Split it up!!!

Yeeeah!

I don't know what made me think of Terry Bozzio after listening to some old Jon Theodore tracks from his "Golden" years. HAAAA!! I kill me! Get it? "Golden" years? Oh, get over yourselves!

I take it that my myopia is pretty evident, hopefully it doesn't outlast its welcome. I'm not anticipating having a JT fanboy-fest in each post, but I sincerely came up with some cool concepts to work on (if I can ever make time for my kit) while listening to Golden and Missing Persons. The idea I'm thinking of is having ordinary fills being expressed in not so ordinary ways. I'm thinking of your garden variety 4 note fill that is pretty standard in most rock songs I can think of. 1 - 2 - 3- 4 ee and uh Crash!

Well, imagine splitting those 16ths (4 ee and uh) into different hand-foot combinations (ok, let's see how well this comes out): (legend: rh = right hand, lh= left hand, rf = right foot, lf=left foot)
rh-rh-rf-lh, rh-rh-lh-lh, rh-rf-rh-lh, lh-rh-rh-rf, lh-rh-lh-lf... and other combinations. The reason that I use combinations in "right hand" or "left foot" versus playing to snare hits is so I'm not just hitting the same voice. If I can change up what I play (maybe not a single tom, but maybe like Kenneth Schalk, where I'm always changing up the notes during fills).

I don't know why Terry Bozzio made me think of this, (well, not in Missing Persons, per se). I guess because I don't see him as the type to just play 4 simple 16th notes as a fill an a crash (which is a cliched fill). I COULD see him playing that simple stuff, but throwing in these weird patterns to fulfill his own personal needs. Any man who creates a drum set-up that would allow him to play drums as notes and not just beats/rhythms would get bored with simplicity. Me? I guess it's just the caffeine that pushes the synapses to fire in different directions, like throwing water on a powered circuit board.

Serendipity! JT's odd patterns and voicings led me to think about throwing weird patterns in a very simple, tried-and-true fill... now if I can just get to a friggin' drumkit! I mean even a set of practice pads! Anything will work, as long as it's not the office desk that I've been banging my thumbs over. I'm sure my director (who shares the wall with me, and has asked me to turn down music before) is probably not very excited about my constantly working beats and patterns over and over again. Should I try to convince him that this is what happens when hospitals and institutions get me upset/angry?

Kit sent me back my recordings from our previous session. For having to work out some rust, the recordings came out great. They're not even rough drafts -- these are essentially my "click track" to what I will record in the very near future. I told Kit that I'd like to be able to work out the various fills in both songs, and smooth out the swing in "That Something". As of now, there isn't a whole lot of consistency in my kick pattern, and I'd like for all of the kick-snare hits to sound like they resemble each other throughout the song.

Sounds good? Sounds good.