Regarding Cream, the first time I heard the term was when Ginger Baker talked about Jack Bruce and said he agreed to play with Jack was because he had “time”. He said that same thing about Eric Clapton. As I recall, in an early interview, Eric said he didn’t understand what Ginger meant, but I’ve heard both Jack and Eric later use the term to describe Ginger. Ginger, in his usual manner refused to define what it is to anyone who doesn’t understand.
So what is “time”? Is it being able to keep up the rhythm/beat (whatever that is) or set up a rhythm/beat as they often did when jamming? At first I was interested only in Eric’s guitar playing, but having listened to the same music for 40+ years, I’ve learned to listen to Jack’s bass and Ginger’s drumming as well, and sometimes can understand a little about how they’re leading the jam in a certain direction. Is that “time”?
Russ Kunkel is a studio session drummer. He’s played on thousands of albums in the past 50 years.
Watch the first 10 minutes. Great players visualize the pocket (time). They see the beats and markers between the beat. A great drummer can play just behind the beat (swing) or on the beat. Russ describes how important it is to play in between the beats. There’s almost an infinite amount of combinations that can happen in that space.
Or ahead of a beat. My usual examples are Stewart Copeland is an ahead-of-the-beat drummer; Phil Collins is dead center; John Bonham is behind the beat. Swing doesn’t have to be behind the beat. Swing is kind of its own topic and hard to explain. Most basically, it’s often a type of shuffle, so a straight eighth note pattern will be shuffled to various degrees (that is, the first eighth note in a two-eighth note grouping will be elongated and the second eighth note will be correspondingly truncated), but swing is more about the general timing, articulation, accenting, etc. It’s hard to define, and I’m not the greatest person to do it, as I don’t feel I have a strong sense of swing. It’s good enough to fake it to non-jazz audiences, but anybody who plays or listens to a lot of jazz will be able to tell that my sense of time and musical phrasing comes from rock.
As for “time,” it’s, well, how a musician feels the beat and plays to the beat in a piece of music, as well as how they interact musically and timing-wise with other musicians.
Thank you for the comments. I think I understand it a bit, but how it work when all three are improvising and seemingly going in their own directions like here on Spoonfu:l https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDZqnYoiG60, but still sound so incredible together?
When concentrating individually on the guitar, bass or drums, I often think that it’s “Oh…you did that huh? How about if I do this?” and the other two come back with their own challenge.
