think he understood how to write music, not necessarily the traditionel way.

But he must have known how many beats he was able to play within the bars.

For instance his break in Stairway at 6.23-6.24 is a break you must be able to count, otherwise you´d lose the timing.

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I agree Bonzo is the best!- However there are many myths surrounding topdrummers.

Buddy Rich would never practice, and Bonzo was just this God-given talent.

I don´t agree w/ that.

Bonham is beyond words, but he must have practised! A LOT! And I think he understood how to write music, not necessarily the traditionel way.

But he must have known how many beats he was able to play within the bars.

For instance his break in Stairway at 6.23-6.24 is a break you must be able to count, otherwise you´d lose the timing.

Almost all musicians know how to count (up to four anyway). This doesn't necessarily mean they were formally trained. There are countless examples of musicians with no formal training whatsoever that went on to make (good) music.

The thing is that we all bathe in music culture straight from our birth so we all become aware of what works and what doesn't on a subliminal level. John Bonham did practice (whether he called it that or something else). He practiced to replicate what he heard, what he liked and what he wanted to hear.

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boylollipop If your interested in more indepth information on Bonzo I would highly recommend Mick Bonham's book on his brother. John was essentialy self taught, much like Jimmy. Listening, playing, he was highly influenced by drummers in the area and learned a lot from a local club drummers. Formal drum lessons, not that I'm aware of.

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All four of them were pretty much self taught - save for some tips and advice from other established musicians. Jonesy and Page had the most experience because of their session days throughout the 60's but really, they were all raw as hell. Its called the Hammer of the Gods for a reason.

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boylollipop If your interested in more indepth information on Bonzo I would highly recommend Mick Bonham's book on his brother. John was essentialy self taught, much like Jimmy. Listening, playing, he was highly influenced by drummers in the area and learned a lot from a local club drummers. Formal drum lessons, not that I'm aware of.

I have read his book. And the one called "A thunder of drums."

But I am going by ear. And I think many of his breaks must have been thought out beforehand. How he practised and understood the breaks, I don´t know, but if you listen to "I can´t quit you", it is clear that you just don´t play those breaks on the spot.

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Hi, I don't think Bonham ever had to read music, much like most rock / pop musicians of the time, and ,indeeed, anytime. He played drums with a lot of groups before coming to Led Zeppelin and would have been playing the kinds of things he did with Zeppelin all the time with these early groups too. If you check out recordings of the Band of Joy you will hear him do lots of stuff that also cropped up in his playing with Led Zeppelin. His formative years as a drummer would have been spent trying out new ideas both on stage and off and gradually this culmination of ideas became his style of playing.

If you read Mick Bonham's book it mentions where he used to try out fills with bands, sometimes pulling them off and sometimes not, much to the annoyance of the bands!

You don't need to be able to read music to play music!

The fill you mention in Stairway is a perfect example of a drummer taking a basic rhythm and orchestrating it in a great way around the kit, but it doesn't necessarily follow that he had to be able to count through it. If you listen closely to the lead guitar at that point you can hear they are doing simillar rhythms. I don't know who played their part first but it seems likely that these things were worked out together during rehearsals for the album.

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Hi, I don't think Bonham ever had to read music, much like most rock / pop musicians of the time, and ,indeeed, anytime. He played drums with a lot of groups before coming to Led Zeppelin and would have been playing the kinds of things he did with Zeppelin all the time with these early groups too. If you check out recordings of the Band of Joy you will hear him do lots of stuff that also cropped up in his playing with Led Zeppelin. His formative years as a drummer would have been spent trying out new ideas both on stage and off and gradually this culmination of ideas became his style of playing.

If you read Mick Bonham's book it mentions where he used to try out fills with bands, sometimes pulling them off and sometimes not, much to the annoyance of the bands!

You don't need to be able to read music to play music!

The fill you mention in Stairway is a perfect example of a drummer taking a basic rhythm and orchestrating it in a great way around the kit, but it doesn't necessarily follow that he had to be able to count through it. If you listen closely to the lead guitar at that point you can hear they are doing simillar rhythms. I don't know who played their part first but it seems likely that these things were worked out together during rehearsals for the album.

Well said, my husband is a drummer and he was self taught, never learned to read music but he just has this ear for rythm. Bonzo is someone who he looks up to a great deal, whorships at the altar of Mr. Bonham. He was such an amazing drummer, I think he and JPJ worked out a great deal of timing together....Black Dog - awesome.

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Hi, I don't think Bonham ever had to read music, much like most rock / pop musicians of the time, and ,indeeed, anytime. He played drums with a lot of groups before coming to Led Zeppelin and would have been playing the kinds of things he did with Zeppelin all the time with these early groups too. If you check out recordings of the Band of Joy you will hear him do lots of stuff that also cropped up in his playing with Led Zeppelin. His formative years as a drummer would have been spent trying out new ideas both on stage and off and gradually this culmination of ideas became his style of playing.

If you read Mick Bonham's book it mentions where he used to try out fills with bands, sometimes pulling them off and sometimes not, much to the annoyance of the bands!

You don't need to be able to read music to play music!

The fill you mention in Stairway is a perfect example of a drummer taking a basic rhythm and orchestrating it in a great way around the kit, but it doesn't necessarily follow that he had to be able to count through it. If you listen closely to the lead guitar at that point you can hear they are doing simillar rhythms. I don't know who played their part first but it seems likely that these things were worked out together during rehearsals for the album.

I am not suggesting he understood how to write music in a traditionel sense. Elvin Jones thought of his fills as in colours. One tom was blue, another yellow. So he played around coulours.

Bonzo has a great way of understanding rock fill-ins in a quite unique way, if you ask.

Sometimes he gets it wrong like when he misses a beat as in Dazed and Confused from TSRTS, but John Paul Jines quickly follows Bonzo and they land on 1 in seemingly right order.

But I really think he knew how to write drum parts, for instance the intro to Rock n Roll is totally unique in the sense that everyone seems to think it starts on the 1. beat of the measure, when in fact it starts at "3 and".

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I have read his book. And the one called "A thunder of drums."

But I am going by ear. And I think many of his breaks must have been thought out beforehand. How he practised and understood the breaks, I don´t know, but if you listen to "I can´t quit you", it is clear that you just don´t play those breaks on the spot.

There is obviously lots of experience and thinking behind Bonham's drumming and that goes for all musicians. Music sounds good to the ear most of the time because it is well structured. Most musicians also often rely on stock musical phrases to either fill time or get them out of problems during live performances and I'm willing to bet that Bonham did that too.

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Of course every musician go by ear unless they are Beethoven.

Bonham plays by ear, but I maintain Bonham must have had some learned foram structure behind his drummig.

His drumsolo, Moby Dick, is also highlly inventive with a formal structure.

From what I've been reading of your posts, and don't take this in a bad way, I think you don't know what you're talking about or at least you're not conveying it clearly.

I am a musician. I have been one for 25 years and I studied music at the college level so I think I can have an informed opinion on these matters. My point being that John Bonham didn't need to have any kind of formal training to play and write as he did. It would seem that, by all accounts, he received none anyway. That doesn't take anything from him, on the contrary, I think it's brilliant that he could learn on his own to play and write music as he did.

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Studiung music at college level, doesn´t sound as a big thing! And don´t take that in a bad way.

Creativity doesn´t come w/ a college degree, far from it.

Bonzo was creative in a worldclass way.

I think that because of the complexity of his drumming, that he might had developed his own system to fully understand what he did, and how to phrase his playing within the meter of the music.

So it wasn´t just on the fly, but more studied and practised, much more that whar has been written.

John Paul Jones wrote the riff to Black Dog, and he wrote it down in a system taught to him by his father. And it was not the traditionel western one.

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If you don´t know about this subject feel free to explore other topics.

I don´t give much for your reasoning that,

"The thing is that we all bathe in music culture straight from our birth so we all become aware of what works and what doesn't on a subliminal level."

lol

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Some quotes from the Man himself should settle this..

From "The Led Zeppelin Biography by Richie Yorke"

"I'd wanted to be a drummer since I was about five years old. I used to play on a bath-salts container with wires on the bottom, and on a round coffee tin with a loose wire attached to it to give a snare drum effect. Plus there were always my mum's pots and pans."

"When I was ten, my mum bought me a snare drum. I've always been fascinated by drums--I felt nothing for any other instrument. Later I played a bit of acoustic guitar, but it was always drums, first and foremost. I don't reckon with that jack-of-all-trades thing."

Bonham never took a single drum lesson, though as a teen he would knock on the doors of local drummers he saw and ask for advice.

"When I first started playing, I was interested in music and I was able to read it. But when I moved into playing with groups, I did a silly thing and dropped it. I do think it's great to be able to write down ideas in music form. But I also think that feeling is a lot more important in drumming than mere technique. It's all very well to be playing a triple paradiddle--but who's going to know you're actually doing it? If you pay too much attention to technique, you start to sound like every other drummer does. I think that being original is what counts. When I listen to other drummers, I like to be able to say, 'Oh, that's nice, I haven't heard that before.' I think that being yourself as a drummer is so much better than sounding like anyone else."

"I've always liked drums to be big and powerful. I've never been into using cymbals overmuch. I use them to crash into a solo and out of it, but basically I prefer the actual drum sound. To me drums sound better than cymbals."

Bonham played many solos hitting the drums with his bare hands. This was inspired by a jazz drummer Bonham saw doing it.

"It wasn't so much what you could play with your hands--you got a lovely little tone out of the drums that you couldn't get with sticks. I thought it would be a good thing to do so I've been doing it ever since. You really get an absolutely true drum sound because there's no wood involved. It hurts your hands at first, but then the skin hardens. I think I can hit a drum harder with my hands than with sticks."

Bonham was very impressed in the mid 1960s by drummer Ginger Baker.

"When I first started, Ginger was a big image in Britain. He was a star in his own right. In the old big band era, a drummer was a backing musician and nothing else. In the early American bands, the drummer played almost unnoticed with brushes, always in the background. Gene Krupa was the first big band drummer to be really noticed. He came right out into the front and he played drums much louder than they had ever been played before. And much better. People hadn't taken much notice of drums until Krupa came along. Ginger was responsible for the same sort of thing in rock. Rock music had been around for a few years before Baker, but he was the first to come out with this "new" attitude--that a drummer could be a forward part of a rock band...not something that was stuck in the background and forgotten about. I don't think anyone can ever put Ginger Baker down. Of course, every drummer has his own idea of just when Baker was at his absolute peak...I thought he was just fantastic when he played with the Graham Bond Organization. It's really a pity that American and Japanese audiences didn't see that band because it really was a fantastic line-up consisting of Jack Bruce, Graham Bond and Ginger Baker. Personally I think Ginger Baker was more into Jazz than rock...he definitely did play with jazz influence. He was always doing things in 5/4 and 3/4 tempos which are associated with jazz. Unfortunately he's always been a very weird sort of bloke. You couldn't really get to know him--he just wouldn't allow it. Ginger's thing as a drummer was that he was always himself. It was pointless for anyone to try to do what he was doing. And Eric Clapton was the same in the guitar field."

Started playing with A Way of Life and married Pat Phillips at age 17.

"I swore to Pat that I'd give up drumming when we got married. But every night I'd come home and sit down at the drums and play. I'd be miserable if I didn't."

The couple lived in a 15 foot trailer. Bonham had to quit smoking to pay the rent.

Midlands musical contemporary Ed Pilling on Bonham: "Bonham was just great--he was the strongest, loudest drummer I'd ever seen. He was the first local drummer to line his bass drum with aluminum to give it a cannon-like sound. The sound he got was just unreal... John broke his bass drum head during the gig. Band members said that was typical. Actually several other groups told me that certain clubs wouldn't book bands in which John Bonham played drums, because he was too loud."

"Well yeah, I was always breaking drum heads when I first started playing. Later on I learned how to play louder but without hitting the drums so hard. It has all to do with the swing of the stick."

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Some quotes from the Man himself should settle this..

From "The Led Zeppelin Biography by Richie Yorke"

"I'd wanted to be a drummer since I was about five years old. I used to play on a bath-salts container with wires on the bottom, and on a round coffee tin with a loose wire attached to it to give a snare drum effect. Plus there were always my mum's pots and pans."

"When I was ten, my mum bought me a snare drum. I've always been fascinated by drums--I felt nothing for any other instrument. Later I played a bit of acoustic guitar, but it was always drums, first and foremost. I don't reckon with that jack-of-all-trades thing."

Bonham never took a single drum lesson, though as a teen he would knock on the doors of local drummers he saw and ask for advice.

"When I first started playing, I was interested in music and I was able to read it. But when I moved into playing with groups, I did a silly thing and dropped it. I do think it's great to be able to write down ideas in music form. But I also think that feeling is a lot more important in drumming than mere technique. It's all very well to be playing a triple paradiddle--but who's going to know you're actually doing it? If you pay too much attention to technique, you start to sound like every other drummer does. I think that being original is what counts. When I listen to other drummers, I like to be able to say, 'Oh, that's nice, I haven't heard that before.' I think that being yourself as a drummer is so much better than sounding like anyone else."

"I've always liked drums to be big and powerful. I've never been into using cymbals overmuch. I use them to crash into a solo and out of it, but basically I prefer the actual drum sound. To me drums sound better than cymbals."

Bonham played many solos hitting the drums with his bare hands. This was inspired by a jazz drummer Bonham saw doing it.

"It wasn't so much what you could play with your hands--you got a lovely little tone out of the drums that you couldn't get with sticks. I thought it would be a good thing to do so I've been doing it ever since. You really get an absolutely true drum sound because there's no wood involved. It hurts your hands at first, but then the skin hardens. I think I can hit a drum harder with my hands than with sticks."

Bonham was very impressed in the mid 1960s by drummer Ginger Baker.

"When I first started, Ginger was a big image in Britain. He was a star in his own right. In the old big band era, a drummer was a backing musician and nothing else. In the early American bands, the drummer played almost unnoticed with brushes, always in the background. Gene Krupa was the first big band drummer to be really noticed. He came right out into the front and he played drums much louder than they had ever been played before. And much better. People hadn't taken much notice of drums until Krupa came along. Ginger was responsible for the same sort of thing in rock. Rock music had been around for a few years before Baker, but he was the first to come out with this "new" attitude--that a drummer could be a forward part of a rock band...not something that was stuck in the background and forgotten about. I don't think anyone can ever put Ginger Baker down. Of course, every drummer has his own idea of just when Baker was at his absolute peak...I thought he was just fantastic when he played with the Graham Bond Organization. It's really a pity that American and Japanese audiences didn't see that band because it really was a fantastic line-up consisting of Jack Bruce, Graham Bond and Ginger Baker. Personally I think Ginger Baker was more into Jazz than rock...he definitely did play with jazz influence. He was always doing things in 5/4 and 3/4 tempos which are associated with jazz. Unfortunately he's always been a very weird sort of bloke. You couldn't really get to know him--he just wouldn't allow it. Ginger's thing as a drummer was that he was always himself. It was pointless for anyone to try to do what he was doing. And Eric Clapton was the same in the guitar field."

Started playing with A Way of Life and married Pat Phillips at age 17.

"I swore to Pat that I'd give up drumming when we got married. But every night I'd come home and sit down at the drums and play. I'd be miserable if I didn't."

The couple lived in a 15 foot trailer. Bonham had to quit smoking to pay the rent.

Midlands musical contemporary Ed Pilling on Bonham: "Bonham was just great--he was the strongest, loudest drummer I'd ever seen. He was the first local drummer to line his bass drum with aluminum to give it a cannon-like sound. The sound he got was just unreal... John broke his bass drum head during the gig. Band members said that was typical. Actually several other groups told me that certain clubs wouldn't book bands in which John Bonham played drums, because he was too loud."

"Well yeah, I was always breaking drum heads when I first started playing. Later on I learned how to play louder but without hitting the drums so hard. It has all to do with the swing of the stick."

I wonder how Lollypop will respond to that...

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Some quotes from the Man himself should settle this..

From "The Led Zeppelin Biography by Richie Yorke"

"When I first started playing, I was interested in music and I was able to read it. But when I moved into playing with groups, I did a silly thing and dropped it. I do think it's great to be able to write down ideas in music form. But I also think that feeling is a lot more important in drumming than mere technique. It's all very well to be playing a triple paradiddle--but who's going to know you're actually doing it? If you pay too much attention to technique, you start to sound like every other drummer does. I think that being original is what counts. When I listen to other drummers, I like to be able to say, 'Oh, that's nice, I haven't heard that before.' I think that being yourself as a drummer is so much better than sounding like anyone else."

Exactly!- Thanks for posting. Yorke´s biography I know. And I wonder what Bonham means by saying he dropped "resding music"? I don´t know what he means by reading music.

Because either you read or you don´t.

The point is that Bonham has some very intricate fill-in patterns, all based on paradiddles, btw. Even today they stand out.

If you listen to the music, especially live, you´ll hear that his breaks must have been worked out beforehand. You don´t play these breaks on the fly.

Rain Song from TSRTS is a great example.

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