Transcription: Philly Joe Jones — Locomotion

I've been working through Philly Joe Jones's intro on Lomotion, from the Coltrane album Blue Train; a student was given the fairly nutso assignment of learning this verbatim off of YouTube. We worked through it by rote/aurally, but I thought I'd do my own transcription of it, so she can see what's going on with it that way:

It's not clear what's happening within the rolls in measures 5-8— something with a triplet rhythm, probably; but we simplified the part there by fitting accented doubles to the rhythm Philly Joe is playing there. It doesn't exactly resolve to a normal rhythm, but the tempo is fast, and it's easy to throw it in there and land the accents in the right spot:

Get the pdf

Audio after the break:

VOQOTD: Dave on practicing

If you come to my house and walk into the room where I'm practicing, you're going to hear me sound like I can't play. That's because I'm working on stuff that I can't do so I can  improve. 

— Chris “Daddy” Dave, Modern Drummer interview, Feb. 2010

Transcription: Ivan Conti — Linha do Horizonte

OK, I may be really blowing what's left of my credibility with you guys with this one, but I'll just have to live with that. This is a goofy little thing with a nice drum performance, by the Brazilian fusion band Azymuth. The fact is, I've learned to really love light music, and as I mentioned before, nobody does light like the Brazilians. I guess I've paid my dues through many years of listening to a lot of Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, late Coltrane, and all other manner of hard listening, and now I've also learned to appreciate things that effectively create a mood. Especially when they have big tom tom fills.

The drummer, Ivan Conti, has at least four toms tuned in pretty tight high and low groups. I've tried to put the fills on the correct drums, which can make them a little obscure to read. Which drums you play them on is not important; instead, go for timing and sound. He plays the fills at an even, strong volume. Like many of my favorite Brazilian drummers, he is a master of dynamics, so you'll often have to make a big jump in volume going into and out of the fills.

A couple of minor points: The occasional ghost notes on the snare (the ones in parentheses) are usually played as a rather sloppy double— you can feel free to leave them out, or add extra ones. Later in the tune, when there is a mixed rhythm on the hihat, accent the 8th notes strongly; the 16th notes happen essentially randomly, so don't get too hung up on getting the hihat part exactly right; he's playing mostly 8th notes, but is likely doing an arm motion for accented 16ths, and some extra notes are creeping in. You can just play running, accented 16ths, or plain 8th notes during that section if you want.

Get the pdf

Audio after the break— you're going to love this one:

Old

You are Tom Bosley.

From one of my political blogs, here's a Twitter exchange highlighting something I've become increasingly aware of. First, Carl Newman of the New Pornographers:

The distance in time between '77 punk and right now is the same as the distance between '77 Punk and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 Response from Atrios at the Eschaton blog:

@ACNewman distance between now and Please Please Me is same as distance between 1963 and Archduke Ferdinand being alive

My version of this observation is to notice that difference in time between the period in which Happy Days was set vs. the time it was actually on TV is roughly the same as the time between now and Kurt Cobain's death. That would make me, horrifyingly, Tom Bosley.

Note: A panicky Wikipedia check reveals that Bosley was in fact older in 1975 than I am now, so I'm safe on that front. But still.

Anyway, Atrios writes:

Obviously the big takeaway is holy crap I'm old (I was born 9 years after Please Please Me, but still), but I think there's a broader point about us olds not getting just how distant stuff is for The Kids Today. More than that, I also think there was a kind of continuity between people born, roughly, from the beginning of WWII until about 1993. The discontinuity here is the internet, a society transforming technology change. 

 I probably started listening to The Beatles (aside from randomly hearing them on the radio) in 1986 or so, when I was 14. Some 14 year old kid today listening to The Beatles would be equivalent to my 1986 self getting into music from 1939 or so. Those "old movies" weren't actually all that old, some of them anyway, when I was a teenager, but I sure did think they were old, even movies from the 70s! Imagine what they look like to The Kids Today. 

Well, a lot of them seem to think they are pretty hip. But this feels like a little bit of an issue, because so much of the music we deal with here is— I guess— old.

Continued after the break:

Holi

Here is a gallery of some incredible photos from the Holi festival in India. Do hit the link.

Phrases for Chaffee linear patterns: triplets in 3/4

Here is one set of practice phrases for the Gary Chaffee linear patterns, in one or two measures of 3/4, with a triplet rhythm. For the sake of brevity, I've given only the two measure phrases that have a pattern crossing the barline; you can make additional two measure phrases by combining the one measure phrases— it will make sense as you get into it.

You can work on these with just the pdf, the patterns, and the examples below, but you want to get the book this is derived from, Patterns, Vol. 3, by Gary Chaffee.

Get the pdf

Many examples after the break:

DBMITW: Bill Withers on BBC

Here's a complete 30 minute Bill Withers concert on BBC from 1973. I'm not sure who's playing drums with him— he gets almost zero screen time, and is severely under-lit. It's not James Gadson, doesn't really look like Al Jackson, and I don't know who else Withers might have been touring with at the time. If you know, please comment...

[UPDATE: Bethany-and-Joe in the comments tells us his name is Fred Casey, who I've never heard of, and about whom I can find no more info.]

Oh, hey...

Judging by this check I just received in the mail, I apparently have an article in the April, 2013 issue of Drum! Magazine— my third. Hopefully that's still in the stores. The piece is my transcription of Vinnie Colaiuta's playing on the guitar solo from Frank Zappa's Keep It Greasey, in 19/16, along with a short analysis and tutorial on how to approach playing in that crazy meter.

My previous Drum! pieces are available on line, too.

Gary Chaffee linear patterns

In the coming days we'll be doing a little extension of a thing found in vol. 3 of Gary Chaffee's Patterns series— an appendix, really— and since that's not an everyday title like Reed or Stone, I need to show you the core of the idea as presented in the book. Patterns is one of the major entries in the literature of drumming to come out of the 1980's. Chaffee was Vinnie Colaiuta's teacher for a time, and seems to have had a big influence on his playing; the books seem very Vinnie, handling a lot of heavy Zappa-esque rhythm. I've been working with them off and on since the later 80's, with periods of years when I'm not able to do much of anything with them.

We'll be working with the linear patterns, found on pp. 40-53; they are three to eight notes long, played with the hands on the drums, and ending in one or two bass drum notes:

The sticking and orchestration on the drums is indeterminate; usually I play them alternating, starting with the right hand, and improvise moving them around the drums. The book presents combinations of these patterns in 16th note and 8th note triplet rhythms in 4/4— for my own practice I've written out the combinations in 3/4 and 5/4, which is what I'll be posting this week.

There's much further exploration of this in the book than I will be doing here, and you will of course want to get these together in 4/4 as well, so it's highly recommended that you buy the book— it really belongs in every serious drummer's library.