Jazzahead!

This past weekend I went to the Jazzahead! trade fair and festival in Bremen, Germany.  The primary goal was to hopefully make some connections ahead of the new Samba Azul record, which will be out later this year, and to help Joy Ellis in the same pursuits with her new album which I am drumming on and co-producing.  I've always hated pitching myself to people, though, so I ended up just roaming around trying to find friendly people who had similar interests to me, and I did end up meeting some nice folks who might be up for collaborating with Samba Azul or Joy in some capacity.  But, much to my delight, it ended up being quite the drummers hang as well.

 

Three or four different people recognized my name from the blog and stopped me to say hello, which was very cool.  I see the analytics, and it does seem like there are quite a few of you out there reading this blog, but it was wonderful to get to meet some of you face to face and chat drums.  Among them was German drummer, Michael Griener.

 

And after more than 10 years of swapping the occasional e-mail and interacting on blogs and forums, I finally had the pleasure of meeting Todd Bishop from the Cruise Ship Drummer! blog face to face.  He was there with his brother, John Bishop, and Evan Woodle, both drummers who respectively own and work for Origin Records.  Todd brought a selection of Cymbal and Gong cymbals which he, Michael, Evan and I spent some time checking out.  There was talk about bring Todd to London with a collection of his Cymbal and Gong pieces, so if you're London-based and that might be of interest to you, please do let me know. 

 

L ro R: Todd Bishop, Michael Griener, Evan Woodle

 

Also hanging about was Peter Primus Frosch.  Peter is an Austrian drummer, based in Switzerland, who is very active on social media.  He's a great player who posts a lot of really handy material.  Check him out if you're not already hip.

 

Throughout the weekend, there were numerous gigs and showcases, with some great drumming.  Standouts (at least that I heard) were Larnell Lewis with the Jeremy Ledbetter Trio; Renato Galvão Santos with Brazilian bassist, Michael Pipoquinha; and German drummer Christian Lillinger who is one of the most unique drummers I've seen in quite some time.

 

A blurry Larnell Lewis, with the Jeremy Ledbetter Trio

  

Going in with pretty low expectations for my own sanity, it ended up being a great weekend.  I could see myself going back in the future.  But for now it's back to the grind.

16th / Triplet Paradiddle Grid

Here’s a fun little grid to try next time you’re on the pad.  Play constant paradiddles, always accenting the first note of each one, but move between 16th notes and triplets every four beats, then two, then one.  The paradiddles will cross the bar lines so that not only will the accents and doubles shift through the bar, but some of the paradiddles will be part 16th notes, part triplet.  It’s a great challenge of stick and timing control.

Solo Transcription - Max Roach, "Gerkin for Perkin"

It's been awhile since I've done any Max Roach, but I've got some students working on his stuff at the moment, so I've been revisiting a lot of it and transcribing it the week I assign it to them so I can check their work on the spot.

 

So here's "Gerkin for Perkin" from Study in Brown, the same album that brought you "Jacqui", the first ever transcription on this blog.

 

 

Solo Transcription - Gregory Hutchinson, "Jet Stream"

I finally caved and bought an iPad, and it's been a surprisingly positive move.  Not only is it really handy for gigs and rehearsals, but I've ended up doing a lot more transcribing by hand while I'm on trains and planes, or in waiting rooms.  So, some things might occasionally look a bit different around here, starting with one of the first things I scribbled out on it.

 

This is Gregory Hutchinson trading on Peter Bernstein's "Jet Stream" with Brad Mehldau and Christian McBride.  Each solo section features two six-stroke rolls; one as triplets and the other double that speed, a sound you'll hear Hutch do fairly regularly, especially in this period.  After this he does a great solo over the whole form that I haven't had a chance to write that out yet.  Trading section start around 5:19

  

Fabio Miudinho

After seeing the Rodrigo Silvard video from the last post, Instagram then served up another pandeirista named Fabio Miudinho.  I’m not familiar with him or his playing, but I really enjoy his sound which is a mixture of classic language ala Bira Presidente, peppered with flashes of modernity, like the three-note hemiola groupings, the bass sounds slapped with his fingers rather than thumbs, and, of course, the wickedly fast sextuplet fill halfway down page three.

In the video below he's playing with a super popular pagode singer by the name of Ferrugem.

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Rodrigo Silvard

For as irritating as social media can sometimes be, it really is cool how we can discover musicians from all over the world who we may have never otherwise been aware of.  Recently, pandeirista Rodrigo Silvard started coming up on my feed.  I don’t really know much about his story or who else he works with, but I enjoyed his playing, which is full of interesting new ideas that are easy to apply to other tunes.  I don’t actually know the name of this piece, but the instagram video is below if you’d like to follow along.

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Collingwood Cymbals

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Collingwood Cymbals in Bristol where I had the opportunity to create my own ride cymbal under the guidance of Dave Collingwood himself.

I’ve been hammering and lathing my own pandeiro platinelas for quite a few years now, but have always wanted to try my hand at a full sized cymbal.  As expected, it turned out to be an entirely different beast all together.  Dave gave me the option of watching more or doing more.  For me, it was more about the process.  I wanted to be as hands on as possible even if that meant getting a subpar cymbal.  Either by luck, Dave’s great teaching, or a combination thereof, I got the best of both worlds.  I’d say I did a good 75% of the hammering and lathing myself, and still came out with a great cymbal that I’ve been gigging non-stop already.

Here are a few pictures and videos from the day.  If you’re based in the UK, or plan to visit, I’d highly recommend this experience.

 

 

Groove Transcription - Carlton Barrett, "Three Little Birds"

The next tune in the medley I mentioned the other day was Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds".  The groove here is known as a "one drop".  In fact, the drummer on this track, Carlton Barrett, is one of the drummers credited with creating the one drop beat.  The groove is pretty consistent, so I didn't bother writing out the whole tune, but there is a lot of subtlety going on with each bar varying ever so slightly, particularly with regards to how many notes he's playing on the hi-hat.  So, I went through and jotted down some of the different ways he phrases the groove.  In the case of the this sheet, parentheses aren't ghost notes, but rather are optional.  For example, the first bar on the sheet appears many times in the recording, but sometimes you'll hear 1e&a, while other times only 1&a.  As the tune goes on there is a bit more variation and density.

Among other things, I noticed that the 16th notes don't swing as much as one might think they do.  The tambourine adds a lot of the bouncy swing, and if you're playing without a percussionist perhaps you should take this into consideration, but you don't necessarily have to put as much shuffle on it may seem.

There are NO crashes.  None.  And I think this is an important part of the sound.  The fills lead straight back to the groove with no cymbal punctuation.  Resist the urge to play them.  Use open hi-hats instead.

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