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Looper's Delight
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Dave wrote: "Years ago I read an interview with Stan Ridgeway, then still with Wall of Voodoo, where he said that drum machines ought to sound like appliances. I liked that. If you want human feel, get a human! " I laughed at this quote! There is a place where I agree. I have been a professional drummer and multi-percussionist all of my adult life and am constantly besieged with questions about both drum machines, sequencers and looping devices............."Aren't you afraid of putting musicians out of work" These are my thoughts about this sort of question and my feelings about drum machines in general. Just for a little historical perspective: Shortly after the turn of the century, when the Secretary of the Navy prevailed upon the mayor of New Orleans to shut down the Red Light district (for upright moral reasons), whose Madams had been the financial backers for the new music that many white people were calling 'Jazz' (a term which is synonymous with Sperm or Gism or Jizz), they first tried to put pressure on the houses of ill repute by using housing code violations, trumped up 'disturbing the peace' violations and the many other ways that cities have of hassling musical establishments (and it continues to this day, bless their pointed little heads). Anyway, as the sailors began to drift away from the port of New Orleans (where the navy had disbanded leaving hundreds of marching band instruments----drums and brass instruments, primarily whose prevalence and , hence, cheap prices had fueled the early jazz musicians) and the finances started to drain out of the area (sound familiar dot.com busters in the S.F. bay area?) the Madams were forced to start hiring smaller and smaller bands to play jazz at their establishments. Also, many musicians started heading up the Mississippi to look for work in places like Memphis, Kansas City, Chicago and eventually, New York and Los Angeles causing the spread to the rest of the country of both jazz and blues. At the time, the de rigeur rhythm section consisted of either a bass drummer and a snare drummer or a bass drummer, snare drummer and cymbal player, which were the classical drumming units in a Navy marching band. As the 12 piece orchestras became 10 piece and 6 piece and finally 3 and 4 piece bands (the 'typical' jazz band size of today), some enterprising young black man (and I have never found anybody to say who it was specifically in all the 1st hand accounts and histories of jazz and drumming that I have read, which is a lot) came up with a 'contraption' that allowed him to play the bass drum with his foot and play the snare drums with both hands (because it was now on a stand)..........it took 8-10 years later before another person (again, nameless, to my knowledge) before another young black drummer added to the contraption (which had , by this time been shortened to the term 'Trap Set'----a contraction of contraption, as it were) by putting two cymbals together with a pulley mechanism to form the first high hat (although the original ones were not "High Hats" at all, but "Low Bows" or "Sock hats" because the cymbals were at the level of the drummer's socks--------it took another few years for some one to raise the heighth of the tube supporting the now named "Hi Hats". In this way, the original 'contraption' inventor reduced the job of two or three drummers and the budding 'Drum Set' and it's importance in the original jazz ensembles was born. Imagine what would have happened to the history of modern music if that person had heeded the question, "Aren't you afraid that this invention will put musicians out of work". Innovation occurs..............people are always looking for better and better ways of getting the music in their heads out into the world. it is a never ending process. As a young man, I remember a producer telling me "You can bitch and moan about the proliferation of drum machines in recording studios, Rick, or you can learn how to program them so you will always have work". Well, from the time that I first saw the band Ultravox play with a trapset player with only a bass drum, snare drum and cymbals (wierdly minimal in the era of 10 tom, concert drum sets which were de rigeur at that time (late 70's) and Roland CR78, which was the first official primitive 'programmable' drum machine, I was transfixed. I love the juxtaposition, timbrally, of the heavy drums and the artifical and light sounding analogue drum machine sounds............I thought it was really beautiful and it changed my life. I through myself into the world of what I call hybrid drumming: real drums, percussion and either drum machines or triggered samples. Early on I discoverd that if I put an old Synare trigger on my kick drum and then made the note as low as I could make it but shortened the envelope so that it was almost inaudible, that I could make my kick drum sound like GOD and still have all the punch and attack and human nuance of a reall drum (which it was). Well, since then I have consulted and provide samples for EMU (I've heard that my famous one headed kick drum tuning is the most used drum in their sample library which makes me proud), I've helped them choose sounds (the EMU Carnaval and the EMU Phatt) and I've programmed preset rhythms for the ZOOM 123. I've also done a tremendous amount of programming for musicians who feel like they just don't know how to program drum machines realistically (boy, can I tell when most guitarists or keyboardists program their drum machines). As a matter of fact, tomorrow, I will be programming an old Roland TR505 for a steel drum band that does work teaching music to children in schools...............they can't afford to hire a reall drummer for their shows but they want their valuable tithing work to the community to continue (and, lo and behold, a drummer will be earning a little bit of money to program the machine with conciousness!!! As a matter of fact, if any one is interested in this very off topic chain, maybe I could show you guys some great tricks for programming drum machines in the most simple and effective ways for your music. Just let me know if anyone is interested and I"ll post these tricks when I have time. So, personally, I love electronic sounds and old analogue drum machines because they are specifically not in the tonal range of the drum set and percussion playing that I do. I also am really deeply into a kick lately to try and invent acoustic instruments that sound as if they were electronic or processed and then loop and process them. I feel like the companies are trying as hard as possible to make their drum machines sound realistic and I'm heading in the opposite direction................I guess I just dig the "NEW". I'd be happy to talk about some creative ways for looping drummers to create new timbres for their acoustic drums that sound like they are on a Portisehead record or whatever. Again, just let me know. The human being is so complex that the drum machine companies don't have a bat's chance in hell of truly duplicating the 'real' thing..............It is the artificiallity of the drum machine, ironically, that draws me to them..............I love the juxtaposition of the highly processed and articificial and the extremely primal and human and idiosyncratic natural. It is, after all, the world we find ourselves in today! Part of our existence here in this culture has to do with reconciling the modern/technological/computer driven and automated aspects of our culture with the urge to just bang on a tree trunk or pick at a piece of gut stretched over a gourd. I say, RECONCILE it all!!!! It's who we are anyway, n'cest pas? So we come full circle (if you haven't fallen asleep yet---------------boy am I long winded sometimes--------LOL) to Stan Ridgeway's comments about drum machine that should sound like appliances............ towards that end, I have a new piece on my next abstract electronica CD, 'Purple Hand' which I'm hoping to have finished by late summer and early fall where I took a $60 sampling Casio watch and drove around the bay area (to looping gigs, I might add...:-) and sampled really cool cash registers that I heard................it came out great............hope some of you get to hear it at some point. yours, in looping and drumming and the love of drum machines. Rick Walker (loop.pool)