The Practice Room

Global Drum Project

From MickeyHart.net:

“The GLOBAL DRUM PROJECT Tour brings Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo together again in a reunion sparked by the 15th anniversary of the ground-breaking album Planet Drum. Released in 1991 on the Rykodisc label it went on to earn the first-ever Grammy Award in the World Music category. The tour is the group’s first in almost a decade. It also marks the resumption of an artistic relationship – between Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain – that goes back to the late 1960s.

“For Hart, this reunion is an opportunity to take Planet Drum into new places. "This is a deep drumming groove. We’re taking the archaic rhythm worlds into outer space. Planet Drum explores rhythm and noise…it’s a sound yoga of processed acoustic percussion headed straight for the trance zone that becomes a dance of ancient and modern worlds. Deep drumming is a skeleton key into these realms."

If this kind of stuff gets your juices flowing, take a look at WorkshopLive’s percussion lessons with Kalani. He teaches a variety of hand drums and small percussion instruments. The lessons are designed for intermediate players who want to expand their knowledge of rhythms, styles and instruments.

Tour dates for the Global Drum Project:

Roots Music Listening Room

This is about as far away from Joe Zawinul and Led Zeppelin as we’re likely to get here in the Practice Room. Juneberry78s.com offers a Roots Music Listening Room, with “…Old-Time String Bands, Ballads & Breakdowns, Early Blues & Gospel, some Early Jazz, Vintage Country Gospel, Early Bluegrass and various Ethnic Musics played by immigrants to America. Most of this material was originally recorded in the 1920s through the early 1950s and was first issued on 78 RPM Records.”

There are thousands of tracks here. In addition to the broad categories listed, you can find Irish dance music (1920s-1970s), Cape Breton fiddle music (1930s-1950s), Calypso music (1930s-1950s), Cajun music (1920s-1970s), and on and on. 

This stuff is not for everybody, obviously. Most of the players were little more than amateurs, recorded on primitive equipment. Mostly they did not have contracts, agents, entourages, costumes, personal assistants, expensive haircuts, expensive drug habits or inflated impressions of their own importance. They didn’t require purple carpets, Jack Daniels or color-sorted M&Ms in order to play music.

All that aside, if you can get past the old-time aesthetic and the scratchy sound, you may find some music you like.

 

[TJH]

Mosaic Records

Fans of classic jazz piano (like me) have a treat coming soon from Mosaic Records:

“Mosaic Select: Columbia and Victor Piano Boogie Woogie and Blues (3 CDs)

75 tracks from the Columbia and Victor catalogs of classic boogie woogie and blues piano from the rich period of 1935 to 1941. The sessions include piano solos, duets and trios to small group recordings and feature a range of diverse artists including Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, Freddie Slack, Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Kenny Kersey and Mary Lou Williams. The blues piano sides mostly feature the unique stylings of pianist and vocalist Jimmy Yancey with over a dozen Victor tracks. The rest of the set dovetails nicely with a slew of sides by vocalist Joe Turner who is accompanied by Pete Johnson, two all star bands led by Benny Carter and Joe Sullivan. Rounding out the set are rare sessions by one of Chicago’s great bluesmen, Cripple Clarence Lofton.”

Don’t already know Mosaic? Shame on you! Mosaic was the first company devoted exclusively to reissuing jazz recordings in limited-edition boxed sets. And when they say ‘limited edition’, they mean it. Here’s some of the good stuff that’s gone, gone, gone:

The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk

The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus

The Complete Recordings of the Paul Desmond Quartet with Jim Hall

The Complete Recordings of T-Bone Walker 1940-1954

The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Grant Green with Sonny Clark

The Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio (18 CDs!)
The Complete Candid Otis Span/Lightnin' Hopkins Sessions

Miles Davis: The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions

… and on and on.

[TJH]

Naked Hippy!

Rocking guitarist Geoff Hartwell was featured in a skit on Saturday Night Live! We asked him how this happened and he replied, "You get naked at ONE party...." But seriously, Geoff has a connection to a writer over at SNL and was called one day and asked to pose for the skit. It led to another job as a shirtless guitarist for a furniture commercial. Years of practice, tons of talent, and fame catches him with his pants down? Click here to watch the Saturday Night Live skit, his image comes up a few moments into the skit but it's all Geoff.

Samchillian

A while back I did a piece about the Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee, a PC-keyboard MIDI controller that operates on the idea of relative pitch, rather than fixed pitch. In other words, the Samchillian doesn’t have keys that produce C, C#, D, D#, etc. It has keys that say “go up one half-step from wherever you are,” “go down one half-step,” “go up two steps,” go down five steps,” etc. The Samchillian was invented by Leon Gruenbaum, who studied music at the New England Conservatory and received a BA in mathematics from Harvard.

Eitan Shefer later invented a svelter version as his graduation project from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. There’s a cool video demonstration of his device at his site.

I mention all of this because I just heard that Leon is performing in at LEMURplex, the Brooklyn home of musical robots, on August 31. This prompted me to check his web site, which now has MP3s of Leon performing. If you like high speed guitar (and who among us does not?), you may like Leon’s MP3s. Worth a listen. He’s into other odd stuff, too – weird videos, goofy band names.

Anyway, if I were in New York or thereabouts on August 31 I’d end up at LEMURplex, but as you know if you’re a regular, I’m almost never in New York anymore, and in fact have never been to LEMURplex despite my curiosity about the place. So can somebody please go and tell me what goes on there? All we get where I live is Taiwanese heavy metal bands and third-tier arena rock old-timers. 

[TJH]

PS: You can download freeware from Leon's site if you want to turn your own keyboard into a Samchillian, but you'll have to do your own wacko paint job.

Intellishred

Alfred Publishing and the National Guitar Workshop bring us Intelli-Shred: The Thinking Musician's Guide to Incredible Guitar Soloing. Intelli-Shred offers an in-depth look into the mechanics and concepts behind guitar solos by artists like Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Randy Rhoads, John Petrucci, and others. Exercises and etudes challenge and motivate students and enable them to build strength, speed, dexterity, and fretboard knowledge. An enclosed CD included demonstrates all the examples in the book. You can order it from the National Guitar Workshop’s on-line store.

[TJH]

Interviews with Greybeards

This week brings us some good interviews with long-time players from a generation that, as a general rule, don’t get much ink anymore:

- Modern Guitars talks with Arlo Guthrie (“…A lot of people confuse folk music with being a genre. It’s really not. What it is, it’s the way that people learn the music they’re playing…”)

- Jambase talks with Herbie Hancock (“…criticism is an indication that I'm doing something right. If I'm not being challenged then maybe I'm working in an area where I'm too comfortable…”)

- Herbie gets around – Hancock talks to the Detroit Free Press as well (…"Miles wanted to hear me. That set me free.")

- Slate’s Fred Kaplan talks about (not to, unfortunately) the late Max Roach - with clips.

[TJH]

Guitar without frets is like girl without beard

I found myself back at Unfretted, the site for fretless guitar players. I haven’t yet taken the plunge by ripping the frets out of my violin-shaped Trump El Cheapo (I can’t bear to – it’s such a great guitar), but I’ve come close. Anyway, for the day I do, Unfretted is the place.

For one thing, it has a helpful series of lessons by Tim Donahue. Apparently there’s more to this than “remove frets and play.” Intonation (playing in tune) is something you can’t take for granted – like a fiddle player, you have to do it yourself. Vibrato is done differently; bends are replaced by slides; chords are a lot more complicated if you want them to sound in tune, and in fact fretless players seem to play fewer of them. Donahue gets into all of this and offers a few exercises.

Set up is different, too. No frets, of course. The fingerboard has to be planed absolutely smoothly, or you’ll hear little bumps where you expect to hear slides. Action is extremely low – so low, in fact, that there’s a little buzz, which for some reason is desirable. Also: a fretted guitar’s saddle(s) is/are usually compensated to allow for the effect of pressing each string down to the fretboard in order to change pitch. On a fretless guitar, the low action means that this compensation is not necessary. It’s where you place your fingers that determines intonation, so saddle adjustment is done completely differently; it needs to reflect the geometry/mechanics of the individual player’s hand. Donahue recommends that you learn to do this yourself, rather than relying on a luthier.

Not sure you want to dive in? There are sound clips of fretless players so you can sample the whole vibe. (None of these guys are playing “Freight Train” or anything like it, by the way. You have to have a little yen for weirdness.)

Like I said, I’m not quite there yet…

[TJH]

Fab Zeppelin

What a difference a few years makes…

http://fretboardjournal.com/blog/2007/08/06/if-the-beatles-were-led-zeppelin/

[TJH]

Pop goes to war

The Orlando Weekly runs an interesting piece this week about how music, movies and pop culture in general fits into the lives of the men and women of our armed forces in Iraq. Some, especially the relative newcomers, listen to heavy-duty, violent kinds of rock and metal; some of those who have been over there for a while lean more towards escapist music and movies – things that are about anything but the war they’re fighting. Some are writing songs, poems, and raps about what they see around them. And, of course, they’re all transformed by their experience.

Well worth reading.

[TJH]