DRUMMER CAFE

That's called a Bean Tree ... which is made from a type of Chestnut tree I believe ... like a Bendo Seed. The sound is very dark ... more than you'd expect. During the drumset portion of my piece, I played the Bean Tree like a Ride Cymbal ... along with backbeats on the Tambourine and Bodhran.

Ah ... she's just having fun. During one of her solos, early in the night, she spun around ... and even used her foot to bend the pitch on the timbales. Nothing wrong with having a good time!

My seminar was based on percussion ... as you can see in the photos, however my approach was both as a percussionist and as a drummer.

My composition, Heavy Revie, is based on a two-bar melodic ostinato ... written as a bar of 5/4 followed by a bar of 9/8. The rhythm I used, predominantly played by a marimba, was syncopated and in a broken three-note grouping, which allowed me to play a lot of rhythmic displacement and quasi-metric modulations.

I started out playing freely over the ostinato, using only my bare hands, and later picked up some blasticks to move the feel into a shuffle feel with more of a drumset approach. I was using the Bean Tree like a Ride, the Bodhran as a Snare (accents/ghost notes), the Tambourine as a Tom Tom, and of course the Ngoma (djun-djun) like a Kick drum.

With the ostinato continuing, I moved into more of a duple feel, adding the Ghungroos in straight eighth-notes and a high pitched accent (right hand) on the Bodhran playing every other eighth-note (ala Vinnie). This meant that the accents where landing on downbeats for two-bars, then upbeats for two-bars. While keeping this going, the left hand and right foot played the syncopated ostinato ... like a Kick & Snare ... along with the melodic ostinato of the track. Did I mention I was playing to a track I created?

So there was some soloing ... and moving into a more obviously groove which outlined the real meter of the piece ... 5/4 + 9/8.

If the video turns out well, I may share it here. I'm not so sure that it will happen though, because I had to keep turning around to the sound engineer, asking for more track. This broke my concentration, and the performance is not where I would want it in order to share it with everyone.    No fault of the sound people, as it was early in the morning and there just wasn't enough time for all us to sound check the way we would have liked. We'll see what happens.

Oh, by the way, the title of the piece "Heavy Revie" has two meanings. First of all, the title was inspired by the fact that it was a "heavy revelation" to me years ago when I saw how I could modulate the feel against the melodic ostinato. So it's sort of a play on words ... a heavy revelation ... or  ... heavy revie. Secondly, the word revie means to bandy or retort, which is exactly what I feel happens throughout this piece.

Here's a snapshot from some of the video footage I took during our Thursday night rehearsal. You can see a mass of drumkits and percussion set-ups filling the stage; what a mess!!!

Dear friends - soon there will be clips of the Drummers for Jesus event  posted at www.drummersforjesus.com. And then soon those clips will be downloaded and sent to other sites all around the world. I only hope that when that happens that folks will hear what the drummers were REALLY doing there that night. I also pray that many of you will join us next year. Those that came from all over the United States and around the world agreed that it was WELL WORTH THE JOURNEY. All that I talked to personally said that next year they would bring 4 or 5 more people with them. The artists themselves said that it was the most incredible LIVE event they've ever been a part of .. now that's quite a statement from some of the greatest drummers and percussionists on the planet. God Bless. carlos <><

Music affects us at a lot of levels; intellectual, emotional, and for many of us deeply spiritual.  Preaching is one thing - expressing your joy of what drumming is all about intellectually, emotionally or spiritually is something else.  Do you want to sensor that?

excellent!  looking forward to the clips.

Here's the first of many clips that I plan on doing for the DFJ website.

I thought I would share the first one here, but you'll have to visit to DFJ website to view more (soon to be available). I put all of this clip together (editing, picture in picture, etc.), but unfortunately the audio is not great ... so I enhanced it the best I could.

This clip is of my good friend Sean McCurley, a Dallas based drummer who has played drums for Kirk Whalum for over 8 years. In addition to Kirk, Sean has played or recorded with LeAnn Rymes, George Duke, Jonathan Butler, Dwight Sills, James Ingram, Everette Harp, Philippe Saisse, Jeff Golub, Rick Braun, Marc Antoine, Paula Abdul and Peter White. Sean and I worked together on Ten Shekel Shirts first album as well. I've had the pleasure to work with Sean on many occasions over the years ... and he is an incredible player ... as you will see on this video.
[stream=256,256]http://drummersforjesus.com/download/mccurley.wmv[/stream]

Upcoming clips will include Vinnie Colaiuta, Alex Acuna and many others ... and maybe even yours truly ... if and when I get the time.

Wow that drum sounds great.  Warm yet crisp.  I especially enjoyed when you incorporated the brush strokes into the groove at one point.  I can't wait to see some more clips!

Wow Bart, that is a really impressive set-up. Maybe cause I live in the sticks and I don't get out much, but it's super cool!