roc_abilly
Member
This one's for Dan.
The Music Thread
- Thread starter Mowl
- Start date
Mowl
Member
Never met a man so fascinated by parking lots and delivery bays. But that's the Irish in America for you: everything's so much bigger over there I guess it makes them feel somewhat small and in need of protection, hence the big massive gas-guzzling hearse-scale motors and mobile homes. Roundy's quite short, he stands around five feet and a few centimeters, and and when he stands next to a woman he looks like a midget/dwarf. In a short-sleeved pale yellow shirt and clip-on grey tie.
One time he posted a video of himself driving 'to a convention' he was invited to. The video was around ten seconds long, but in it you can hear him say: 'hello, and greetings to all. Just driving today to this Irish millionaires convention. My kind of people. The turn off is after the next overhead bridge' and so up comes the bridge and he veers right to the turn off. So I paused the video to see what the name of the venue was with the intention of checking their event listings to see if a convention of the type he was suggesting was a spoof - like most of his bullshit.
The still frame in the video?
Next right - McDonald's 24hr drive-through.
Nailed.
One time he posted a video of himself driving 'to a convention' he was invited to. The video was around ten seconds long, but in it you can hear him say: 'hello, and greetings to all. Just driving today to this Irish millionaires convention. My kind of people. The turn off is after the next overhead bridge' and so up comes the bridge and he veers right to the turn off. So I paused the video to see what the name of the venue was with the intention of checking their event listings to see if a convention of the type he was suggesting was a spoof - like most of his bullshit.
The still frame in the video?
Next right - McDonald's 24hr drive-through.
Nailed.
Mowl
Member
So,
David will be happy to hear that Johanna & Kurkela will be performing live at Helsinki Cathedral as part of their nationwide tour, all of which are being performed in cathedrals up and down the country.
The venue on Senate Square:
I'll try to get you an autograph if I can, but really - you should be here to see and hear this one yourself.
David will be happy to hear that Johanna & Kurkela will be performing live at Helsinki Cathedral as part of their nationwide tour, all of which are being performed in cathedrals up and down the country.The venue on Senate Square:
I'll try to get you an autograph if I can, but really - you should be here to see and hear this one yourself.
Mowl
Member
The tour is selling out fast, and the venue is one the bigger reasons for it. Cathedrals are amazing spaces for musicians to work in. The first problem to solve is the length and height of the space; then the lack of any sound absorption whether it's marble, stone, or wood. The only wood is the benches and pews, the gallery facade, and they don't absorb anything really. The positives start with the ambience, particularly in relation to how the various instruments are balanced for best effect. One must account for empty room/packed room as bodies and clothing will absorb certain levels. One must also account for room temperature: an empty cathedral is cold from top to bottom, but a packed cathedral is far warmer and warmer air makes for a better sound overall.
The excellence starts with the vocals of the choir: the bigger and 'wetter' (more ambient) the room, the more awesome the choir will sound, so everything else has to be contained so that the vocals are the pinnacle of the sound. I played with UCD orchestra years back and they toured the main churches of Ireland over summer weekends doing the midday mass in places like The Pro Cathedral in Dublin, Galway cathedral, etc. Using drums/percussion in that environment is challenging. You can't just sit and play a regular 4/4 like you're in the garden shed. Sticks are out of the question, so it's brushes and mallets and anything else you can dream of that isn't the whack of a stick on drum. I used kitchen washing tools, the regular scrubber with the brush and long handle. Two of those made for very interesting dynamics. In one section I had to use ten or twelve small thin panes of glass at a certain point in the arrangement by dropping them into a metal wash bucket with a mic over it and ran through a delay. Beautiful.
One kick of the bass drum took around eight or nine seconds to diminish. So that was another challenge, my solution being to stuff the kick drum full of balled-up newspapers until it was full. The paper muted the strike of the pedal and the front head resonance was shorter than for a jazz club. Cymbals struck with a stick? Nope, way to loud. Mallets? Now you're talking.
So when you have a sixty-five piece choir behind you and two dozen reeds to the left, two dozen more brass and strings to the right, everything on the altar has to sing in harmony and with all elements at ease with each other in terms of balance. Like when you watch any orchestra and there are guys at the back playing bass drum, timpani, snare, cymbals, and concert toms, you wonder why there's seven percussion players instead of one drummer using all of the above parts. It's about delicacy, parts moving seamlessly across each other without drowning each other out. Subtle musical parts like these may look easy, especially when there's a conductor out front arranging the elements. Not all notes begin on the first beat of the bar, sometimes they begin several seconds beforehand, but they peak at exactly the right moment before diminishing once again into the overall mix.
Engineering an orchestra's sound and dynamic is a completely different task to engineering a standard three/four piece band, and because the music is written for theatre/altar types stages by dudes like Beethoven, Chopin, etc - they weren't thinking in the mid-1700's about small stages. Quite the opposite. They were writing and arranging these parts for coliseums, ballrooms in castles, amphitheaters, with stone walls, or no walls at all. So trying to emulate that simple fact into the arrangement is essential: no wandering around the church listening for 'sweet spots' but rather looking at ways to contain the overall dynamic without distorting or reducing the delicate balance of one hundred-plus voices and musical elements on the alter/gallery.
Playing the Pro Cathedral was awesome, especially with a full house. I also got to play in the smaller tower of Christchurch Cathedral looking down to the Liffey. RTE later got a license to use the space and they filmed a music show the name of which I can't remember. But it was hosted by Kevin Sharkey and an American lady named Barbara (Babs) who was married to Steve Wickham of The Waterboys. She got me the weekender audition I did with them after their long term drummer Kevin Wilkinson topped himself. Terrible weekend, one of the most draining, tiring, depressing moves I ever made. When it was over I just walked without saying goodbye. Several months later they announced Fran Breen as their new guy. He told me recently that those were some of the worst days of his life and all he wanted was to leave and go back home, such was the tension in the ranks while recording the 'Fisherman's Blues' album.
Anyway, here's a bit of Fran doing his thing at the laughable 'Self Aid' gig in the RDS back in 1996. You'll also know him for the cracking intro on 'Mustang Sally' from the 'Commitments' album. Fabulous drummer, lovely guy, family man, and great craic onstage:
The excellence starts with the vocals of the choir: the bigger and 'wetter' (more ambient) the room, the more awesome the choir will sound, so everything else has to be contained so that the vocals are the pinnacle of the sound. I played with UCD orchestra years back and they toured the main churches of Ireland over summer weekends doing the midday mass in places like The Pro Cathedral in Dublin, Galway cathedral, etc. Using drums/percussion in that environment is challenging. You can't just sit and play a regular 4/4 like you're in the garden shed. Sticks are out of the question, so it's brushes and mallets and anything else you can dream of that isn't the whack of a stick on drum. I used kitchen washing tools, the regular scrubber with the brush and long handle. Two of those made for very interesting dynamics. In one section I had to use ten or twelve small thin panes of glass at a certain point in the arrangement by dropping them into a metal wash bucket with a mic over it and ran through a delay. Beautiful.
One kick of the bass drum took around eight or nine seconds to diminish. So that was another challenge, my solution being to stuff the kick drum full of balled-up newspapers until it was full. The paper muted the strike of the pedal and the front head resonance was shorter than for a jazz club. Cymbals struck with a stick? Nope, way to loud. Mallets? Now you're talking.
So when you have a sixty-five piece choir behind you and two dozen reeds to the left, two dozen more brass and strings to the right, everything on the altar has to sing in harmony and with all elements at ease with each other in terms of balance. Like when you watch any orchestra and there are guys at the back playing bass drum, timpani, snare, cymbals, and concert toms, you wonder why there's seven percussion players instead of one drummer using all of the above parts. It's about delicacy, parts moving seamlessly across each other without drowning each other out. Subtle musical parts like these may look easy, especially when there's a conductor out front arranging the elements. Not all notes begin on the first beat of the bar, sometimes they begin several seconds beforehand, but they peak at exactly the right moment before diminishing once again into the overall mix.
Engineering an orchestra's sound and dynamic is a completely different task to engineering a standard three/four piece band, and because the music is written for theatre/altar types stages by dudes like Beethoven, Chopin, etc - they weren't thinking in the mid-1700's about small stages. Quite the opposite. They were writing and arranging these parts for coliseums, ballrooms in castles, amphitheaters, with stone walls, or no walls at all. So trying to emulate that simple fact into the arrangement is essential: no wandering around the church listening for 'sweet spots' but rather looking at ways to contain the overall dynamic without distorting or reducing the delicate balance of one hundred-plus voices and musical elements on the alter/gallery.
Playing the Pro Cathedral was awesome, especially with a full house. I also got to play in the smaller tower of Christchurch Cathedral looking down to the Liffey. RTE later got a license to use the space and they filmed a music show the name of which I can't remember. But it was hosted by Kevin Sharkey and an American lady named Barbara (Babs) who was married to Steve Wickham of The Waterboys. She got me the weekender audition I did with them after their long term drummer Kevin Wilkinson topped himself. Terrible weekend, one of the most draining, tiring, depressing moves I ever made. When it was over I just walked without saying goodbye. Several months later they announced Fran Breen as their new guy. He told me recently that those were some of the worst days of his life and all he wanted was to leave and go back home, such was the tension in the ranks while recording the 'Fisherman's Blues' album.
Anyway, here's a bit of Fran doing his thing at the laughable 'Self Aid' gig in the RDS back in 1996. You'll also know him for the cracking intro on 'Mustang Sally' from the 'Commitments' album. Fabulous drummer, lovely guy, family man, and great craic onstage:
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Mowl
Member
Here's a good reference to the type of orchestral containment I'm talking about. It's the final outro section performed by The Leningrad Symphony Orchestra and The Kodo Drummers of Japan. Note how the initial section is moderate in tempo and dynamic, then slowly begins to build as the Kodo drummers rise and fall in levels apart from the largest Japanese drum, which remains consistent throughout.
The orchestra has a snare drummer, another guy for crash cymbals, and another guy for timpani. That's what orchestral percussion is all about, you can't replace all three or four players with one drummer surrounded by drums and cymbals. Individual players can wash over each other, begin their piece earlier to peak with it at just the right time. No sudden stops, starts, or jerks. Rather a fluid and heavily soaked cacophony of multiple layers of instruments all finding their own place in the complete sound. Except they don't get to hear it that - you DO. You're out front, they're surrounded by other players. They generally hear what's closest to them and those elements at the lower end of the pitch, like double bass, cello, timpani - more so than individual voices/vocals, violins, or piccolo.
Note the conductor and the tympani player on the last notes as the swirling strings take you up to the pinnacle, then drop you into space and silence. Epic. The timpanist starts his roll two seconds or so before the final note, which culminates at a sudden and startling peak, then suddenly stops, and all you hear is the last of the notes ringing out and dissipating into silence. Magic.
The orchestra has a snare drummer, another guy for crash cymbals, and another guy for timpani. That's what orchestral percussion is all about, you can't replace all three or four players with one drummer surrounded by drums and cymbals. Individual players can wash over each other, begin their piece earlier to peak with it at just the right time. No sudden stops, starts, or jerks. Rather a fluid and heavily soaked cacophony of multiple layers of instruments all finding their own place in the complete sound. Except they don't get to hear it that - you DO. You're out front, they're surrounded by other players. They generally hear what's closest to them and those elements at the lower end of the pitch, like double bass, cello, timpani - more so than individual voices/vocals, violins, or piccolo.
Note the conductor and the tympani player on the last notes as the swirling strings take you up to the pinnacle, then drop you into space and silence. Epic. The timpanist starts his roll two seconds or so before the final note, which culminates at a sudden and startling peak, then suddenly stops, and all you hear is the last of the notes ringing out and dissipating into silence. Magic.
Mowl
Member
My old friend and mentor from Ballyfermot, Kevin Malone - another disciple of Samuel Beckett, published this a couple of days ago, his first foray into releasing original compositions. The Beckett influence is apparent right from the start, and he carries the role of the lost and deluded so well. This guy is, by far, one of Ballyfermot's most talented musicians. He's been on the drumming scene for years having guested with just about everybody ever so it's great to see him take his first steps into his own material.
The Panic (aka: Kevin Malone): 'Looking For Love'
The Panic (aka: Kevin Malone): 'Looking For Love'
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Mowl
Member
Great to see that the wee effort I put in yesterday has paid off already for Kevin, with reviews coming in to him from all over the planet. I hit as many obscure sites and destinations as I'm aware of to see the general opinion on his work: it's extremely high, if rather confusing to the man himself who is, although a powerhouse behind the drum-set, an extremely private and shy person who dislikes attention and praise. He's a very complicated individual considering his background is the same as my own.
When I was a kid, we used to visit my aunt's house every Sunday after midday mass. Kevin lived two doors up and when I hear the drums coming from his back garden shed, I climbed the walls to get a closer vantage point. He heard me scrambling on his back garden wall and came out to see what was going on. He had a Mowl on his case and thankfully he did the right thing: 'get down off there before you hurt yourself and come in here til I show you something wonderful'.
And so in my Sunday-best knee-pants I entered his castle, and it was goode - grande in fact. His Yamaha 9000 Custom Recording kit was fully assembled, four toms up and two more down. But that wasn't his quest, his quest was to grant me my one wish: the key to the classic triplet shuffle I'd been trying (but failing) to hold down. Kevin, being a rhythmic scientist of some considerable skill, turned on the little mono record player and put on the 7'' single version of Toto (I know, I hate them too, but there's a point here) playing 'Rosanna' at 33rpm instead of the correct 45rpm.
I sat and listened to his mathematical approach to extricating the marrow out of complicated rhythmic structures and then simplifying them for the common man. After a close listen, he then showed me the sticking pattern on an invisible drum-set we both imagined. He then tried to explain to me that even one single straight beat out of a bar of four beats has many divisions one can apply in order to customize the rhythmic pattern to something unique. This was taking me close to the edge but I held on and kept at it until he could see that I had it - on the invisible set. I then had to replicate it on the actual set, which is a horse of an entirely different colour.
Of course, back then we didn't have instructional videos for free on youtube. Back then you had to buy Modern Drummer to get the latest news on rhythms from around the world. These days anyone can source their information in a variety of online places. Like this one, which was essentially what Kevin was trying to explain to me. The classic triplet shuffle, in half time, with a four-bar long kick-drum pattern, by the Master himself, Jeff Porcaro:
Magic.
When I was a kid, we used to visit my aunt's house every Sunday after midday mass. Kevin lived two doors up and when I hear the drums coming from his back garden shed, I climbed the walls to get a closer vantage point. He heard me scrambling on his back garden wall and came out to see what was going on. He had a Mowl on his case and thankfully he did the right thing: 'get down off there before you hurt yourself and come in here til I show you something wonderful'.
And so in my Sunday-best knee-pants I entered his castle, and it was goode - grande in fact. His Yamaha 9000 Custom Recording kit was fully assembled, four toms up and two more down. But that wasn't his quest, his quest was to grant me my one wish: the key to the classic triplet shuffle I'd been trying (but failing) to hold down. Kevin, being a rhythmic scientist of some considerable skill, turned on the little mono record player and put on the 7'' single version of Toto (I know, I hate them too, but there's a point here) playing 'Rosanna' at 33rpm instead of the correct 45rpm.
I sat and listened to his mathematical approach to extricating the marrow out of complicated rhythmic structures and then simplifying them for the common man. After a close listen, he then showed me the sticking pattern on an invisible drum-set we both imagined. He then tried to explain to me that even one single straight beat out of a bar of four beats has many divisions one can apply in order to customize the rhythmic pattern to something unique. This was taking me close to the edge but I held on and kept at it until he could see that I had it - on the invisible set. I then had to replicate it on the actual set, which is a horse of an entirely different colour.
Of course, back then we didn't have instructional videos for free on youtube. Back then you had to buy Modern Drummer to get the latest news on rhythms from around the world. These days anyone can source their information in a variety of online places. Like this one, which was essentially what Kevin was trying to explain to me. The classic triplet shuffle, in half time, with a four-bar long kick-drum pattern, by the Master himself, Jeff Porcaro:
Magic.
Mowl
Member
Odd coincidence, but this article in the news about a ruckus along Ormond Quay looks to have taken place in what used to be one of my Dublin studios years ago. I had a few projects on the go and didn't want to use commercial studios on a daily/weekly hire basis, preferring instead to have a single room on permanent lease with access both day and night. So I scouted around and spotted an ad in the window of the building for sale in the shot above.
It was owned by a man who ran another business in the rag trade around the corner on Little Mary Street. A decent auld skin, he asked what the purpose was and I told him I wanted to opened a private studio for creative work where I could work whatever hours I needed or wanted to. The initial rental fee was a bit out of my reach and I made him an offer of around 40% less than he was looking for. He looked at me and grinned and said why not? The room you see above with the windows open were my space. So I got the keys, it was in perfect condition with access to a smaller room at the back which had a kitchen and WC for my use, all ready to walk into and get busy. In fact, it would have been an awesome apartment: the view over the Liffey along the quays was lovely when the tide was in. When it went out and the river drained almost down to the bed, it stank like hell.
But I remember one day we were doing some work and I glanced out the window and saw all these people swimming in the River Liffey, it was the big annual river race from up Heuston Station way down into the docklands. I had the place lit up in bright orange, using gels over the tubular bulbs placed in all four corners. We had no neighbours at night so I could make all the noise I wanted to into the night. Had to keep it as secret as possible too, otherwise I'd have gangloads of players looking to use it when I wasn't. That can be very messy, so I avoided it and kept it going for a year before notifying the owner I had to leave for travel purposes. He said not to bother paying the last month in rent, it was going to be vacated as he was deciding what to do with the place. The rent was £400 (punts) a month, which was as much as I was paying in rent for the flat I lived in on Belgrave Square up in Rathmines.
Looks now like it might have been squatted, what with the hassle going on there today.
Amazing how neglected a lot of Dublin addresses are, especially the ones in the city.
€1000 a month doesn't buy very much in dear old Dublin these days, eh.
Lumpy Von Talbot
Member
'I'm going to ghost the third note'... that's the best jazz language comment I've heard for years
Mowl
Member
'I'm going to ghost the third note'... that's the best jazz language comment I've heard for years
The curious thing about ghosting notes is somewhat comparable to painting with water colours: staring at what you're doing and where you're doing it prevents you from seeing the entire body of the painting rather than the detail you're adding. If you do what you're doing manually but keep your eyes on the total/overall composition rather than the square inch you're working on, then the blending of the colours and how thick/dense the strokes are will make your entire finished piece far more harmonic than taking the strict graphic approach.
Ghosting notes on the off-beats is quite a similiar feat: you first study the signature of the rhythm. Is it a 4/4 loop or is it twice that (8/8)? Well, 8/8 beaks down to a four-four anyway, so let's look at the underlying quantization: is it sixteenth notes or thirty-second notes? Which are the most relevant to the groove required? If it's carried as eight notes with the right hand keeping time, then what's your left hand doing in response to that? The right hand's playing hard eight notes so the left can complement that by playing the other eight notes in the overall sixteenth note phrasing.
But if instead of dividing the four whole beats of the bar with your right hand (or eight notes, depending) then the left can fill in the 'missing' or 'ghost' notes and use them to flatter the points in between the full notes to give it more expression.
The triplet variation is rather more complex at first: you count all four beats of the bar: 1, 2, 3, 4 - but instead of using eight notes you divide the space in between each on beat with three notes instead of two, or four, or even eight. The difference now is that your 4/4 has twelve notes across the entire bar. Each beat having three notes to it. So instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, you now have 1,l,l, 2,l,l, 3,l,l, 4,l,l. The hard notes are played on the fourths and the spaces in between can be ghosted with the other two triplet notes your left hand is playing against the right hand.
ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR and
As opposed to:
ONE, la,la, TWO, la,la, THREE, la,la, FOUR, la,la.
They're both played at the same tempo, but the first lopes along like any 'white man's' beat you know and like: it's four beats long, is carried by eight notes, can be sub-divided into sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes, or even sixty-fourth notes, if you're adept enough to carrying it. The second, on the other hand (literally) opens up the possibilities of using triplet note figures divided down into twelfths, or twenty-fourths, or forty-eights. It's the difference between swing and steady. Jazz players specialize in sub-division of notes, whether on the piano, sax, or even drums. A track like 'Take Five' has five beats to the bar, but Joe Morello uses the fifth-note bar and sub-divides each beat first into triplets, and then into twelfths, and even deeper into twenty-fourths, while still carrying a 5/4 groove.
When an odd time signature (5, 7, 9, 11, 13) loop is being used, the other instruments can then sub-divide their parts as fours (for example) meaning it'll take five bars of real time for them to resolve their loop against yours. Same rules apply to straight time signatures (2, 4, 8, 16, 32). But then you also have your natural triplets (3, 6, 12, 24) which are set as triplet form but again can be subdivided and the ghost notes used to best effect in between the hard notes.
Actually, I think Dave Allen explains this (maybe) a bit better than I can:
Mowl
Member
Jane's Addiction: 'Been Caught Stealing'
Perry Farrell loses it with Dave Navarro last night in Boston.
Bass player grabs Farrell and puts him in a headlock, then pummels his face several times.
Dates cancelled.
Apologies issued.
Global headlines in the music press.
All told?
An excellent stunt even Oasis can learn from.
Think about it: did you even know that Jane's Addiction were out on tour?
Now you do.
So does the entire planet.
Music biz stunts 1: 01.
Perry Farrell loses it with Dave Navarro last night in Boston.
Bass player grabs Farrell and puts him in a headlock, then pummels his face several times.
Dates cancelled.
Apologies issued.
Global headlines in the music press.
All told?
An excellent stunt even Oasis can learn from.
Think about it: did you even know that Jane's Addiction were out on tour?
Now you do.
So does the entire planet.
Music biz stunts 1: 01.