Transcription: more Serge, more Dougie

What the heck, let's do some more Dougie Wright. The last thing was a little goofy, but today's transcription is for me a minor classic of 70's studio rock drumming. The album again is Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson, and the song is L'Hotel Particulier. We're very much in post-Ringo mode, meaning: fat bass drum and snare drum, light hihat, big, simple melodic fills on the tom-toms.

The dotted-8th/16th rhythm is slightly swung, in an irregular way; on the other 16th note rhythms, and on the fills, the 16ths are straight. Play the hihat very lightly (sometimes it may even drop out) through the breakdown at the bottom of the first page, then play it more strongly, and half-open through the end of the song. Note that in measure 52 there's one note on a third, lower, tom-tom. And there's a typo on the fill in measure 44: the last note should be snare drum and floor tom together— I'll have to fix that for the next year's book...

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Groove o' the day: Dougie Wright — En Melody

I spent a lot of time listening to French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg as I was working on my album of his music a few years ago, and came to appreciate a very British, very 70's, session drummer named Dougie Wright, who frequently recorded with him. This is the drum groove from En Melody, from Gainsbourg's famous concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson. You get the feeling here that Serge told the band to do something très extrême, they did this in a couple of takes, and then went off to do whatever musicians did in their off time in those days. It was kind of Gainsbourg's style to do these things almost as if he couldn't be bothered, and the entire album is under 28 minutes long.

As it says, the circled bass drum notes are optional— his most frequent variations in the groove are to play or omit those notes, especially the first one. The 16th notes are slightly swung. There are a lot of sixtuplet fills throughout the song, which no doubt use that same RRL sticking used here.

Transcription: Dougie Wright — La Décadanse

This makes a nice companion piece to the recent Azymuth thing— they're both pretty cheezy, with a lot of big tom tom fills. The song is La Décadanse, by Serge Gainsbourg. I can't find a credit for the drummer, but I believe it's the great British session drummer, Dougie Wright, who was working with Gainsbourg a lot around 1970, when this was recorded.

The tempo is slow, so don't flip out at all of the 32nd notes, 32nd note triplets, and occasional 64th notes. Have fun with it.

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Groove o' the day: Gainsbourg

I love 70's studio drumming. I was just re-listening to some old Serge Gainsbourg stuff- I made a record of his music in 2009 and did a couple of  little Europe tours with it- and this groove jumped out at me. We played this on the tour in 2010, but I guess I never listened to the groove that closely, even though I transcribed arranged the tune for the band. The drummer is an English session player named Dougie Wright

The hihat part is played with both hands, natural sticking, I guess (RH on the 8th notes, LH on the e's and a's); it's a little bit reminiscent of Cissy Strut, which uses the hihat the same way. The rhythm of the accents makes a little partido alto rhythm- I don't know if that's intentional; I suspect not. I think it's just a universal rhythm. The bass drum notes in parenthesis are optional.

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