Creativity Quote by Jan Hammer

There is a quiet demotion embedded in Jan Hammer's line: the drums have been reassigned from identity to pastime. Coming from a musician whose public persona is largely built on keyboards, synths, and sleek, high-gloss studio craft, the phrasing draws a bright line between what feels good and what makes the record. "Still for fun" is the tell. It frames drumming as tactile pleasure, a private outlet that survives even as career priorities shift toward the tools that best translate into his signature sound.

The second clause does the heavier work. "I don't do much recording with them" isn't a denial of ability; it's a comment on the economics and aesthetics of production. Recording drums is expensive, logistically fussy, and unforgiving. In the studio, drums are less an instrument than a system: rooms, mics, phase, engineers, endless decisions. For an artist known for precision and control, that setup can feel like surrendering the steering wheel. Synths and programming, by contrast, let you iterate fast, sculpt tone surgically, and keep authorship tightly in hand.

There's also a subtle honesty about how musicians age within their own skill sets. You can love an instrument without needing it to be your professional voice. Hammer's sentence normalizes that separation: play for joy, record for intention. It's the sound of someone protecting the part of music-making that isn't optimized, monetized, or turned into a brand.