Style
Jazz fusion is a "lead" style of playing distinguished by interplay with lead instruments such as guitar or keyboards, and the blending of jazz and rock drumming styles. Though the use of lead drums was not a new concept in jazz, it was relatively unheard of in rock. Upon joining Hendrix in late 1966, it became evident to Mitchell that the trio format of the band was similar to the recently formed Cream, and that it would allow him to become more free with his playing. Like a jazz drummer, Mitchell's playing not only provided a rhythmic support for the music, but also a source of momentum and melody. He made heavy use of snare rudiments, fast single and double stroke rolls, and jazz triplet patterns, and shifted between both traditional and matched grips. Examples of his style include the rudiment-heavy fills on "Hey Joe", which help to carry the song through a series of increasingly intense climaxes. "Manic Depression" is a 3/4 rock waltz that finds Mitchell playing a driving Afro-Cuban inspired beat, which then shifts to an explosion of triplets around the drumkit during the outro.
"Third Stone from the Sun" incorporates a swing ride pattern to underpin Hendrix's jazzy surf guitar, and the spacey breakdown section features polyrhythmic drum fills that float over the 4/4 meter. "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" features military-style snare drum work and delicate cymbal playing that evokes the sound of wind chimes. The long blues jam "Voodoo Chile" features Mitchell playing a deep blues groove with subtle hi-hat accenting and powerful drum fills.
Read more about this topic: Mitch Mitchell
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body—both go together, they can’t be separated.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)