After listening to Radar Love four or five times this morning on the "first snow" bus ride to work, I switched to ELOOut of the Blue.
The "album" is the one and only one that I ever owned on 8 track tape. I got it for a couple of bucks at Sears in a sale bucket in probably 1983 or 1984. The purchase was inspired by my love of the Xanadu soundtrack, which was inspired by my love of Olivia Newton-John...which was inspired 99% by the hormones of a tween lesbian. I also owned a concert program from an ELO concert that I bought at Texas Tapes and Records (the greatest record store EVER), also on the cheap. I got it cause I played cello at the time...and thought the pictures of the cello players in a rock band were cool. Ironically and totally not by design, ten years later I would be playing cello in a rock band...but I digress.
I bought an ELO greatest hits "album" (on cd this time...which is the format that I also replaced Out of the Blue with a few years ago) recently and have been playing a bit of drums along with it. The parts aren't hard. I'm sure that, for many years, I assumed they were done with a drum machine.
But no. They were done by Bev Bevan. Lately his name seems to pop up as having been witness to every great party in rock and roll. He is quoted alot in stories about rock stars who OD'ed. I kind of wonder if some of his stories aren't made up. Lately, he has a radio show and blog...which I've checked out a few times and found to be increadibly boring (not unlike THIS blog in that respect, I suspect).
Drummerworld is fairly silent on Bevan, though there is a bio here. As seems to so often be the case, not much is said about his playing style, though given that he filled in for Black Sabbath and also played in ELO, he must have a bit of range.
10538 (with a little more going on with the drums that much of their stuff) and Do Ya? live:
New band is being pretty nice to me. It's a very instinct-driven kind of playing. Very different from copying covers...and even different than trying to write set parts. It is very likely that I'll never play the same thing twice on any of the tunes. And I think that's probably ok. Half the time I don't even know what song we're playing...I just feel my way through and try to pay attention to what everyone else is doing for cues on feel, dynamics, and starts/stops.
After a full day of immersion in Radar Love (listened to it maybe 20 times and played it maybe 5 all the way through, with additional work on smaller sections) things are progressing quite nicely. I can make it through the entire song now, though I trip a little at the start of the tom breakdown. I think either I'm speeding up there or the recording changes tempo. I'm modifying most of the song to simplify it, of course, but I can make it through. It will be doable for Dec 12th and the main concern will be how the interaction with the other musicians goes. I'll still spend every day until then refining the tune, of course...trying to get closer to the recorded part and improving, in particular, the speed on my triplets and the bass drum part (which I'm playing mostly 1 & 3 on now, but it varied from that quite a bit on the recording). This would be a nice tune to master and then video tape.
I'm pleased with the progress so far, and much, much less freaked out about the recital. It'll be fine.
When I focus, things come along fairly quickly. And once they are in hand, they seem easy after that. I have to remember that. Focus.
I've been meaning to look into the concept of drum "fake books" for a while now. I remember how you can buy guitar fake books...that distill the basic of a song into a short summary...so you can kind of play all kinds of things. It occurred to me that such a thing for drums would be awesome. So many rock and pop songs use a repetitive groove...you'd only need the basic one to four measure groove plus a note about any fancy sections. Most songs could be summarized in a few lines. And then classic rock cover band here you come...or live karaoke band.
Now granted, not all songs NEED a fakebook...drummers can fake it all by themselves often. But still...I wondered.
A quick web search reveals lots of promising dead ends that lead to fake books for any instrument under the sun aside from the drums.
So no obvious fake books available for drums...drum transcription books of various flavors, but nothing like I had in mind.
I was reminded, though, during my search, of the free drum charts at Gigging Drum Charts...which mostly aren't free at all...but most are pretty cheap even if they aren't free. Taking a look at those that ARE free, I see that theses "charts" are pretty close to what I was thinking of as a drum "fake book"...they just aren't all together in a big book. Here, for instance, is Running Down a Dream by Tom Petty. It seems like they could have reduced this particular song down significantly with short hand and repeat symbols/notation...but oh well. Anyway...I'm gonna do some searches under "drum charts" and add the good links at left.
I did something stupid last night. Actually it's maybe something that would not have been stupid if I'd done it a month ago, but now it is a bit stupid. A "big mistake" as I like to say.
Big mistakes usually work out for me ok though.
I signed up to play Radar Love at the Madison Music Foundry student recital.
Wait for it...on Dec 12th. That's less than two weeks away.
Radar Love is in the Hal Leonard Classic Rock Playalong Book. It is a tune that I've heard for years, but never took much notice of. When you look at the drum chart, though, as a beginning/intermediate drummer you get blown away pretty quickly. I thought for sure that I'd reviewed the song here before, but I don't find it in the archives. It's one of those songs that I thought, "Now when I can play THAT, I'll be good" immediately followed by "I'll never be able to play that."
In the intervening months (because indeed that first look was less than a year ago...the compression of time really blows me away sometimes with this drum thing...even though it feels like I'm not advancing, I've come a long way in just the last year) I've returned to the song a few times, and it has begun to seem less daunting. A key issue was mastering (well, KIND of mastering) the "train beat" which gave me fits when I first tried it and isn't as big of a deal now. Another daunting portion is the drum breakdown section...which sounds really impressive. It isn't really that hard, though I still haven't quite mastered it. Something about playing the toms sounds more impressive than it is.
Anyway, the song seems doable now, but it still represents a challenge. I've meant to take on that challenge but haven't had a real reason to push it. But having to play it with a live band (with no rehearsal) in front of an audience in less than two weeks is probably a pretty good incentive. Like I said, if I had decided sooner (read: if I had the nads) to sign up, I would have had more practice time and that probably would have been a good thing. That said, as I've written, I've been in a drum lull lately, and this is probably a good fire to light under my ass.
Learning the song is one thing. The venue is another. Basically I will be playing with other students from MMF...all ages and playing levels. Oh...and there will be two drummers. And we will never have met each other or played together before. Get up on stage at the High Noon in front of an audience heavily parent-leaning and play.
This presents its own set of issues. Best case scenario, the kids rock and blow me off the stage and I just ride along. I suspect this will not be the case, however. I'm not saying that they won't be good and that they won't know the tune. Surely they will. And that may be a problem. Most of them will be teens or pre-teens, and eager to show off their "chops." Many of them may have never played with other musicians before.
Last night I heard a few tracks off of the Rock Workshop cd. MMF has a program where you lay out cash and your kid gets to join a rock band for 6 weeks. At the end they record a cd and have a show. The recital I'm playing in is the opening act for the Rock Workshop show. I guess I always assumed that kids that were motivated enough to do such a thing would be really good. And I'm not saying they aren't good...and aren't millions of miles ahead of where I was at their age...or maybe even am now in some respects. What surprised me about the recordings wasn't that they played poorly individually...it was that they played poorly TOGETHER.
I guess this is something that I've taken for granted...learned by osmosis. How to play WITH other musicians. I actually thought that I wasn't very good at it because I don't feel like I listen to the other musicians as well as I should. But I've been playing in ensembles since I was 12...in rock bands since I was 22ish. I guess over that time I've learned to "play nice" with others...though it's never been a focus.
I guess that's what maturity gets you, if not chops. I think this is what all those pro drummers lament wishing they knew then what they know now.
So yeah, the recording was all over the place. Sounded like 4 different songs.
And, I fear, so will sound Radar Love. Only worse...because the Rock Workshop had 6 weeks of playing together with an instructor. We're gonna have nothing. And Radar Love isn't exactly a simple tune. There are lots of odd transitions.
Enter the drummer...or in this case...drummerS. It occurs to me that learning the tune is one thing. Learning it perfectly the way that Golden Earring played it would be awesome. But playing it that way at this recital might be counter-productive. Probably what this performance needs is a rock to hold things together. There are lots of parts in the recording of Radar Love where the time keeping does some kind of non-traditional rock things. For starters, the song swings, so counting time is a little weird...and there are places where there's no bass drum beat and/or no snare. It's a little jazzy. Which sounds cool...but could really fuck with a 12 year old who's never played in a band before.
I'm considering, partially because it would be a little quicker to learn it this way, but also because I think it would make the performance go oh so much smoother, adding a bass on 1 and 3 and a high hat on 2 and 4 throughout most of the tune...whether it is in the original recording or not. There are places this isn't appropriate and I wouldn't do it. But there are long stretches where I think it would help things significantly. Throw my "chops" on the sword for the greater good. It's only parents watching anyway.
Here it is in all its glory...it'll be the main thing I play for the next 12 days.
Just to make me feel really good about this...JoeDrums...who is awesome...says "This was a very difficult drum part" (for the record, he's added some of the time keeping stuff I spoke about too):
Some lessons don't seem to cover much and some are crazy busy. I really think that he doesn't watch the clock and just goes with it when things are going well, but that could just be my perception.
Monday was jam packed.
We started with sticking exercises in 6/8 and working on double strokes. I talked to him about when playing mostly with fingers is appropriate and when playing mostly with wrists is appropriate. The upshot is that, once I've practiced it awhile, I'll have more control and speed with fingers...more power with wrists. So intricate things or soft things are fingers, loud things or the beginning of strokes (where you need rebound) are more wrists.
Then we moved on to a new sheet of triplet exercises. I did pretty good on these. Four way independence is improving, though it is still really, really hard.
Then we played a Count Basie tune and he recommended that I get Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. The Basie tune was really good for strengthening left foot and ride. It's worth using in a regular practice regime I think. I forgot the name, but it's one of the famous ones. I wrote it down.
I try to play drums and bass (and other stuff). I started late in life. My thoughts on my own playing, the playing of others, and various resources. Plus a running gig list of my shows.
