DRUMMER CAFE

Well let's see -

As so many know, there is a real yin and yang to a career in drumming. There's the love of doing it, playing, making music, that you just want to do - with no other considerations. Then there is putting food on the table, building a career, etc.

Luckily, at times, these things line up... a very beautiful thing indeed. But most of the times, I think, the best one can expect is for them to line up to some degree. But after playing for awhile, I learned that every project doesn't have to fully serve the yin and the yang, at least for me. As long as over time, the sum of all I'm doing gives the blend of in and yang that makes me happy.

Of course, to have it all in one package would be great - but I started my career (and actually so much of my decision to pursue playing seriously) playing the music of Don Ellis. Music that was both challenging to the average ear, unlikely to ever be heard on pop radio, and tending to rely on quite large ensembles to play. Great for the yin - some of the most satisfying art I've been lucky enough to be associated with. But the yang? Well, that's another story. Basically a musical pursuit that is likely to have serious limitations life-style-wise.

Anyway, so there's been balance. And one way that balance has been achieved for me is with projects like Transvalue III. 

There is a trombone player/composer whose music I've been playing on and off for years, who hooked up with a poet/spoken word artist named Chuck Britt, which led to Transvalue's first two recordings. Both of which I played on (and recorded at my studio in LA).

Michael writes this great music - that can at the same time be technically challenging and yet be very free and open to improvisation. And he is pretty stylistically unbound - I mean, this is called jazz in part for lack of a better term and, of course, the amount improvisation going on. So with Transvalue, Mike creates these musical settings for Chuck to tell us his thoughts and stories about himself, life, relationships, etc. Which is not to say Chuck just reads over the top of this music - no, this is like some beat poetry thing, where the music reacts to Chuck and Chuck reacts to the music.

Which is all well and good with a trio, or five piece - but for Transvalue III, the compositions and the ensemble grew much more complex and larger than what we had done before. So this is how I got more involved with the production of this - I had always had the idea that Transvalue's recordings could be greatly benefited by not just using jazz recording techniques and customs, but everything pop and rock had to offer as well.

In a nutshell (and in our own humble way), if our previous album was Mahavishnu's Inner Mounting Flame, I wanted Transvalue III to be "Birds Of Fire". I wanted it to aggressive, and loud where appropriate - I wanted it tight and punchy, again where appropriate (and without losing any of the improvisational aspects).

Looking back a very big challenge. Lots of fun... and lot's of work.

So we did sessions with rhythm and trombone and Chuck; with everyone; with just the horns; stacked two great singers into a small madrigal type group; lots of solos went down live and some were overdubs - and nobody is ever supposed to be able to tell which is which.

Then came mixes, and then honestly came a very long break. I got real busy; everyone's life got real distracting, so it sat for awhile.

Then a couple of years ago, we pulled it out to take stock of it. Well some of it was done - but for me especially, most of it had fallen short of the mark that I was aiming for. So the guys, let me take it and work on it - with the promise that it would get done sometime in our lifetime. :-)

So I edited, fixed, cleaned things up. Now most of the rhythm section had been basically piano, bass and drums - and I realized I needed it to be bigger and more diverse. So being the drummer - I threw out much of the drums and started again. :-)  Three pieces became re-imagined as double drum pieces. One with a bebop kit along with a more contemporary kit - playing different sections, playing together, playing together but different parts. Another was a ballad with very free jazz brushes with another (mainly cymbals) pass played with sticks on very dry cymbals (Radias), but with the tape sped way up, so when played back the cymbals sound very low in pitch. (I did a equally weird process to the acoustic piano - creating a both related and unrelated sort-of electric piano part playing with the original piano, but not at all together).  The other drum duet married my regular kit paired with a really small kit with three roto-toms - very single head-y.  The drum solo in this tune got replace by full blown homage to the multiple-drummer solo routines that were common in the music of Don Ellis. But with me getting to be both the drummers... I couldn't resist! :-)

Lots of other cool, fun stuff, but I've got to leave something for the imagination. :-)

Anyway, more percussion overdubs, some loop stuff, some sound FX, a bunch of support keyboards parts - including my debut on a couple of "a-little-more-than-support" Hammond parts.

Then mixing, mixing and more mixing - mastering, helping with graphic design, and the webpage design, overseeing manufacturing and here we are. We just shipped 200 promo CD's overseas with another 200+ going out domestically tomorrow.

And it feels really great - after having been so intimate with just about every note of something for so long that you dig so much, to have it finally out there to be shared with others is just so exciting.

Anyway - this is probably not really what I should have wrote here. The 'behind the scenes" thing is usually not the smartest way to entice new listeners. But Drummer Cafe feels so much more like a home-base, workshop sort of place to me, that I feel more comfortable sharing both the process as well as the end result.

Not that I don't want to entice those interested to check out the end result, I do.  Because I'm just really pleased with it. There are moments in at that still - after 60,000 listenings - still raise goosebumps for me.

So anyway, if you want to check it out - Bart posted the link to the Transvalue site above and there are sound samples there, etc., so go, check it out!

I guess that's long enough for one post... sheeesh. :-)


David

Thanks, Felix

As it turns out, yes. Actually I just became aware that the myspace page is up (three of us working on this - all at the same time). So yes, the myspace page is:

http://www.myspace.com/transvalue

And it looks like Chuck has posted three pieces from new CD - including "The New Day" with dual drummer solo routine.  There's also a track from one of the LP releases dating back to the mid-80's. My word, I haven't heard that in years!

As for iTunes - on its way. That's being handled by CDBaby where the CD will be available really soon. Though buying it through Amazon through Bart's link above is always a good idea (always nice to throw a couple of coins in the Drummer Cafe tip jar, so to speak).

If someone is chomping at the bit to do the download thing, and doesn't want to wait for iTunes - I should have the download widget up and running at www.transvalue.info in the next 24 hours - and those will be full quality 320bps files with no DRM - more convenient and far better sounding than what iTunes will allow us to sell.

But thanks for mentioning the myspace thing - I completely spaced on it.

David