Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Tumbleweed - 01

Jack Dejohnette playing on Tumbleweed, from Michael Brecker's album Pilgramage— released a few months after his death. This is the type of playing much of what we do here is in service of. 

For a moment it sounded like the tune is in 7, but that's because the bass hits the root on the & of 4, and again on the 1, which is a little unusual. The transcription starts at the beginning of the track, and goes through the first time through the head— it repeats quite a few times. Tempo is 89 bpm. 

There's some random-ish hihat activity, which I usually don't include, except I think it's a co-equal voice with the ride cymbal, almost, as far as constructing the groove is concerned. In the last two measures there's some unusual bass drum activity, partly in unison with the hands, partially in the gaps. Not all of it is real audible, that interaction between the snare drum/tom tom and bass drum is a little buried, the statement there is about the hands.  

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Daily best music in the world: Spirit of '86

Funny how dramatically the zeitgeist can change in a few years. Did you know that fusion was actually a serious thing, for many years? Until Wynton Marsalis hit us with his thing in the mid 80s, fusion was the only thing; jazz played with acoustic instruments and a swing beat was still around, but all the energy and money was in fusion.

Individual albums had a lot more influence. Chick Corea's Elektric Band album was the huge-deal release for musicians in 1986, with everybody envying Dave Weckl's effects rack, 8 and 10 inch mounted toms, and poofy mullet. And, hey, his playing— he was sort of a super-Steve Gadd. Hyper Gadd. Now it looks like the sort of twilight of LA as the center of the musical universe.




John Scofield's Blue Matter is technically an '86 release, but we didn't hear it until around spring of '87. It's fusion, but it's more New York. The weird out-of-time snare drum thing at 0:10 and the sixtuplets on the bass drum after 0:25 announced Dennis Chambers, and what seemed to be a whole thing in drumming.





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