drum studio blog

A Lesson with Billy Martin

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:51:00 +0000

I knew a few months ago that I was going to have to travel to NY for business for a week in December. Last time I traveled I was near Chicago and got to hang with Rick from the boards and we even got to play a bit together at his place on his lovely DW’s. (thanks Rick!).

This time around I was on a quest to find a way to make the travel ‘suck less’. One of my all time most inspiring drummers is Billy Martin from Medeski, Martin & Wood. While studying his playing over the last 10 years, I’ve been able to overcome my old Rock instincts to play at FFF all the time. I’m consistently inspired by his playing and his approach. I decided that the best case scenario would be to get a lesson with Billy Martin. I dropped him an email and didn’t really expect to hear back. About 3 weeks later I get an email from his student list posting times available in December between tours and things. Sure enough one day worked for me and I grabbed up 2 hour long slots back to back. I was thrilled!

Gracious host

Billy was a gracious host and was warm and welcoming. My goals going in were to be challenged and to get new perspectives on my playing and approach. I wanted to try to identify the conceptual blockers that are between me and more enlightened playing. It’s not about chops for me (though I could always us more tools in the bucket) but more about how to apply myself and to play more organically and more musically.

After arriving and getting a warm greeting, we went back to his practice room in an outbuilding behind his home. It’s December so he had a lovely wood burning stove stoked up and keeping the space toasty. The room was minimalistic and earthy with a slightly Asian aesthetic. In the center of the room was a 4 piece set of drums. High-hats and one cymbal. The snare(14), rack (12), floor(16) were old Rogers drums, and the bass drum was an amazing primitive drum of some type, though certainly not a regular kick drum. It was a clean and inspiring space.

Wrong and strong

After taking a minute to say hello to his drums and warm up a bit. Billy asked me to improvise a 5 minute solo. “Say something with the drums. Don’t be shy. I don’t care if you play something wrong, play wrong and strong, there is no wrong.“ This reminds me of T Monk. Much of what Thelonious played could have been considered bad playing or just mis-formed chords. But of course in the context of what he did, it was perfect. His wrong notes were the new ‘right’ notes. Wrong and strong baby, play with conviction.

Drum tuning

I always thought that I was comfortable playing with a broad range of tunings. Billy’s snare drum was tuned very low, almost floor-tom range, with the snares very loose. If I would have played this drum anywhere else I would have thought that the owner didn’t know how to tune the thing. I was pleasantly surprised when I played it. It had a meaty ‘clonk’ rim shot but was also very sensitive and pleasing when played with just the tip. It was certainly a drum that you wouldn’t waste your time playing dead center. It’s real tone came out when playing halfway between center and the edge, and from there out to the hoop. I found his kit generally comfortable without any modifications, though this surprised me because I’m usually very picky about my setup.

Since, I’ve spent some time trying to recreate his snare sound on a few drums in my studio while the sound was still fresh in my mind. I have to say I’m getting really hooked on the sound. Though not quite as loose as his. I’m certainly hooked on the feel and overtones. I found it was also easier to play this drum without ear-plugs. I’m a hearing protection junkie, since my days slamming punk rock at obscene volumes, and I have some tinnitus in my left ear so I think I have a natural tendency to crank my snare up past where it should be in order to ‘cut’ through my hearing protection. Playing Billy’s snare, tuned in the extreme, and still sounding awesome has opened my ears to this.

Thinking compositionally

We discussed how I practice improvising and how I usually break my routine up. One big insight was that I tend to practice too long on something. I would improvise for 45 minutes to an hour. Sure in an hour of improvising there’s going to be some cool stuff in there, and some junk. But the goal is to be able to conjure a meaningful composition within just 5 minutes. Something with an identifiable structure to the listener. Then work into longer compositions after I can consistently create in a 5 minute space.

We decided to focus on my structure and composition, where I needed the most work. We worked on soloing in a simple ABA form, where the B section was completely different from the A section.. .not just a subtle change but a 180 degree change. And then back to the A section in approximately a 5 minute canvas of time. I struggled a bit remembering what I was doing in the A section when I was trying to return. Billy’s suggestion was to remember the ‘feeling’ of what I was doing and not the exact notes or groove. It’s something that I’ll be working on for a while I’m sure.

Billy’s book

We spent the last half hour or so working from Billy’s book Claves of African Origin. I had been working through some parts of the book on my own. I’ve been especially intrigued by the clave notation which can be used to transcribe a clave pattern with associated lead foot (bass) secondary foot (high hat) and with high and low counter rhythm elements with the left hand. It’s a deceptively easy notation system which is equally effective at notating a general groove as well as it is clave rhythms.

The claves in his book (there are hundreds) are really sensual when thought of more as rhythmic harmonies than as ‘exercises’. I can see how internalizing them will expand my internal core rhythmic palate. I think there can be a tendency to try to ‘get through’ a book. This book is more of a grab bag, that I can tap into and pull something out to examine and internalize. I’ve found much pleasure since working on just one clave rhythm for an entire practice session.

Going forward

Billy really loaded me up with stuff to do, since we both knew it may be a long time till I get to go back. I’m feeling energized and excited about the things I need to work on. I’ve started transcribing some clave rhythms from selected tunes into the new notation and finding connections. I’ve been working on recording 5 minute improvisations and am seeing progress every time. I’ve also been able to think more critically about what I need to work on to get where I want to go. It some sense the main thread is ‘just go do it’ and ‘trust your ears, follow what’s good’. I always knew that I could be better at playing compositionally, but I kind of assumed that it would just come. I’m now realizing that if I can identify a gap, it’s worth working on that.

The journey never ends!

Here are some pics of my clave transcriptions using Billy's notation:

How it works in my studio..

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Electric instruments:
Guitars, Keys, Bass, etc all go directly into Amp modelers (such as the Pod). I’ve got one Line 6 Pod at my place and I think Biggie has at least a few for Guitar and Bass, in case either you or Phil don’t have a modeler. You can run additional pedals right into the Pod as if it were an amp. It used to be that running guitar right into a recorder or out from a combo effects pedal produced horrible results. But nowadays since the prevalence of high quality amp modeling pedals, it’s primo, and is a technique used on countless major label albums.

Acoustic Instruments:
The drums are always the biggest problem, but I have that solved by having a Clearsonic IsoBooth. This is a mostly sound proof enclosure that allows me to slam the skins without disturbing neighbors, my wife upstairs or our sleeping toddler. It’s effective enough that the in the room right above the drums (living room) my wife won’t have to turn up the TV or take a phone call in another room. And from my toddlers bedroom you can’t hear a thing. The drums are fully mic’ed up and run through the board.

Vocals are generally the only other acoustic instrument to deal with. Mic’s are run into the board and after some non-volatile effects (effects run only for monitoring, not to disk) they are blended and directed into the recorder.

The Mix:
The headphone mix is critical. I’ve spent a lot of time making sure we have the flexibility to make it the best mix possible. Within the recording hardware piece I have a separate mixer section specifically to manage headphone mixes. This allows me to have 4 distinct headphone mixes where I can blend 4 drum mics, vocals, bass, and 2 guitars individually for each of the 4 mixes. A headphone mixer manages the amplifier output for each of the 4 sub mixes, and each submix can drive up to 3 separate headphones. So I could actually tailor 4 mixes for up to 12 pairs of headphones… sweet.

Non-volatile effects are applied to help make the mix comfy and pleasing with some reverb on vocals etc. If you need more guitar, less drums, or anything it’s easy to adjust to taste. Because everything is coming in through headphones, you don’t have to struggle to hear what you need to, and you don’t have to deal with your ears ringing afterward.

The Recording:
I’m currently recording 8 tracks at 96khz/24bit. This is about double CD quality and allow for clean effects rendering before mix down to stereo 48khz for CD/mp3. I usually record in blocks of 2 hours (Pro-Tools max session size). That way everything we play is recorded and we don’t have to mess around starting and stopping the recorder between takes. Sometimes the best stuff comes out while we are messing around between tunes etc. Everything is captured. It also takes some of the stress out of recording. It doesn’t seem as much like the heat is on. After a few minutes you forget the recorder is on and you can just let go.

I’m recording and mixing with the latest Pro-tools 7.4 software with some nice plug-ins. They have some great live modeled reverb (TL Space) and some awesome compressors (Smack and Bombfactory) as well as a host of EQ and other tools for tweaking.

If a take is perfect, awesome, we’ve got it. If we need to re-do the vocals or other individual parts later… no sweat we can overdub to our hearts content. If I’m tracking for a project (not just recording a rehearsal) then the first goal is to get the drums nailed first. So if there’s a guitar or vocal mess up, we don’t stop the song… fyi. Then later we can overdub the part needed, or just try the song again.

Guitar re-amping:
Another cool trick we can do is re-amping. If the sound of the guitar or bass is missing something, we can run the guitar/bass signal out of the recorder and into an amp that’s miced up in my ISO booth. Then we record the re-amped signal from the mic. We might then use this signal instead of the straight guitar, or blend the two. Though, I don’t have to do this very often with the quality of the amp modelers these days.

Mics:
I’ve got a bunch of mics. I use Shure SM57’s on toms and snare, I use a Shure SM81 overhead and some Oktavia large diaphragm condensers as other overheads. I use an Audix D6 kick drum mic. When recording live rehearsal or run-throughs I would ask that you bring your own vocal mic and stand. Most folks are using the Shure SM58 vocal mic for live and that gives a nice live sound for the vocals. And we can overdub vocals with some of the condenser mic’s afterwards if we want more vocal presence or a more ‘studio’ sound.

Loop Deluge

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:56:00 +0000

Below is a selection of loops I’ve done in my studio in the last year or so. I play in a few groups around town and one of them is a band called Ebeneezer. We do some pretty lengthy improvisations live, kind of Phish meets, Particle, meets something else. I’ve included a link to the second half of an hour long improve we did a few months back. This is about 30 minutes of pure improvisation.. which after the first 3 minutes of so moves into a trance/electronic stratosphere journey thingy…

Here’s some loops I’ve done.. Most of these are pretty short.. just a few measures..

http://xonk.org/drumstudio/loops/2008-06-25/schlunk-38sec.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio/loops/2008-06-25/clacketytongtong-76sec.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio/loops/2008-06-25/biggiedoda-37sec.mp3

http://quadranaut.com/demo/jungle-loop.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/great-drum-loop.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/great-drum-loop2.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/samples/dub.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/samples/greasy.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/samples/hiccup-nanigo.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/samples/ren0.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/samples/ren1.mp3

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/samples/steelygroovey.mp3

Here is a sample of some of my bands early experiments in the studio with more electronic sounds...

http://quadranaut.com/demo/04-23-2008-neez-Mixed-part2.mp3

This is about a 30 minute improv that heads out into the stratosphere… it’s actually the second half of about an hour improv. The first 3 minutes or so build into something.. and at the 3 min mark it starts getting tasty…

Ok.. .sorry for the deluge… J Here’s some purely electronic stuff I’ve done…

Here are some links to some electronic stuff I did with samples and loops, a few years ago.

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/boobinga.mp3

I’m taking liberty with some great old D-Lite saxaphone here. Chopping it up and pasting it as something new

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/improvise.mp3

This is a tricky set of samples I pulled from an old Peter Erskine drum instructional CD, including Peters voice.

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/suglunk.mp3

This is the deep sub bass tune I showed you last week. Pardon the Paula Abdul backbeats :P

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/dawchickychaw.mp3

This one was an experiment on building a clean stereo image… after the first 30 seconds or so the tune should open up into a wide stereo image.. I kind of like that.

http://xonk.org//drumstudio-orig/audio/prowler.mp3

This is a slow groove using the same D-Lite horn samples

http://xonk.org/drumstudio-orig/audio/hoedown.mp3

This is a dirty sounding abrasive tune… I go back and forth on this one.

Let me know what you think!

Neal Peart and Rush on Colbert Report!

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:26:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1y2SV7fn9k&fmt=18

You've got to love it!

Polyrhythm Illusions

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:19:00 +0000

Polyrhythms used to intimidate me. They were this black magic where the drummer was playing 2 separate things at one time. But everything seems like black magic until you learn it. Then it's just another thing you know. Sometimes the mystique of a new technique will actually diminish after you've learned it.

I'm also a juggler. Juggling 3 balls has the same kind of draw that drumming has on me. (helps with triplet feel also). But with juggling its also an illusion. It 'looks' like you have 3 balls in the air at a time, but actually you only ever have one ball in the air and switch out at either hand.

Polyrhythms are the same. I have internalized the 3:2 or 6:4 Polyrhythms and use them all the time. But I love 7:4, it tickles my soul. The hardest part of learning it occurred before I began to try to learn it. Because it seemed so crazy and unattainable. I had to think of it not as 2 rhythms but as 1 rhythm which was divided a certain way among my limbs. Now it's internalized and doesn't seem as hard. But I still love how other musicians triple take when I whip out a 7:4 groove.

Here's how I conceptualize it.

First grid out a measure of 7/4
1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a5e&a6e&a7e&a

Each quarter note gets a pulse, and then the 4 lays within that on certain other notes like this:

1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a5e&a6e&a7e&a

Now place the sticking like this:

Right Hand
1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a5e&a6e&a7e&a
Left Hand
1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a5e&a6e&a7e&a

Note how the right hand just plays quarter notes, and the left hand starts on the beat and then shifts one 16th every time around. As I play it I think (1...2 a3..4.&.5...6e...7....1..etc)

After I thought of the rhythm this way I was playing it very soon after. Then I had to internalize it so I could play it 'with' something.

Try putting the right hand pattern on the high hat and splitting the left hand pattern between the Kick and the Snare. This is a really interesting and strange groove.

Play it and repeat the pattern while thinking in 7/4. Feel the 7 and lock in with that.

Then Play it feeling the Kick and Snare in 4/4. This can make you stumble, but let your right hand go on auto pilot and focus your mind on the Kick/Snare. You will feel that second tempo and start to relate to it. When you are doing a poly like this you are actually playing two tempos at once and this can lead you into cool implied metric modulations, but thats for another day

Do this enough and you will internalize the feeling of the 7:4 poly to the point where you can take a regular 4/4 groove and throw a 7 high hat rhythm over it for a measure. But be sure your playing with musicians who trust you or you may make them think you're drunk

Once in a while in my band we will have a special rehearsal where we will work on ensemble 'exercises' as opposed to songs and improvisation. One thing we will work on is this 7/4 groove. The bass player will lock in with the 4/4 pulse and the keyboard or guitarist will improvise in 7. We did this a long time before it started to sound good. Mostly we were just thrilled to be hanging on at first.

Fun stuff

Custom Kick Head

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:01:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I received my custom drum head from drumart.com for my band Ebeneezer.

I opted for the removable logo for my 18" kick drum. That way I can remove it without taking the drumhead off if I'm playing with another group. The logo is basically high quality printing on vinyl film. It installs easily and looks so professional I'm shocked it cost me under a hundred dollars. If you need/want a custom head I would recommend this company for sure.

The only problem I had with the logo was the first time I gigged out with it. I loaded my car up with the drums on a Thursday night for the Friday gig. I went to work Friday and left the drums in my hot car all day and then drove 2 hours up into the mountains to the gig. Alma Colorado is just shy of 10,000 feet, and thats almost twice the altitude of Denver. We had the midnight slot at the bar and it was quite cold out by the time I unpacked my drums. as I unpacked I noticed that the logo had started to peel off the top of the drum head. Some closer inspection revealed that the vinyl did a little shrinkydink number. The vinyl had stretched out in the heat and contracted in the cold. I 'made' the head go back on the drum with a little duct tape and it made it through the gig.

When I got home I put the head in the bathtub and let it soak in about 4 inches of the hottest tap water. I then applied the logo to the glass shower door and used a squeegee to remove the bubbles. My wife wasn't too thrilled that she had to look at my band logo while taking a shower, but thats another story. Anyway it worked and the head flattened back out. Next time I have to keep my drums in my car I'll remove the logo until right before the gig and it should be all right.

Gear - Drums

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:53:00 +0000

I have 2 kits that I currently record and play out with. I’m partial to a four piece setup and I always approach a drum configuration as a four piece, or an extended four piece with do-dads. I find that a four piece setup aids focus when playing for the song and keeps me grounded and thinking creatively.

Pearl Master Studio series in deep cobalt blue.

16×22″ Kick drum with no mounts
7×10″ rack tom with RIMS mounts
12×14″ rack tom (used as floor) with RIMS mounts

Gretsch Catalina Jazz kit in white peal.

14×18 Kick drum (mounts unused)
7×12 rack tom on a snare stand
14×14 floor tom on legs

Snare Drums

5×14 Gretsch steel drum (10 lugs with die cast hoops)
4×14 Custom built maple (10 lugs with Pearl die cast hoops)
6×13 Tama (6 lugs) with a Yamaha groove wedge
6-1/2×14 Pork Pie Big Black Brass Snare (10 lugs triple flange hoops)
12″ Remo TSS Snare

Cymbals - primary

22″ Bosphorus Stanton Moore series wide ride
14″ Bosphorus Stanton Moore series fat hats
18″ Bosphorus Traditional series Jazz Crash/ride
18″ Bosphorus Traditional series flat ride
8″ Zildjian A splash (mounted ‘bell up’ under Bosphorus flat ride

Cymbals - in the arsenal

20″ Zildjian K Custom Dry ride
20″ Zildjian K Rock Ride
16″ and 18″ Zildjian Z rock crashes

Hardware

Axis Pedal (AX-A)
DW 6000 series stands (flat base) for gigging out
Pearl stands in the studio
Pearl Eliminator Pedals (double)
Yamaha cocktail kick pedal (for playing the bottom of a floor tom)

Sticks

Vic Firth - AJ1 hickory
Vic Firth - SD4 maple
various rods sticks and toys for special effect

Loop Harvest - 6/25

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:39:00 +0000

Wednesday is my usual rehearsal day with Ebeneezer, but this week we had to cancel because the guitarist had a canceled flight back from NYC and couldn’t make it in time.

So I made use of the 2 hour window to do some housekeeping in the studio. I was working on some drum tuning tweaks for our gig up at the South Park Music Tour on Friday the 27th.

I made a few little breakthroughs. I found out that my internally mounted kick drum mic (Audix D6) was out of phase with my overhead microphone (Shure SM81). I didn’t think it was out of phase because I haven’t run into that problem previously. The sound was really washed out and almost transparent sounding. I thought it was the mic placement, but then I noticed that kick sounded full until I brought in the rest of kit.

I corrected the phase problem in pro tools by sliding the kick track so the waveform lined up with the overhead waveform for an isolated kick hit.

Anyway, while playing and tuning and improvising I discovered a few tasty grooves. Below are the first ones I’ve harvested from the hour and a half session I recorded.

Free Drum Loops

Biggie Doda
Clackety Tong Tong
Schlunk 0
Schlunk 1
Schlunk Fill

Cocktail Kick The Bucket

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:07:00 +0000

Since seeing Glenn Kotche on the Modern Drummer Festival 2006 DVD playing a cocktail kick drum, I had the idea that this would be a good thing to have in my bag of tricks. I’m currently mainly playing an 18” kick drum and getting a nice big sound out of it so I was pretty sure I could get a usable sound out of a floor tom. The challenge in my mind was to tune the drum so that it had a usable ‘kick’ sound while still maintaining a playable top head.

I bought a used Yamaha cocktail kick pedal from a shop in Boulder Colorado, and so I had the kick pedal covered. Both of my floor toms are 14” in diameter. The Gretsch floor tom has legs so I figured it would be easier with legs to position. I put a 14” Remo coated Powerstroke on the bottom, replacing the clear ambassador, and tuned it really low, almost, but not quite flappy. The batter head was a Remo ambassador weight renaissance which I kept.

It didn’t take very long to get a decent kick sound that was quite usable, especially when miked up in my studio. The top head was harder to deal with however. if I tuned the batter where I would normally tune a floor tom, it sounded like a kick, if I tuned it higher it sounded like a muffled timbale. I ended up bringing the resonant bottom head up a little bit from flappy, and then bringing the batter head somewhere between floor tom and timbale.

Bottom line is, this is a compromise. I see this configuration as a way to do some low volume acoustic gigs, like small coffee shops and such, where I might be accompanying acoustic instruments with no amplification at all. I think with the cocktail kick, a snare, one cymbal and high hat, I’d be well equipped for that kind of venue. Of course I’d need my box of do-dads, shakers, and sound makers to round things out.

The other place I could see myself using this setup would be in the studio for tight break beats or loops.

I’ll try to post some loops with this configuration.

Thank you Billy Martin for the Clave Notation!

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:07:00 +0000

I was working in the great book by Billy Martin, "Riddim, Claves of African Origin", and in the book he presents a really great notation system used for conveying clave rhythms on the drum set. The system was so useful that I immediately found myself using it right away with little practice. I would recommend buying this book by the way. Billy has been a huge inspiration to me, and his book is very insightful. It shows clearly the depth of his personal approach and method to acclimate these styles into his tasteful repertoire.

This clave concept sparked a revelation for me: Everything can be considered a clave. Each groove, no matter how it's painted has a predominant pulse, which can be thought of as a call and response. Personalizing this into my own playing has a tendency to make my playing more conversational at its core. This frees up my embellishments to maintain the conversation with the other musicians I'm playing with. Even some thing as simple as "boom chick boom boom chick" becomes:

QUESTION: "Boom Chick?"
ANSWER: "Boom boom chick!"

This may sound strange, but it's apparent as you start to think about the dialog between instruments, and extend that to the drum set. You can hear this between musicians in some choral music where a group of singers may repeat a phrase as an ostinato pattern as a â€˜call and response' and other groups of singers singing related patterns over top.

Related to this, I'll mention the tune "Boozer" from the John Scofield album "A Go Go". Medeski, Martin, and Wood back up John Scofield on this album, and on this track they work together to create this kind of simulated drunken banter. As you listen to the track imagine the music is a drunkard talking, boasting, belching, and spitting a bit. I think you'll get what I mean here.

Back to my main thread here, I started using a variation of Billy's clave notation to quickly document groves I play on set, so I can remember them later. I also used this to map out difficult patterns that I can understand, but have trouble lining up between my limbs. It works well on paper, but also in a mono-spaced font in the computer world. Here is a description of how I have been using it.

Legend - Beat Notation

Count 1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a

R Hand | | | | | | | |
L Hand | | | | | | | |
R Foot | | | | | | | |
L Foot | | | | | | | |

x closed HH
o open HH
x foot HH

@ Snare Drum
- Cross Stick

^ Rack Tom
v Floor Tom

* Kick Drum

There is basically a vertical line for each part of the pulse. In this case a measure of 4/4 is represented by each 8th note. 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. The spaces in between represent the e's and ah's in 1e&a. The horizontal positions aren't instruments, but instead limbs, so you can easily see how the rhythms relate to each other as a whole.

Then along each horizontal limb, you map out the orchestration that is played by each limb, which may change. Here is an example groove in the clave notation:

Count 1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a

R Hand x x x x x x x x
L Hand | | | @ | | @ |
R Foot * | | | | **| |
L Foot | o | | o | | o

And here is what it sounds like: clave-notation-example.mp3

The situation has come up a half dozen or so times in my life where I had to sub for a group and get up to speed on a nights worth of songs in just a few days. On 3 occasions I had to do over 40 unfamiliar songs in less than 48 hours. This isn't bad if you are somewhat familiar with the songs, but if they are completely foreign then it can be quite a challenge to do without some excellent notes. I usually will use a kind of Nashville number system hybrid wherever possible which is similar to the one Billy Ward describes in his great book, "Inside Out: Exploring the Mental Aspects of Drumming".

It's pretty easy to document a groove or feel in the clave notation and include it with the Nashville style chart to make a more complete reminder of how the groove is constructed.

I was recently asked to fill in playing a nights worth of mostly Grateful Dead tunes. I had never had the opportunity to listen to the Dead and had no idea what I might be in for. I got the list of songs and started listening and making notes. Most of the grooves are pretty standard kind of feels, so notes like: "2 beat country swing" and "Slow blues shuffle" were enough to suffice for many of them, but for the trickier tunes this system worked really well. I was able to do the one and only rehearsal with the band without any actual wood-shedding. The band was very happy and surprised that I was able to hop right in so quickly. They Bass player, who I play with regularly, told them "Oh yeah, he does his homework all right!". Can't beat an introduction like that to other musicians .

Pimp My Ride... Cymbal

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:06:00 +0000

It's taken me 20 years to find out why my ride cymbal sound sucked for jazz. Back when I was playing for a living I didn't have the financial luxury to buy a bunch of rides to try out. Also back in the 80's and 90's every ride cymbal for purchase in a music store in a 2 hour radius of my hometown in Michigan was geared toward rock and heavy metal.

Ping ping pa ping, is not what I was hearing on old jazz records. I was hearing Ptaw paw pa ptaw. It just didn't' dawn on me that the problem was my ride cymbal. I have to admit, I wasn't playing jazz for money, and in the end rock and roll was paying the bills so it wasn't high on my priority list.

Now that I'm older and have a â€˜real job' I can afford to pursue the music that really inspires me, and also have the luxury of having an income that can support some trial and error purchases. Even still I was mostly at the mercy of what local drum shops stocked. From my experience at least 80% of the inventory of most music stores is targeted for new/moderate level of players who wish to play modern popular music (a.k.a. pop rock). That said it's hard to travel all over the state to â€˜try' cymbals that may or may not be what you're looking for. Or, that may sound nice in the store but not blend with what you've already got.

Play a ride that crashes
My first clue was that when I really started working on creating a solid swinging ride pattern to vamp over, I was drawn to my 18" rock crash cymbal. It's thick for a crash but as a ride still very thin by comparison. It was the closest thing to the ride cymbal sound I was looking for. Still I was daunted by the fact that it said â€˜crash' right there printed on the metal. My problem was that I had inner conflict between my ears and my mind. The ears should always win. Grasping that has made a huge difference in my entire approach to the kit.

It was around this time I discovered www.cymbalsonly.com where Tony the owner personally plays every cymbal that comes in and records it with industry standard microphones and posts the recordings on his web page. He will play every cymbal on its own, and with a kit, including clean single hits and crashes. It was here where I could listen to and â€˜try' dozens of cymbals out of hundreds to find out what was really appealing to me. I found out that I really need thinner ride cymbals. And that every ride that is really turning me on also has a very nice crash sound that stands alone also. I ordered a Bosphorus Stanton Moore 22" wide ride and 14" Stanton Moore fat hats. Not because of the name, or the brand, but because those particular cymbals sounded the best to my ears. The only ears I'll ever listen through. When I received those cymbals and played them the first time, I almost cried. I'm not joking. Here was the cymbal sounds that I had always dreamed of, and the exact same sound I heard from the website. Since then I've also purchased a great 18" crash/ride and an 18" flat ride. They are both in heavy rotation in my cymbal bag.

Having a cymbal sound that is conducive to the style that I'm playing is a huge motivator. Or I should say, having a cymbal sound that isn't conducive is very de-motivating. Since I have been playing these cymbals my feel and playing in a jazz situation has improved immensely. If you are struggling with getting really â€˜into' the jazz space, look at your cymbals and seek them out, it will help you for sure.

Yesterday I put one of my old ride cymbals up to see what I was missing, and also to verify that it really was the cymbal and not just in my head. I mounted a 20" Custom Dry Ride by Zildjian. Wow. How could I have ever played that thing? It's completely tailored to that dry ping sound. Swing patterns just sounded wrong, though I could still tell that my feel had improved. The bell was nice, very focused. It is still a great ride for the right situation. But that's not the situation I'm in any more, at least for now.

Splash Madness

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:05:00 +0000

I"ve been really finding some interesting sounds on the kit lately; mostly by using a splash cymbal in creative ways.

I used to have a cymbal arm attached to my high hat stand so that I had an 8" Zildjian A splash right above my hats for easy accents. Recently I purchased new hardware for my Gretsch kit. I"m going for a vintage setup and picked up the DW flat based 6000 series hardware. I got 2 straight stands 1 boom, flat high hat stand and 2 snare stands (one for my 12" tom).

The stands are much lighter weight and I didn"t want to unbalance the light high-hats with a heavy boom arm. I couldn"t really justify a separate stand just for the tiny splash so I had it left over. I ended up putting the splash in some creative places.

On top of the high hats
I started out putting the splash on a separate top hat clutch that I had lying around. This allowed me to put the splash directly above the high hats. It also gave me the ability to easily pull the splash off and use it on the snare, or replace it as the top high hat cymbal. Pretty cool.

Next I tried the splash over the high hat pull rod without any felt or anything just letting it flop there. This provides an interesting pseudo delay effect on all left foot high hat closes. Kind of a "chick shaw, chick shaw" kind of sound, where the "shaw" sound is consistently behind the beat a bit. You could still hit the splash solo. I also tried putting the splash on the high hat rod but positioned where it would rest on my first crash/ride cymbal which is positioned between my high hat and my rack tom. This provided a nice little sizzle when riding on my first cymbal or crashing on it.

In the high hats
I had a lot of fun playing with the 8" splash between the two high hats. It"s a different sound if you put it upside down also. I did have to widen my high hats in order to accommodate the cymbal though. I got a great dirty high hat sound with this technique. Doing pea-soup style accents sounded awesome, almost like a great tape saturation kind of chunky sound. Surprisingly it took really heavy playing to get the splash to start creeping out, even on 13" hats.

On the cow bell
The splash also fits on the cow bell mounting rod that I keep on my bass drum hoop for my cowbells. Again no felt or anything to protect the splash but it was an interesting placement. I also tried stacking the splash on a 12" cheapo Wuhan china on the cowbell, and that sounded really trashy and nice. I was even able to hit the cowbell and stacked china/splash a the same time to get an interesting effect.

On the LP Crasher
I usually keep a smaller LP Crasher on top of the cowbell as above. I found I could put the splash on the mounting pins that run through the crashers. This was similar to the sound of the stacked china/splash but a little trashier and shorter decay.

On the cymbals
I don"t usually use top felts on my cymbal stands. I have a feeling that his helps the cymbals move easier and resonate better, but I can"t really quantify that assumption. So, its pretty easy to pull the nut off a cymbal between songs and throw a splash cymbal on top of another cymbal. This can have different sounds depending on the cymbal. The shape of the bell on the splash and the cymbal beneath it are both important. If the cymbals are too similar in shape it can make the stack sound like big old high hat. If they are different in size it can make a great sizzle sound on rides, or a china kind of sound on a crash cymbal.

Balancing Choices and Limitations
I"ve found it to be a very creative tool to limit my sound sources for a particular track. With a simple 4 piece kit with only 2 or 3 cymbals other than high hats, I have created some great limitations to work within. Appart from being much easier to haul around, I find that for some reason these imposed limitations facilitate better takes. More so than when I was playing a â€˜universal" kit designed to be ready to handle any situation without modification. So if the tune really needs a sizzling china sound I can add a splash on my main crash cymbal and get the sound while keeping the limitations. In this case I have to remember that my main crash has been repurposed, and if I want a standard crash sound then I have to rely on my high hats or ride cymbal. Or if the original crash sound is needed, then I can put the splash on my ride. It"s been a lot of fun, and has opened some door for me.

New Snare Drum

noreply@blogger.com (John Curry) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:04:00 +0000

I built a new snare drum this week. It's a 4x14 maple Keller shell with chrome tube lugs, triple flanged hoops and a beautiful Dunnett snare throw off.

I did an intricately stenciled design between each of the 10 lugs in a black stain and then did the overall drum in a dark walnut stain with a satin finish. The overall look of the drum is very antique which was what I was shooting for.

I had some initial trouble with the Dunnett strainer which I expected on a 4â€ drum. It was tricky to place the strainer so it wouldn't interfere with the top hoop, and still be able to travel the distance to get a good tight snare sound. I ended up flipping the small plate that clamps the plastic strips on the strainer side. This allowed the strainer mechanism to travel further.

My default snare drum batter head is the Remo Renaissance Diplomat weight head which I love because of its great combination of extreme sensitivity and fat feel at medium tensioning. I use this head on my 6x13 maple snare and on my 6 1/2 x 14 steel shell and it provides a great contrast to the deeper shells.

However on this drum it was a bit too sensitive. I'll have to try it again with a different batter/snare side tuning. Anyway I put a Remo Fiberskyn Diplomat on the drum and it sang. I was really shooting for a sensitive bebop snare, and this is spot on.

I would like to get some die cast hoops for it, but that's going to be another hundred bucks, so I decided to play the drum for a while with the triple flanged and see how it does.