A.D.D.

This morning I received texts from Chris Cadiz about some ideas for a new song he had. Jamming them out on Saturday was fun and I dig the song concept, but since Chris and I come from such divergent musical backgrounds, I knew that what I was thinking was going to be far off the mark, making any composing on my end temporary and inconsequential (which I’m oddly fine with). This morning’s texts meant that Chris’s head was spinning with ideas that he wanted to solidify. He suggested that the vibe we wanted to go toward was something like “You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire” off of Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf album. After some productive hours at work, I clicked through my repository of albums on my work computer, and queued the song onto the player. As the groove kicked in and my feet started moving, I start to anticipate the chord changes in the song (and since there are chord changes in this new Trunk track, I was wondering how they’d be addressed in the songwriting process), and in anticipation, I start dreaming of “Birdsong” from Tomahawk’s Mit Gas.

Cue adoration for John Stanier. I remember the “Unsung” drum groove, and my mind wanders to his work on Battles’ “Race: In” off of Mirrored. Oh shit, “No One Knows” starts playing and again my attention is back to the notes coming out of the speakers. I’ve been in dreamland for about the last 2 minutes.

I’ve been thinking of ostinato patterns and their usefulness. Actually, more like dreading them, since I can’t play a simple jazz pattern to save my life. I don’t know what it is, I think it’s just simply my inattentive nature that makes me bored when I try to reach outside of my comfort zone. But if I could get my right hand to play 3 16^th notes (with a rest on the 4^th) and incorporate a rock beat with my other limbs for this, I think that would be a step closer to being able to play a jazz pattern. I think the stipulation would be that I’d have to play the 2^nd and 4^th beats on the hi-hat with my left foot (closing the pedal). I’m describing it in a complicated way, but really, it’s basic. Any beginning drummer that has taken lessons can already do this, and they’ve likely not been playing for a dozen years.

So, I still haven’t set my kick pedal up. I keep looking at the instructions that I wrote myself on my mirror (about non-accented double strokes to “Behind Closed Eyelids”) and saying “I’ll get around to you”. I think I’ve been dreaming of the patterns in 4-Way Coordination more than anything, but dreaming isn’t doing, and I’d better get on it.

Anyways, just wanted to spread some love for John Stanier.