I had gotten together with some friends the other night to do a short rehearsal for an upcoming gig. I was playing drum set for several songs, one being a song I already knew but had previously played bass on instead.

Intellectually, I knew how to play the song on drum set, but I had yet to acquire the feel my friend – the song’s writer and bandleader – wanted for the end of the song. I chalked it up to having only played it three times that night and that the feel would come with a bit of practice, both mentally and physically. The fourth time through was a bit better, with the exception of a few odd experiments on my part.

As I went home, I began my usual thought-obsession with the songs I knew I needed to better be prepared for, and in this case it was the new song. As I thought about my rehearsal performances of the song, I thought perhaps I was trying to be too creative, something I know I am often guilty off. Give me an inch of freedom and I’ll want to experiment with trying to enhance music with percussion in my own way, playing rhythms and sounds that I think would sound good with the rest of the music.

But as I thought some more, I thought that perhaps I was just trying to be too clever.

What’s the difference? It’s probably a matter of semantics. From my point of view, it’s a fine line. Attempting to be too creative is to go through several possibilities of enhancements to find the things that work and don’t work, all for the sake of trying to bring out the best in the music (or whatever medium you’re working in). Attempting to be too clever is to go through several possibilities of enhancements to find the things that work and don’t work, all for the sake of trickiness, drawing attention to the enhancements, and being “cool”.

Sometimes both concepts cross over. Something clever can certainly be creative, and something creative can certainly be clever. However, the intention behind pure cleverness isn’t necessarily artistic, and that is the fine line.

Case in point: according to the definition of “clever” on my computer’s dictionary, to be clever is to be “superficially ingenious or witty.”

As a musician and a percussionist, I have noticed that when trying to be too clever on drum set, I’ve got to think more about what I want to try to do, and that thinking removes me from the fundamentals of the music being played which disallows me to fully take the music on its own terms. Also, being clever often involves trying to pull off licks that may make (my) drumming the center of attention, or add enhancements that would only really be noticed by other drummers, or add things that sound cool on their own but don’t necessarily accomplish the goals of the song.

I think this stems from my drum corps background, where being clever is often part of being creative, especially with the art of snare drumming where expression often comes in the form of “rudiments”*, tricky sticking, and odd licks when otherwise simple sticking would suffice. This is often the order of the day in advanced marching snare drumming. It’s a style of expression that I often employ when playing drum set because it’s part of who I am as a musician and percussionist, it’s part of how I hear and think about music, and it’s part of how I play.

However, I often take that style of expression and overuse it, or use it in the wrong context, and that is when being creative becomes being more on the side of clever.

The moral of the story: It is important to know the difference between creativeness and cleverness, to be able to spot that fine line. Being creative is part of the attempt to bring out something special in the music, to bring out hidden potentials, to bring out new ways to hear, to find new ways to interpret, all for the sake of the music. Yes, being clever can certainly be part of being creative, but to be clever for cleverness’ sake isn’t musical at all. Instead – at least in the case of drumming – it’s basically math.