well Alice, drummers are taking a beating because the drum is a dective insterment. It looks easy enough, if you have a sense of rythm you think you can learn it in a few hours. It seems that most people pick it up, and beat our the rythem, and thats it. Drums played that way are not insterments, and those drummers are not musicians. The drum itself is a musical insterment, but you need to practice to get it that way, in fact a drummer probably has to practice more then other musicians because the drum has a peirceing sound that is heard all the time, but doesn't have a large range compared to the other insterments. Therefore to produce a nice sound you need to spend more time. With a fiddle you need to spend a lot of time before you can produce notes, by that time you know the instermetn, and hopefully can play a little music.

While watching my sister in marching band a few years back I heard someone playing the drums, just a standard drummer with no feeling. After he was done Josh (nephew to Bob Dylan) took the same drums, played the same rythem, but there was a difference. Josh was playing music, the other kid was beating a drum. You really need to hear the difference one.

I don't like the drums because nobody plays them. Much the same as Mark Twain said that nobody read huckelberry finn. Of course people read the words, but not the book. People beat a drum, but most don't play it.

You can treat ANY insterment like I'm accusing drummers of doing. You can play anything with the perfect notes, cords, and rythem. Next time your at a Jam session though, listen. You will probably notice that the best players, the ones you could listen to for hours are making more mistakes, then others. The difference is in the feeling, you don't need the right notes to play music. The best players know something that I can't explain, but I'd rather listen to them, and emulate them, then someone who plays like a computer.