Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history. Roach started as a traditional grip player but used matched grip as well as his career progressed. Roach’s most significant innovations came in the 1940s, when he and Kenny Clarke devised a new concept of musical time. By playing the beat-by-beat pulse of standard 4/4 time on the ride cymbal instead of on the thudding bass drum, Roach and Clarke developed a flexible, flowing rhythmic pattern that allowed soloists to play freely.

This also created space for the drummer to insert dramatic accents on the snare drum, crash cymbal, and other components of the trap set. By matching his rhythmic attack with a tune’s melody, Roach brought a newfound subtlety of expression to the drums. He often shifted the dynamic emphasis from one part of his drum kit to another within a single phrase, creating a sense of tonal color and rhythmic surprise. The concept was to shatter musical convention and take advantage of the drummer’s unique position. While this is common today, when Clarke and Roach introduced the concept in the 1940s it was revolutionary.

Max Roach approached improvisation as free as possible. He didn’t spend any time prepping his improvisational sections beforehand. Max Roach enjoyed dealing with his musical thoughts on the spot, allowing the moment to create itself. This enabled him to take more enjoyment out of what he was playing on the drum set, since it was a natural response to the moment he was in. Having a lot of technique at his disposal, like high levels of independence, hand technique, and foot technique enabled him to do so. However, Max Roach’s incredible set of tools served only his ability to communicate different ideas.

Although Max Roach enjoyed coming up with new patterns within a single piece, he made sure he returned to ideas that were still within the structure of his drum solos. He would do so by repeating those ideas throughout certain sections of the solo. This concept of design within solos and improvisational pieces were more important to Max Roach than melodic or harmonic content. This concept is an integral part of his very popular drum solos, like “Big Sid” for instance, which he wrote in honor of Big Sid Catlett, one of his favorite drummers. This also gave his drum solos and improvisational pieces an awesome sense of musicality and theme. Another one of Max Roach’s cool concepts when it came down to soloing, was his use of feet-ostinato vamps. Drum solos like “The Third Eye” and “Drum Waltz” are great examples of that. While keeping a steady ostinato going with his feet, Max Roach played the main statements and themes on top of the vamps.

The way Max Roach approached soloing pretty much took drum solos in a whole new direction. Instead of bashing and unleashing a series of notes on the drum set just for the sake of it, Max Roach worked on different themes and ideas. That, coupled with the names he baptized them with, gave his solos a strong identity, almost like if they were songs. This way of approaching soloing is very interesting and original, resembling the way stories are written for books and movies. Max Roach builds on the emotion of his drum solos as he goes along, using different textures, rhythms, and dynamic levels.