A drumming blog written by Todd Bishop.
Most of the examples don't have much in them for actual drummers, but he's very businesslike about it. It's funny to bring in one of the top drummers on the planet to point out, OK, there's no bass drum there, here's how you hold the sticks.
This is all just an excuse to share that screen shot, which I thought was hilarious. It is funny when they get to the movie Whiplash.
Enjoy:
Hey, I should make some kind of effort to hear some new music. I'm in danger of being a total dinosaur, only listening to decades-old music, and not knowing anything happening this century, let alone decade. Let's make this a new regular feature— I'll listen to something new, and give some thoughts on it. There's no excuse not to, with Spotify generously enriching themselves by forcibly demonetizing all the music in the world so it's free to everyone.
I put on Antonio Sanchez's Spotify channel, looking for something to be annoyed by— that's my attitude going into any new record, my peculiar attitude problem. Three Times Three, released in 2015, features three different trios: Sanchez plus Brad Mehldau and Matt Brewer, Joe Lovano and John Patitucci, John Scofield and Christian McBride.
It's great. Of course it's great. The tunes are all great, the performances are great. It's almost a throwback— other than Sanchez and Brewer, these players all came into prominence in the 80s/early 90s, and you can hear the depth, they're in a comfortable modern bag, that's very heavy. Everybody's playing with a lot of power.
Watching Sanchez can feel like watching drum corps, but I can't argue with what he's actually doing— this is all foundationally solid. What I'm hearing is, he is an incredibly skilled performer who has taken a lot of cool things I like and ruthlessly perfected them. It's just a taste thing of mine that I don't like listening to ruthless perfection— when I sense that, it puts me at a distance.
There are some percussive things happening that read like special effects— which I'm not sure how to process. With any instrument you've got the primary thing it does, the normal sounds it makes while doing its role; when you get into a lot of things that are anomalous that, without developing them... I don't know what it is. We could be expanding the sonic possibilities of the drum set, or we could just be getting into vaudeville, with the bulb horns, Acme sirens and whatnot, I'm not sure.
I like this record a lot. There are some times when I would like a break from the finer subdivisions and total obvious mastery. I start feeling twitchy, like I've been hitting a practice pad for a couple of hours. I can't enjoy the few spaces there are, because I've been set up to read them as further expressions of somebody's genius.
