More Rational Funk

It's testimony to the lameness of the Internet— not my readers, who are awesome, but all the rest of that rabble— that the videos in Bad Plus drummer Dave King's Rational Funk series mostly get around eight to ten thousand views— occasionally commanding as much attention as this joker's worst video, but never, in anyone's most cocaine-induced fit of megalomania, achieving more than a fraction of the views of this video by some guy called Turdadactyl. Let's see, how are we doing today, still worse than Turdadactyl? Yep. Wonderful, let's all commit suicide.

If you're a follower of this blog, you're going to love Rational Funk, so get in there and subscribe to the series on YouTube, follow him on Twitter, and all that jive. Show some support for good drumming stuff on the web.

Here are a couple of good recent videos— extended techniques, and dealing with children:


Commentary on Whiplash:

Dahlgren & Fine in 7/8 — 01

This is a continuation of a thing we did before, in which we worked on playing a very standard three note pattern, RLF, in 7/8, phrased 3+2+2— as it is in the tune Solitaire, by John Zorn, which has been our context for this series. If you're like me, you play a lot of three-note patterns, and have learned to do them well in 4/4 and 3/4 without getting lost. It's considerably more challenging in this fast 7/8. Here we'll take some triplet patterns from page 10 of  the book 4-Way Coordination, by Marvin Dahlgren and Elliot Fine, and learn to fit them into one measure of 7/8, creating a two measure phrase, alternating with an easy right hand-lead pattern in the second measure— a sticking pattern of RLLRLRL, with the RH on the cymbal, playing the bass drum along with the cymbal:

Mainly our job here is 1) to figure out what one measure of the three note pattern feels like— played all the way to beat one of the next measure, and 2) to figure out how to get into the second-measure RLLRLRL pattern, when, due to job 1, the first note may be a RH, RF, LH, or LF. And do it in a way that makes the downbeats clear to the people you're playing with.

On the page are several examples of a sequence of exercises for developing this idea— apply them to each of the 48 one-beat patterns on p. 10 of 4WC. We're using a Dahlgren & Fine-style staff, with each line representing a specified hand or foot. We're assuming the right hand is on a cymbal, the left hand on the snare drum, right foot on bass drum, left foot on hihat. You'll notice there's a black note head in the right hand part in the second and fourth examples— play those notes on the snare drum. In those cases, our three-note pattern ended on a left hand, and to get into the second measure pattern, we're starting it with a LRL on the snare drum. Also, in the fourth example, you'll notice that the second measure of the last exercise ends with a quarter note; that's just to avoid doing three notes in a row with the left hand on the repeat— one of my biases in my practice methods is that I'll try to avoid more than two hits in a row with any limb. It makes it easier to go faster, and lessens the need for developing a lot of chops. It's just a basic philosophy of mine— I don't want my playing to be dependent on having a lot of technical prowess. You can do whatever you want, of course. Just put together one measure of the three note pattern with one measure of RLLRLRL, and connect them however you see fit.

...what an ugly mass of verbiage. If I were you, I wouldn't read it— I'd just look at what's on the page, and try to figure out why it is the way it is, and apply it to the other patterns in 4WC.

Other suggestions: It's a good idea to accent the first note of each measure, and also the fourth note: 1-2-3-1-2-1-2. When the second measure starts with a solo right hand, play the bass drum along with it; when it starts with a solo bass drum, play the cymbal along with it— if you don't have to do anything awkward to do that. Whatever you do, go for the easiest, most flowing thing, that also states the downbeats clearly.

More of this type of thing coming soon...

Get the pdf

Service announcement — EVERYTHING WORKING, apparently

OK, it looks like we've gotten this hosting nonsense sorted out. PDF downloads are working for the whole site, and you can get to the site via www.cruiseshipdrummer.com, or via the blogspot address, http://shipdrummer.blogspot.com. Just typing in cruiseshipdrummer.com takes you to the interim placeholder I put up when the thing was down.

Please let me know if you encounter anything strange strange behavior by the site in coming days... hit the email Todd link in the sidebar. Thanks for your patience.

Posting will continue to be light, as I'm getting married next week, and have lots of stuff to do...

SUNDAY UPDATE: No BS, now everything is actually together. What a pain. Please let me know if you encounter anything strange...

The Vanguard 'n' me

Looking through my archives I found some of my old drum corps music, from the Santa Clara Vanguard in 1986. Hastily copied from Ralph Hardimon's score— I think this was basically my audition, now that I think about it; Ralph left me with the score for about 90 minutes, and I had to copy it out and learn the vibraphone part for the opener, Festive Overture by Shostakovich. So it's rather rough looking. I think I had only been playing mallets for about a year at this point— the first piece I ever actually learned was to prepare for my college audition, and that was in the spring of 1985.

I was in my freshman year in college, and thought my drum corps career was over after the Salem, Oregon corps I had marched with for several years folded after being edged out of DCI associate status, finishing 26th at nationals in 1985. I had been shifting my focus to drum set for several years, and was ready to move on from corps. Then a fellow percussion major at the University of Oregon, who was with the Vanguard in 1984, let me know in April that they had lost a couple of people from the pit (I think they call it “front ensemble” now?), and hooked it up for me to go down to California and audition for the spot. They also lost a tenor drummer, and for a moment I was deluded enough to think I could get that spot. But you don't just walk into a position like that six weeks before the first shows.

I think the person I was replacing may have been the low man in the section, because the parts were mostly not extremely difficult. I had a fast lick on the vibes in the opener, and some big, exposed concert tom parts in a fast piece called The Hut; the rest was mainly sound disks (tuned crotales), gong, concert snare drum, and bass drum. I did get to play the Garden Weasel, sort of a legendary SCV garden implement turned musical instrument, as well as destroy a very expensive 36" Paiste gong, several mallets, and nearly my wrist on the closer, The Great Gate of Kiev, from Prokofiev's Pictures At An Exhibition. One day early in the season Ralph rehearsed that part of the show— which we were playing with great taste and decorum, like good classical percussion students— he continually demanded more and more volume, until I was putting my whole body weight into these gong notes. That earned me a close up on the television broadcast of the DCI World Championships— I think a few veteran members were jealous of that.

The experience of being in the group was different from what I was expecting, based on the SCV alumni I knew; they were all music majors— Tony Cirone or Charles Dowd students— or music professionals, and I shared a lot more in common with them than I did with many members who were not on that path. There was a little bit of culture shock, me being the northwest, little-corps, hippie-schooled, ultra-left wing, transitioning-into-being-a-jazz-musician guy that I was. Overall it was a good experience; Ralph Hardimon I think is one of very few real artists involved in drum corps— he writes music— and I was very fortunate to get to be in one of his groups. Talking to my friend Nathan Beck, who I marched with previously, and who stuck around SCV after me, getting to work with Ralph was really our whole interest in continuing in the activity after high school.

Here's a recording of the show:

Page o' coordination: straight 8th 7/4

More 7! This is a collection of exercises based on a pattern not unlike some of our old Elvin waltz patterns, for use with a new sampled practice loop that will be forthcoming today or tomorrow. The idea is to play these with straight 8th notes, but you can swing them, too— just turn the beats with 16th notes into triplets, in whatever way makes sense to you.

Do the left hand tom moves— they're a value-multiplier. Play through an exercise a few times as written, then play it many more times with each of the moves. Loop coming soon.

Get the pdf

Transcription: Roy Haynes intro

You know what, I still owe you a BOOK OF INTROS. The thing has been languishing a few short hours from completion for quite a few months now. Perhaps me drawing attention to that fact, as I'm doing here, will help me get off my butt and get it done... stay tuned...

In the mean time, here is an intro played by Roy Haynes on a cool hard bop tune, G.W., from Eric Dolphy's first album as leader, Outward Bound. That's a very in-your-face Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, and Jaki Byard on piano.

The entire passage is played at a fairly uniform, strong volume. The Xs on the snare drum line are played as stick shots. The last two measures are the beginning of the tune, and are approximations— there may be a little more going on than I've written. The 8th notes have a legato swing— don't play an exaggeratedly triplety swing feel— even the 8ths out a bit.

Get the pdf

Tech-boosting NYT writer beat up

For starters, I don't believe anyone was
predicting an actual apocalypse... 

UPDATE: More links at the end! Lots of people talking about this article. 

STILL MORE UPDATES: This thing is a hit. Will Buckley at Fareplay comments, in a piece called The Creative Meltdown That Is, author Steven Johnson writes a follow-up to his original article, gets comments from Marc Ribot and T. Bone Burnett! Excerpts at the end of the post.

UPDATE AGIN: Robert Levine at Billboard responds!  

Also see the comments of my Internet media piece for an ongoing discussion of the issues involved here, between me and an anonymous, pro-piracy/libertarian[?] reader. 

A little follow-up to do with one aspect of my Internet media piece of a few days ago: a New York Times Magazine article, The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn't, by Steven Johnson, has been making the rounds lately. In it Johnson makes a case, based on very broad categories of statistics, that all the bad effects of Internet 2.0 media on artists' livelihoods, which artists say are happening, are not happening. Or are offset by good things.

I said this about it in the comments of my Internet media piece, where someone left a link for it:

Interesting article. We'll put him in the camp of writers boosting the idea that recorded music is now worth nothing (ignoring that a lot of people are making money off of it), and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The article is not a scientific study, it's one writer's opinion, based on very broad categories of statistics— which it seems to me would be prone to distortion because of the vast amount of money concentrated at the top, say, 1% of the business. His conclusion “Consumers spend less for recorded music, but more for live.” is indicative of that— if revenues for middle class musicians fall off a cliff, well, hey, U2 is getting $500 a ticket, so that makes up for it. I don't see his conclusions borne out in the lives of the musicians I know, and clearly a lot of artists have been alarmed about the way things are going. 

Similar questions and criticisms are now being raised by more able reporters than I. Jonathan Taplan, an artists' rights firebrand, calls it “one of the most brain dead pieces that the New York Times Magazine has ever published”, and says “Whenever the technology industry comes under criticism, they can always rely on the epic logroller Steven Johnson to roll out a book or article that 'proves' that everything you are observing is actually wrong.” He makes the same complaint as I do about the distortion of the statistics caused by the concentration of wealth at the top:

As we have pointed out before, the recorded music business is a winner take all business in which 80% of the revenue flows to 1% of the artists. So the fact that Beyonce and Jay Z are making more money today that in 2002 does not have anything to do with the lives of the average musician. If you average in the incomes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, it looks like the median income is rising. Bullshit. 

Taplan is fun to read, but other writers go more in depth refuting Johnson's claims. Like Kevin Erickson at the Future of Music Coalition, in The Data Journalism That Wasn't. It begins:

Steven Johnson’s article “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t” frames itself as a data-driven response to concerns about the plight of creative workers in the digital age. But Johnson’s grasp of the limitations of the data he cites seems tenuous, and he ends up relying on some very dubious and all-too-familiar assumptions. In its sweeping dismissal of artists’ various concerns, the article reads as an exercise in gaslighting.

The piece is so detailed that it's difficult to summarize— do go read that whole thing. I promise you will encounter Johnson's arguments again. Erickson concludes:

The debate today [is]... not just about whether art will make money, but whose art, what kind of art, and how much of the money generated by art ends up with artists, and what they’ll have to endure to get it. It’s about how much agency artists get in defining the terms of the digital landscape. It’s coming from artists who hated Napster passionately and artists who really had no problem with unauthorized file sharing. It’s coming from artists who’ve recorded for major labels, indie labels, or no label at all. 

Let us be clear: our problem with Johnson’s article isn’t that he fails to conform to some doom-and-gloom scenario for artists working today. Indeed, there are a lot of new opportunities for artists, and those opportunities are worth celebrating. Most frustrating to us is that Johnson reinforces a false binary between pro-technology optimistic futurism and anti-technology digital pessimism. And that simply doesn’t describe the state of the contemporary debate about art and the digital age. 

If you want to know how musicians are faring, you have to ask musicians, preferably a whole lot of them. You’ll get different answers from different musicians, and they’ll all be correct in terms of their own experiences. But your overall understanding will better reflect the complexity of the landscape. 

More after the break:

Groove o' the day: Zigaboo Modeliste — Keep On Marching

Here's a funky Second Line groove from Zigaboo Modeliste, on the song Keep On Marching, from the Meters album Good Old Funky Music.

Play the open hihat strongly— it helps if you have some pretty light hihats, as Modeliste does. On the downbeat of beat 3, he plays the hihat both with his hand and with his foot, or sometimes just with his foot— the sound is a little different, and accents that note a little bit.

Here's what he plays in the first measure of the recording, which you can use as a fill. The tenuto mark on the & of beat 3 indicates a half-open hihat.

The track:

Gratuitous Whiplash gif o' the day: double time swing-off!

Remember, it took a couple of hours of movie-reality time to declare this guy the loser.

Feel free to share it, with a link.