Cover Photo by Eric Keltner

JIM KELTNERSince his first recordings with Gary Lewis in the '60s, Jim

Keltner has become one of the most well-respected drummersin the business. In this revealing MD interview, he speaks of hisexperiences with such artists as John Lennon, Boy Dylan, andRingo Starr, and shares his thoughts on balancing personalhappiness with the demands of being a musician. 10

ED BLACKWELLNew Orleans-born Ed Blackwell is probably best known for

his work with the influential saxophonist Ornette Coleman, andwhile Blackwell's contribution to Coleman's music was certain-ly innovative, it is only one aspect of his total career. Blackwelldiscusses his many influences and experiences, and how thesewere combined to give him something very unique—a trulyindividual style. 14

TERRY BOZZIOIt takes a special drummer to work with Frank Zappa, whose

music is a combination of just about everything. Terry Bozzionot only met the challenge, but he did it so well as to becomeone of the most popular and best known of Zappa's long rosterof drummers. Bozzio offers an interesting look into today'smusic scene, and into his own musical development. 22

FEATURES:

THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRUM SET-PART 1ARE DRUMS HARMING YOUR EARS? 25

18SONNY GREER: THE ELDER STATESMANOF JAZZ 30

COLUMNS:EDITOR'S OVERVIEW

ASK A PRO

READER'S PLATFORM

JAZZ DRUMMERS WORKSHOPStickings—Part Iby Gary Chaffee

ROCK 'N' JAZZ CLINICAmbidexterity—Part 2by Roberto Petaccia

IN MEMORIUMRoberto Petacciaby Scott K. Fish

CONCEPTSCymbals: Tips and Mythsby Roy Burns

STAYING IN TUNEby Hal Blaine

CLUB SCENEHeadset Microphones for the Singing Drummerby Rick Van Horn

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2 COMPLETE PERCUSSIONISTDonald Knaackby Rick Mattingly

IT'S QUESTIONABLEby Cheech Iero

DRUM SOLOISTEd Blackwell—"Bemsha Swing"by Skip Shaffer

ROCK PERSPECTIVESFuture Soundsby David Garibaldi

SHOW AND STUDIOBobby Rosengardenby Joe Buerger

PRODUCT CLOSE-UPSimmons SDS5 Modular Drum Synthesizerby Bob Saydlowski, Jr.

DRUM MARKET

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I'm saddened by the fact that the drum world recently lost a dearfriend in Roberto Petaccia who died of cancer in New York City at theage of 29. Roberto was MD's primary contributing editor for Rock NJazz Clinic. Those of us who work on the magazine feel a very specialloss, as he was truly a key member of our team.

Roberto was really much more than a superb drummer. He was anunselfish gentleman whose deep compassion for young players, and in-satiable enthusiasm for performing, writing and teaching, were infec-tious. He was the essence of that special camaraderie which exists be-tween drummers universally.

In an effort to maintain that spirit, the Directors of Modern Drum-mer have decided to establish a scholarship in his name. The RobertoPetaccia Memorial Scholarship will be awarded annual ly to a talentedand worthy drummer who has been deprived of an opportunity for ad-vanced musical education. The scholarship will be coordinated throughthe Berklee College of Music in Boston, and the winner wil l be select-ed by MD each year. Further details can be obtained by writing to theBerklee College of Music, c/o Scholarship Committee, 1140 BoylstonStreet, Boston, MA 02215.

One final note, Roberto had submitted several installments of hisRock 'n' Jazz Clinic in advance. We plan to continue publishing the se-ries until it is completed. Though some may question our decision, wefeel certain that Roberto would have wanted to continue sharing hisideas with you.

Joe Cocker, Delaney & Bonnie, John Lennon and Bob Dylan arejust a few of the artists drummer Jim Keltner has performed with . Ahousehold word in the L.A. studios, Keltner shares his views and phi-losophies, musical and otherwise, in this penetrating profile by MD'sScott K. Fish.

Terry Bozzio has worked with the Brecker Brothers. Frank Zappaand UK. An outspoken 29 year old, Terry lives for performing andtells all in Bozzio: Burnin'.

Firmly rooted in the New Orleans traditional style and a student ofAfrican rhythms, Ed Blackwell was a key figure in the music of Or-nette Coleman during the early sixties. And at age 78, Sonny Greerstill maintains an active performing schedule. In The Elder Statesmanof Jazz, Sonny paints a delightful picture as he reminisces on 28 yearsin the Ellington drum chair during the heyday of that great orchestra.

Danny Read's Evolution of the Drum Set: Part I is a fascinatinglook at the development of the instrument with some great photo-graphs. And if you've ever had your ears ring after a full night's work,you'll learn more about it from health and science editor Jim Dearing,who explores one of our most prevalent occupational health hazardsin, Are Drums Harming Your Ears?

November's column roster is as diverse as it is enlightening. Foropeners, there's Dave Garibaldi with some incredible challenges formind and body, Roy Burns on cymbal myths, Gary Chaffee on stick-ings, Roberto Petaccia on ambidexterity, and Rick Van Horn on thenew Shure miking system for the singing drummer. You can also readabout percussionist Donald Knaack, TV drummer-conductor BobbyRosengarden, and the amazing Simmons SDS5.

Finally, the editors of Modern Drummer dedicate this issue to thememory of Robert Petaccia. He will be missed.

STAFF:EDITOR/PUBLISHER

Ronald SpagnardiFEATURES EDITOR

Rick MattinglyMANAGING EDITOR

Scott K. FishASSOCIATE EDITORS

Mark HurleyPaul Uldrich

ART DIRECTORTom Mandrake

ADVERTISING DIRECTORJean Mazza

ASSISTANT ADVERTISING MANAGERCharlene David

ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTORIsabel Spagnardi

ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGERAnn Lambariello

DEALER SERVICE MANAGERCarol Morales

CIRCULATIONLeo L. Spagnardi

Ellen UrrySALES PROMOTION MANAGER

Evelyn Urry

MD ADVISORY BOARDHenry Adler, Carmine Appice, Horacee Ar-nold, Louie Bellson, Bill Bruford, Roy Burns,Jim Chapin, Billy Cobham, Les DeMerle, LenDiMuzio, Charlie Donnelly. Saul Goodman.Danny Gottlieb, Sonny Igoe, Jaimo Johnson,Don Lamond, Mel Lewis, Peter Magadini,Butch Miles, Joe Morello, Neil Peart. CharliePerry, Charli Persip, Joe Pollard, ArthurPress, Paul Price, Paul Real. Paul T. Riddle,Ed Shaughnessy, Lenny White.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSSusan Alexander, Rich Baccaro, Robert Carr,Jim Dearing. Clint Dodd, Robyn Flans. Stan-ley Hall, Harold Howland, Cheech Iero, DaveLevine, Bruce Nixon. Michael Rozek, Mi-chael Shore, Robin Tolleson. T. Bruce Wittet.

MODERN DRUMMER Magazine ASSN 0194-4533) is published 9 times yearly, February,April, May, June, July, August, October,November and December by Modern Drum-mer Publications, Inc., 1000 Clifton Avenue,Clifton, N.J. 07013. Second Class Postagepaid at Clifton, N.J. 07015 and at Richmond,Virginia 23219. Copyrighted 1981 by ModernDrummer Publications, Inc. All rights re-served. Reproduction without the permissionof the publisher is prohibited. SUBSCRIP-TIONS: $15.95 per year, $28.95, two years.Single copies $2.00. MANUSCRIPTS: Mod-ern Drummer welcomes manuscripts, howev-er, cannot assume responsibility for them.Manuscripts must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. CHANGE OFADDRESS: Allow at least six weeks for achange. Please provide both old and newaddress. MUSIC DEALERS: Modern Drum-mer is available for resale at bulk rates.Direct correspondence to Modern DrummerPublications, Inc.. 1000 Clifton Avenue, Clif-ton, N.J. 07013. (201) 778-1700. POSTMAS-TER: Send form 3579 to Modern Drummer,1000 Clifton Avenue. Clifton. N.J. 07013.

STEWART COPELAND

Q. What do you think of the tonal qualityand practicality of Evans Hydraulic headsand Remo Roto-toms?

James CaseyCarteret, NJ

A. I don't like the Evans Hydraulicheads. I feel they're very dead sounding,and that they absorb the impact of thedrumstick and soak up all the responseof the skin; which does terrible things tothe feel of the drum. But some people likethe sound. It's totally a matter of taste.I've used the Remo Roto-toms quite a lot.They're just very specialized drums. Ifyou're buying your first drumset, Iwouldn't really bother with them. But ifyou're into experimentation, I supposethey're experimental. As the basis for adrumset they're not versatile enough. Ilike them for particular tom-tom effects, Iusually prefer normal tom-toms becausethey have a good sound. But occasional-ly, you want to use something thatdoesn't sound like it's part of the drum-set.

LENNY WHITE

Q. Do you think there is anything nowbeing played on drums that hasn't beenplayed before?

Eddie TabileSpringfield, Mo.

A. No, but allow me to explain my think-ing. There are a finite number of rudi-ments which make up drumming, but aninfinite number of combinations in whichthey can be played. Percussion playersand African/Latin rhythms greatly influ-ence contemporary music. That's whatmakes it sound like there's somethingnew being played. It's the placement ofthe rudiments in today's music thatmakes it sound new. Music has changed,and so has the placement of the rudi-ments, yet the rudiments remain thesame. That does not mean to say thatdrummers aren't playing anything worth-while. If you were to go back and listenclosely to the playing of Max Roach,Buddy Rich, Sid Catlett, Elvin Jones,Gene Krupa, Philly Joe Jones and TonyWilliams, you would fully understandwhat I'm saying. It's just new interpreta-tions of basic licks. I will say that what'snew today is the use of the instrumentsthemselves. Drummers seem to belearning to play with their feet more, andare beginning to realize the possibilitiesof the hi-hat.

BARRETT DEEMS

Q. You were once billed as the fastestdrummer in the world. Do you feel you'restill the fastest? Also, how long have youbeen playing?

Richard HoffmanBuffalo, N.Y.

A. There are a lot of good boys around,but many drummers have said I'm play-ing faster now than I did 30 years ago. Istill practice 3-4 hours a day. I some-times practice with winter gloves on. Thatreally puts some chops on you. I was 68years old last March, and have beenhitting the drums for about 63 years. It'sthe one thing, outside of my family, thatkeeps me happy.

RON ZITO

Q. What was the most important studiosession for you personally?

Arnold PatrowskiVineland, N.J.

A. Probably the first session I did withthe Woody Herman Band in 1966 or '67.Even though I do many commercial re-cordings with artists like Barry Manilowand Cher, I still consider myself a jazzdrummer, and Woody's sessions werejazz dates. It was something I alwayswanted to do and I was completely in-volved in it. I remember I had a great dealof anxiety about doing the recordingsince I had only been on the road with theband for a month.

I recently had the honor of participat-ing in the 2nd Annual Summer JazzDrumming Workshop at Ohio Universi-ty. It was an intensive week's worth ofexperience that was immensely reward-ing both educationally and socially. Thesessions covered all areas of jazz drum-ming imaginable. I would like to person-ally send my thanks to Ed Soph, GuyRemonko, and Bob Breithaupt for theirinvaluable assistance throughout theworkshop. With the Jazz DrummingWorkshop and MD to help us along, howcan we drummers possibly go wrong?

DONALD WILLIAMMcCLENNAN. JR.

SALEM. OHIO

I was amazed to see Stewart Copelandwin the "Most Promising New Drum-mer" award in your June MD. I amhoping in the future to see an article onthis truly great drummer. Thank you.

KENNETH SCHAEFERROSEDALE, N.Y.

Editor's Note: MD correspondent RobynFlans is at work on a Stewart Copeland

exclusive due out in a future MD.

I'm sure the author meant well inhis article A Conga Primer, but if you'reserious about learning, you have to knowvarious rhythms, and the proper execu-tion of these rhythms such as the Afro-Cuban guaguanco (not "wawanko"). Ifyou work hard on the proper hand pat-terns you will have a good sound, andwith proper technique, your hands won'tneed tape or gloves. How about somearticles on people like Gene Golden,Jerry Gonzalez and people who knowthe correct way to play. Guys who havepaid their dues.

FRANK VALENTINAVENEL, NEW JERSEY

Thank you for the fine piece on ourschool. We've had response from coastto coast and Europe. Many studentshave moved to N.Y. to study here as adirect result of your article. It's obviousthat your magazine has respect through-out the world, and with articles l ikeBassists: On Drummers expanding the

scope of MD, things can only keep get-t ing better.

PAUL SEIGEL/ROB WALLISDIRECTORS: RHYTHM SECTIONLAB: DRUMMERS COLLECTIVE

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

I just wanted to thank MD for the fineSimon Phil l ips story. I 've been workingas Simon's roadie for two years. StanleyHall's interviewing was right on andJohn W. Wright's photos were lovely. Idon't th ink a more thorough article couldhave been done.

BOB GRAHAMNEW CASTLE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Through MD I have observed newdrum products and different ideas onhow to make drums sound better. I dis-agree with most of them. A drum doesn'tneed anything added to it to make itsound good. The most beautiful sound inthe world is a conventional double-head-ed drum with both heads in perfect tunewith themselves. The sound is incompa-

continued on page 8

Reader's Platform continued from page 6rable to what most drummers have everheard.

CHARLES LYNCHGREENWOOD, DELAWARE

Thank you tor quoting me correctly inyour article Bassists: On Drummers. Iforgot one drummer, Hal Blaine, whoI've worked with a lot in the studios. Wetook each tune and/or singer, applied ourparticular talents to create "hooks" andlines, and made hits for them while rais-ing our kids who are now grown. Wewere a family together for years—thegreatest bunch of people in the worldwho made even the worst situation fun toplay, and that's what got on those hits ofthe '60s and '70s. Love your magazine.

CAROL KAYEN. HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA

I t h ink MD is really great and I read itfrom cover to cover. How about somefeatures on players like Steve Jordan,Victor Lewis, Chris Parker, James Gad-son, Rick Schlosser and Terry Bozzio?Over here in Ireland I only get to readabout the top drummers l ike Englishmen

Phil Collins and Bil l Bruford. I don't gettoo much on USA players. Many thanks.

PATRICK BRADLEYNOVAN, IRELAND

MD has excellent balance and the in-terviews have real substance. I wouldlike to see articles on techniques andideas on "endings," and more insightinto developing as a soloist within thecontext of the melody.

ROD BORKCENTERLINE, MICHIGAN

I can remember the day I discoveredMD, mostly because I was ecstatic thatsomeone was wil l ing to devote an entiremagazine to drummers and drumming. Abit of dissatisfaction began to creep inover the months though, un t i l I pickedup the July issue. I was starting to gettired of never, ever seeing mention ofany women drummers/percussionists or,for that matter, of any women who playother instruments. I 'm referring to yourarticle on Susan Evans and the mentionof Carol Kaye in Bassists: On Drum-mers. Will we get to see more articlesfeaturing women in the future?

VIV SUTHERLANDNEW YORK, NEW YORK

Editor's Note: Definitely.

Trying to establish a representativeinterview with Jim Keltner requires asense of humor. The way he plays drumsand the way he is seem to be so alike.Talk to Jim on Monday about drumheads, for instance, and you'll get adifferent answer than you would if youasked again on Friday. We conductedthis interview on and off for severalmonths, putting the finishing touches toit only weeks before publication. Wespoke about the early days, the crazy on-the-road days, his diverse drummingstyles, John Lennon, Boh Dylan, Jim'sfamily, all the way to equipment refer-ences. Putting this all together, I real-ized one of the qualities that make JimKeltner a great musician. It's the samequality one finds in the musicians heplays with. The quality is heart. KennethPatchen once wrote, "Be assured—whatever happens, I won't lie to you.One ends by hiding the heart. I say hereis my heart, it beats and pounds in myhand—take it! I hold it out to you . . . "Jim Keltner is like that.JK: My father bought me an old, usedSlingerland set, which I wish I had to-day. The snare drum was practically thesame as one I'm using onstage. It's anold Radio King restored by Paul Jamie-son here in Los Angeles. He's done onefor all the drummers here in town. Ev-erybody has at least one, I th ink . If I hadthat Radio King shell I'd give it to Paul,he'd fix it up for me and it'd be a greatold drum! But I don't know where the setis now. Somebody's garage probably.SF: When did you first know that youwanted to be a professional drummer?JK: It sort of crept up on me. I alwayswanted to be a jazz drummer. That's theonly kind of music I liked when I firststarted playing. I really hated rock androll. Then it dawned on me after awhilethat I wasn't going to be able to make itas a jazz drummer. Basically, because Iwasn't another Tony Williams, ElvinJones or Jack DeJohnette. I started do-ing demos and I felt like it came real easyto me. Then they always complimentedme on the sound of my drums, because Iwas copying Hal Blaine.SF: As far as actual tuning of yourdrums?JK: In terms of tuning and the way Iplayed, because Hal was playing on allthe hits that I was starting to listen to atthat time. I just became very intrigued bythe whole rock and roll studio drummingthing. When people started compliment-ing me, saying, "Hey, you sound likeHal," that's the best thing that hap-pened. It gave me a lot of confidence andI kept on going. It was Albert Stinsonwho really turned my head around aboutjazz. Albert was my very closest friendin life. When we first got out to Califor-nia in 1955, I was thirteen. I met Albertwhen I was fifteen, and we played to-

gether for a long time. He was a bassplayer, and we were like Charlie Mingusand Dannie Richmond. We had a l i t t l erhythm section going, and we playedoccasionally with people like BobbyHutcherson. Then Albert went off andbecame a huge jazz player. Miles Daviswanted him at one time. He played withall the jazz players and they all lovedhim. He died June 2, 1969 in Boston. Iwas in New York at the time with De-laney & Bonnie & Friends.

Albert had moved to Westchester,New York to be with his family. Duringthat year he first moved, I got verydepressed because he was gone. He wasmy only touch with jazz. When he split Ijust didn't have anybody to play withanymore. That whole year seemed like alifetime somehow. So the year that hewas gone, I really got heavy into rockand roll and joined Delaney & Friends.When I got back east, I saw Albert. Wespent a night hanging out in New Jerseyand had a great time. The morning afterthe next night, his girlfriend called meand told me that Albert had died in hissleep. It pretty well turned everythingaround for me. Bill Goodwin came downto the club that night and we shared ourmisery and pain. Bill's a fantastic guy.I've always loved the way he plays.

Albert used to say, "Check it outsometime. Different personalities in peo-ple affect their playing. They play prettymuch like they are." That's very true.Look at Buddy Rich!SF: People say, "Gee, it's a shame thatBuddy Rich is the way he is. He plays sowell." If he wasn't the way he is—hewouldn't play like that!JK: Let me tell you something aboutBuddy Rich. Everybody says that he'sreal conceited and you can't talk to him,right? A few years ago, Emil Richardstook me and my wife to see Buddy playat a musician's night in a restaurant inGlendale. All the musicians in town werethere—especially drummers! So after hisset—which was incredible—we all wentback to see him in the dressing room. I'mjust watching him sitting there and talk-ing and having been buzzed on how heplayed so incredible. He looked realsmall and kind of vulnerable. So I wentover and I said, "Can I kiss you, man?"I reached down and kissed him on thecheek. Everybody in the room wasthinking, "OH SHIT! WHAT'S JIMDOING? HE'S CRAZY! BUDDY'SGONNA KILL HIM!" But he was sogracious and beautiful. He understoodwhere I was coming from. He could feelwhat I felt in my heart, you know. He isan incredible man. Everybody's got areputation of some sort if they're in thelimelight at all.SF: When you wanted to be a jazz drum-mer, did you practice and strive to be-come technically proficient?

JK: Well, there was a guy named Mi-chael Romero. This guy was playing inLos Angeles, all around, just like Albertand he was so intimidating to all drum-mers. Old, young, great drummers—whatever! He was just great. He hadchops that wouldn't stop; he had a con-ception of how to play, he had every-thing together. After seeing Michael playa bunch of times I remember I almostjust threw it up. Albert said, "Hey man,don't worry about it. This guy's got a lotof chops; he can play but don't worryabout him. You got your own thing. Youplay like Dannie Richmond. It's okay." Iwould see Bil ly Higgins play a lot. Heblew me out. I became an instant BillyHiggins fan. He played a lot simpler thanmost guys, but had a groove that justwould not stop!

I practiced a lot, but mostly listened torecords. Every time a new Miles or a'Trane record would come out, I'd get itand we'd all sit around and check it out. Ialways wanted to sound like the drum-mers I heard more than I wanted to knowwhat they played. A certain amount oftechnique is necessary to pull that off", soI practiced pretty hard. I used to play ona pad on the coffee table in front of theTV. I'm thinking of taking a few lessonsagain.SF: It sounds as if Michael was some-what of a local folk-hero.JK: Possibly so. He had a point where hewas definitely the hero. He had a realEast Coast sound. We had a great deal ofrespect for some of the principle WestCoast players, but basically the EastCoast was where it was at. Michael photo by Eric Keltner

JimKeltner

by Scott K. Fish

never had a really clean sounding snaredrum. It always sounded kind of sloppy.But his technique was so great that hemade it work beautifully. There are a fewguys around who remember him. Mostof the rock people don't know.SF: So you grew up when rock was in it'sinfancy.JK: Yeah, I was able to see Elvis for thefirst time on TV. Elvis always did k i l lme. My sister—who is 5 years youngerthan me—played a lot of the current rockand roll at the time. That stuff used todrive me up a wall. I used to constantlybelittle her. I'd say, "Hey, I'm gonnabreak your record." I started turning mywhole family into jazz fiends. It workedto a certain extent, but then they had thelast laugh.SF: Was your gig with Gary Lewis andthe Playboys your first studio shot with aband?JK: That was in 1965. I had been withDon Randi playing six nights a week at alittle club called Sherry's. I really en-joyed playing with Don, but Gary Lewisoffered me a lot of bread; $250 a week, toplay drums so he could step up front,play guitar and sing. My first real rockrecording was with Gary. "Just MyStyle" was the hit from the album. I wasonly with Gary about seven months.

After that I played with Gabor Szabo;then John Handy for a minute, then in agroup called Afro-Blues Quintet + 1, andthen a group called MC

:. I did a lot of

demo recordings in 1967 and '68. I spentmost of '69 with Delaney and Bonnie'sband. In March of 1970 I did a two-month tour with Joe Cocker's Mad Dogsand Englishmen, and directly after thattour I started recording in the studiosalmost full time.

Another drummer I want to mention isGene Stone. He and Larry Bunker bothplayed with Clare Fischer's group whichwas an exciting band at the time. Theyswitched on and off, and it was a greatcontrast in styles. Gene had a real easyway of playing that really influenced mea lot. I related to him real well. That'skind of the way I started trying to playmyself. To hear him on record you'dknow what I'm talking about.SF: When you were frequenting clubslike Shelly's Manne-Hole, were you ableto talk to the established drummers?Were they receptive to you?JK: Shelly was the easiest drummer totalk to ever! He'd talk to anybody aboutanything. I even called him one time andhis wife woke him up to talk to me. Isaid, "Oh no, no. Don't bother." Shesaid, "That's okay. He'd probably like

to talk to you." So Shelly got on thephone, sleepy, and I said, "What size hi-hats do you use?" He just ran down thewhole thing and was beautiful. He an-swered all my questions. I was alwaysintrigued by his great cymbals. He andHal Blaine are the two most amiablepeople you'll ever want to meet. Theylove having company. I 'm sort of theopposite. I keep just with my familyhere. Not really a recluse. We've gotenough entertainment going on aroundhere with three kids.SF: I've always felt the family was im-portant. It used to bother me hearing allthe horror stories about the difficulties ofbeing a musician and keeping a familytogether.JK: I'm considered a rarity in that re-spect because I've been where I've beenand done all the things that I've done andI still have my family together. That'swhat hurt so bad about John Lennon.Everybody calls him the genius that hewas. So prolific and down to earth just tohave that ability to lead people withouttrying. John didn't care about what peo-ple called him, or what people thought hewas supposed to be doing. That newalbum! Whether you like Double Fanta-sy muscially or not—however you feelabout it, it's John singing from the gut.

Those songs about his family and abouthow happy he was? God Almighty!That's an incredible thing! How manyartists would have the courage to dothat? "Hey, here's the genius comingback! What's he going to do?" And hetalks about changing diapers and howmuch he loves his wife. Good Lord!

You're very fortunate if you can havea family and maintain it through all thethings a musician goes through. I 'm actu-ally fortunate to still be alive after someof the things that I've done through theseventies. I was really hard on myself. Iguess at one point or another all of uswere. It's a real great thing to be able tosit here and talk and still have a familyintact. One of the things that John en-joyed was that I had my family togetherall the time. The few times he was here,he really enjoyed it and felt real comfort-able with the family situation.SF: Do you do any teaching or clinics?JK: I wouldn't want to right at this time.I have a real hard time even helping mykids with homework. I just don't haveany patience. I was teaching in 1961 at amusic store for awhile. I enjoyed it ,except my lack of patience got to me. Iwould have moms calling me up asking,"Hey, what did you do to my son? Hecame down to the car and he was cry-ing?" I would say to a student, "Lookyou're not fooling anybody. Your momis paying hard-earned money and shethinks you're really interested in this .You tell me you're interested, you gohome, spend a whole week and then youdon't know the lesson at all! You can'tfool me. I know you didn't practice."And the kid would cry. In some cases itworked and in some cases it didn't .Another thing, I taught a l i t t le kid namedJackie Boghosian. We're s t i l l in contact.He's a psychologist or a psychiatristnow. He probably had as much talent asanybody I've ever seen. I was 19 at thetime, and he was ten years younger. Hecould do things I couldn't do! I'd beteaching him but he'd be showing mel i t t le things that I'd cop from him withouttelling him. I had to be the teacher, youknow. But his folks had bigger plans forhim; they wanted him to be a doctor. Sothey got their wish. I 'm sure he's happy,that's the bottom line, but that kind ofblew me out. He was so talented. Rightnow he could be one of the greatestdrummers around.SF: How would you advise a drummerwho wanted to get into the studios?JK: You talk to any studio player oneither coast—anywhere—and they ' l l tel lyou pretty much the same thing. You'vegot to be in the right place at the righttime, and it's luck. Obviously you haveto be able to provide what the peoplewant. You're working for producerswhen you're in the studio. They're eitherproducing a film, record, or a commer-

cial and it's those people that you workfor. Attitude has as much to do with thestudio as your playing abil i ty. If you goin and you've got in mind, "Hey, I wantmy drums to sound like this," or "I wantto play my own thing," then chances areyou're going to limit yourself. The studioscene is definitely geared toward theproducer. You've got to deal with theengineer, the artists and other musicians,so it's definitely attitude along with play-ing ability. But the bottom line is theproducer and what's best for the song.

Nine times out of ten, my drums aregoing to sound l ike the engineer, theproducer, or the artist wanted them tosound. It's not necessarily what I wouldchoose myself. If it works for them—itworks for me. In striving for hit records,the producer and engineer have a ten-dency to check previous hits and copythese sounds, although many times themusician will try to copy something helikes. I have many times. Sometimes itworks, other times it doesn't. Also, ev-ery studio has its own personal acousti-

"IT'S YOUR BODY ANDSOUL THAT'S MAKING THISMUSIC . . . IF YOU SCREWONE OF THEM UP . . .YOU'RE DEFEATING THEWHOLE PURPOSE OF MAK-ING THE BEST MUSIC YOUCAN."

cal sound and feel. You may find thatone drum that sounds great in one studiomight require an altogether different tun-ing to sound great in another studio.

I was speaking the other day about acomment someone made that all drum-mers sound alike today. That's not al-ways the drummer's fault. I was inchurch once watching our kids sing inthe choir. They had a l i t t le band playingwith a full orchestra, and three choirs. Itwas beautifully done. They had a rockdrummer playing some of the contempo-rary gospel things and he was a goodplayer, but his drums sounded horrible!It sounded like he was trying to copy that"studio sound." He had no bottomheads and his drums were tuned low witha lot of tape on them. Somebodyshould've told him, "If you're playinglive, make the drums sing if you can!" Ihave heard good sounding one-headedtoms, but I suppose just l ike with double-headed drums you need to take the timeto get the best out of them.SF: Is there any difference in your set-upand your tuning when you're in the stu-dio and onstage?JK: A lit t le bit. I like to have my drumstotally wide open when I'm onstage. Not

real ringy, but at least so that they have atone. It depends on the kind of bandyou're in and the kind of music you'replaying. Everything is relative. There areno set things. A guy called to ask mewhat kind of heads I use, and what kindof snare drum I use. I said, "Well, I have17 snares." Not to be bragging abouthow many drums I have, but over theyears I've collected that many and I 'm adrum fanatic. I love drums with myheart. I appreciate a well-made drum, sowhen I see one I'll do anything I can toget it. I was that way when I had nomoney at all. When my wife was workingand I was doing Bar Mitzvahs and Mexi-can weddings for $15 to $25 a shot, Iwould make sure that I would somehowdo something to get a cymbal or a drum.Then I never sold them or traded themin. As a consequence I have a lot ofequipment. Seventeen snare drums justgives me a choice. I use them for differ-ent things. It's like asking, "Who's yourfavorite drummer?" That's impossible.If I tel l somebody that I'm playing onekind of drum head today, later on tonightI may make a discovery that anotherhead is better. Generally, I like RemoAmbassadors or Diplomats on mysnares, and almost anything on the tom-toms. I make a new discovery of combi-nations every so often. I'm constantlychanging things around. But I only useRemo heads or an occasional calf head.

I feel that I have to tune the drums tosome kind of way that makes sense tome. I don't tune in intervals. It's toopredictable for me. I don't like anythingthat is that predictable. I purposelyscrew-up my drumset sometimes to cre-ate a change of attitude. I love it whenthe cartage people set up the drums allwrong; maybe a small tom on the rightand a big tom on the left. When I 'mplaying with two or three tom-toms, Ithink of a melodic scale. I get bored withthe same old descending tones in perfectthirds or fourths. It 's nice for things to bea bit weird to make your attitude change.SF: What kind of sticks do you use?JK: I used Gretsch 3D sticks for years.Then I wanted a l i t t le heavier stick so Iwent to Regal 5A, then to 2A, then to theProDrum AB stick which is just a bit toolong for me. Now I'm using a Regal Rockstick which is a l i t t le l ike the old Gretsch3D. But it's like when I go to buy acoat—it's either too big or too small.SF: Have any of the companies consid-ered making a Jim Keltner model stick?JK: Yamaha would do that. I'm sure. Idon't think I'd really want that becauseI'd be afraid if I didn't dig it, there'd bethousands of sticks all over with myname which I wouldn't be using at all. Ichange in a second. I need a stick that's

continued on page 52

EdBlackwelllSingin' On

The Set

by Scott K. Fish Photos by Tom Copi

Superlatives are like chuff before the wind indescribing the drumming of Ed Blackwell, I'msure I could speak with him for days and stillwalk away feeling like we'd never even gotstarted. Born and raised in New Orleans, Black-well brings the tradition of jazz drumming fromthe roots, adds to it, and takes off into newdimensions. He has experience in virtually everyaspect of drumming, but he is perhaps bestknown for his work with Ornette Coleman. Indescribing his own music, Coleman has said, "Iwould like the rhythm section to be as free asI'm trying to get, but very few players so far—onhorns or rhythm instruments—can do this yet. IfI don't set a pattern at a given moment, whoeverhas the dominant ear at that moment can takeand do a thing that will change the direction (ofthe music). The drums can help determine direc-tion too. Certain phrases I start to play with mydrummer, Edward Blackwell, suddenly seembackward to me because he can turn themaround on a different beat, thereby increasingthe freedom of my playing."

Coleman told writer Nat Hentoff that, "Mymusic doesn't have any real time, no metrictime. It's more like breathing—a natural, freertime. People have forgotten how beautiful it is tobe natural. I like spread rhythm—rhythm thathas a lot of freedom in it—rather than the moreconventional netted rhythm. With spreadrhythm, you might tap your feet awhile, thenstop, then later start tapping again. Otherwise,you tap your feet so much, you forget what you

hear. You just hear the rhythm."That gives a clue as to the development of

Blackwell's style of drumming. He is by nomeans confined to the role of "Ornette Cole-man's drummer." He has performed, and con-tinues to perform, with the best musicians injazz, and he has his own band with a soon-to-be-released LP on Sweet Earth Records, incrediblyhis first LP as a band leader! Two recentlyreleased LP's with the Old and New Dreamsband {Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Dewey Red-man, Ed Blackwell) feature some superb drum-ming. Of that quartet Blackwell said, "Afterleaving this hand, the love I feel from them,from the music, lasts the whole year. I feel sofull."

Blackwell is also teaching at Wesleyan Uni-versity in Connecticut, a tremendous asset tothat jazz department, and student drummers arevery fortunate to have this genius to draw from.

We met at Ed's office at the University for thisinterview. We didn't get too much into equip-ment because Blackwell uses a variety of differ-ent sets. He was playing a four-piece Sonor kitwhen I saw him; 18" bass drum, 8 x12 mountedtom, and a 14" floor tom. His cymbals were allPaiste. The hi-hats were 13" Sound Edge 2002, a22" Medium Ride with sizzles FO 602, and a IS"Thin Crash FO 602. Sometimes he adds another22" Medium 2002.

My opening question was in reference to PaulBarbarin, a noted Dixieland drummer who wassaid to have been a tremendous influence onBlackwell's drumming.EB: Paul was one of the big influences, but therewere quite a few. Paul had two brothers playingdrums and he was from a family of drummers.But he was the oldest and the most well-known.We played beside each other in a club in NewOrleans. He played with the Dixieland band inthe big part of the club, and I played in thesmaller part. Our group played the after-hourssession, so when the Dixieland band would getoff we would start. So maybe I would go downearly and I'd sit around and listen to him play.He used to sit down and talk to me a lot aboutthe drums and drum rolls; how he played andhow he learned to play. He was very interesting.SF: Was he playing a full drumset at that time?EB: Oh yeah. He had two toms, bass drum,snare, cymbal, and hi-hat. He played all of it!SF: When did you start playing drums'?EB: I started playing in high school. A friend ofmine, Wilbur Hogan, played drums in schooland he was about two years ahead of me. Sowhen I went to school I decided that I wanted toplay the drums. I used to bang around the houseon pots and different things, and I really wantedto play, but I couldn't read the music. So Wilburspoke to the teacher and told him that he wouldhelp me with the music and show me all therhythms and the beats. The teacher said alright,and let me join the band. For two years Hogantaught me a lot about reading and when he left Itook his position. He had been captain of thedrum corps. When he left, they promoted me tocaptain. Hogan was another big influence on me.He was one of the younger drummers that weused to hang around, because he had an unclethat taught him to read real early, and he was

very adept at reading. He wanted to show mehow to play a paradiddle and what a paradiddlewas, and what a long stroke roll was. We werevery tight.SF: Were you interested in learning how to read?EB: Yeah, I was into it. The only problem wasthat after he left, I was on my own! So I had todevelop my own reading. It took me longer todevelop because I didn't have anyone to teachme after that. All the teachers around didn'timpress me as being the ones I wanted to studywith. So I just listened to Max Roach anddifferent drummers and learned to read on myown.SF: Were you playing snare drum in the highschool band?EB: Snare and tenor drums.SF: When did you begin to play a full drumset?EB: Well, in 1949, two brothers called the John-son Brothers were starting a rhythm and bluesgroup. The drummer they had got drafted, sothey needed a drummer. A neighbor of mine wastheir uncle and he heard me practicing in thehouse. He told them about me, they gave me aring, I went over to try out. and I joined the

group!SF: Up unt i l joining that band you'd neverplayed a drumset?EB: Never played drumset before. We weren'tplaying anything but rhythm and blues and shuf-fles. But it was something. That's when I start-ed. They played all the popular rhythm andblues tunes. Their biggest number was "Jazz atthe Philharmonic," by I l l inois Jacquet. One ofthe brothers played tenor sax and that was hissolo piece. That was always the house closer.We always closed the concert or wherever wewere playing with "Jazz at the Philharmonic"because that was the rocker! Everybody lovedit.SF: How many pieces were in that band?EB: Five. Trumpet, tenor, piano, drums andbass. After awhile the trumpet player had to goback to college so we worked as a quartet . Ireally enjoyed it. I really began to get veryinterested in the drums.

There was another friend. Tom Wood, whowas Wilbur Hogan's cousin. He tried to teachme to coordinate the sock cymbal on beats 2 and4. That was the hardest thing ever in my life! Ijust could not work that sock cymbal on 2 and 4.But after awhile, everything comes when youtry, and I tried! It worked out. Then my sister'shusband bought me a drumset that used tobelong to a girls' group called The Sweetheartsof Rhythm. His brother was the manager of thegroup. When the group broke up, the drummersold her drums to him and he bought them forme. It was a big 24" bass drum, but it was myfirst set and I loved it . I've gone through somany since then. I took a sheet and cut it out andput it on the bass drum head so it wouldn'tvibrate so much. It had a very good sound. Ilearned how to tune them very well.SF: How did you learn?EB: By listening to the sound. I knew when I hitit, it would vibrate loud, so I knew I had tomuffle it .SF: Did the Dixieland drummers give you anytips on tuning?EB: Yeah. Especially Paul. The Dixieland drum-mers had a way of playing with the bottom snarehead tuned looser than the top. They playedwith these very small snare drums that musthave been about 4" deep. They're called Dixie-land snares and they got a real "snarey" sound.They could roll l ike paper being tom.SF: That's backwards from normal snare tuningisn't it?EB: Yeah, but I guess they used it like thatbecause of the size of the drum. I've tried thesame technique with the normal snare. It de-pends on how high a pitch you want. Try differ-ent intonations with the drum. Loosen the bot-tom head, loosen the top head, try everything!Try the same method for the bass drum and tom-toms. It all depends on the size that you use.With a 14" floor tom I find that with the bottomhead looser than the top head you get a bettersound and better intonation. If you've got themtuned too tight they sound too high. If you wantto get a bottom sound out of it you have to havethe bottom head looser than the top head.SF: I read somewhere that you once built yourown drumset.

EB: Well , I didn't build them. I converted somedrums. I took a 16" mil i tary snare that I used toplay in high school, bought some hoops for itand converted it into a bass drum. I had a tenordrum that a girl in school gave me. I put somelegs on that and made a floor tom-tom out of it,and I had the regular mounted tom-tom. Thenmy brother painted it for me and put someglistening sparkles on it and made a real nice setout of i t . I had a lot of fun with that set. In fact,Bil ly Higgins really loved that set. It was nicesounding, but it looked l ike a set of toy drums.The tenor drum was a 9 x 13. I t h i nk . The snaredrum was regular. There was an album recentlypublished by Harold Batisste called New Or-leans Heritage: 1956-1966. I 'm playing that setof drums on the record.SF: Who else was in the band?EB: Harold Batisste and Alvin Batisste on clari-net, Ellis Marsellis, and an out-of-town bassplayer. I don't remember his name. We werecalled The American Jazz Quintet , and we

played all original tunes. Alvin, Harold, andEllis would write all the tunes.SF: There's always a similarity in the playing ofNew Orleans musicians. It isn't a sameness, butthere's always a s imi lar i ty . Could you identifythat?EB: Well, it's the culture. New Orleans has thisheritage of marching and parading. All of thedrummers that are born there come up hearingthat everyday. When I was a kid, every Sundaythere was a parade. There's a parade for funer-als, births, deaths. Everything called for a pa-rade. In a minute people would get out and startplaying a parade. Natural ly , when you hear themusic, people would gather and a big crowdwould just follow behind. It was a lot of fun. Theband would come down the street playing andyou would hear them. You could hear the bassdrum coming and you knew it was a parade. Allthe kids would have "The Second Line." Thekids would follow behind the parade, dancing.Most of the drummers would come up w i t h tha t

heritage, and you can hear it in their playing.SF: So it's definitely a military influence.EB: Definitely, yeah. It 's a marching beat.SF: You moved from New Orleans to Californiain 1951?EB: Right. Ornette was in California. He leftbefore I got there and went back to Texas. Thenhe came back in '53. We started playing togetherbecause he couldn't find anybody else to playwith. Nobody wanted to play with him. Ithought that was amazing. Here's this cat play-ing all this music and nobody wants to play withhim! So we got an apartment together. We didn'thave any musical gigs so Ornette was working inone department store, and I was working inanother. He was driving an elevator and I was astock clerk. So that way, we were able tomaintain a living while playing. But we'd playeveryday. The minute we'd get home, we'd getright in and start playing, man.SF: What topics did you discuss with eachother?

continued on page 42

"ORNETTE WASWRITING TUNESAND HE WASPLAYING HISTUNES . . . WENEVER COULDPLAY WITH ABASS PLAYER . . .THE ONLY TIMEWE'D GET A BASSPLAYER WAS IFWE COULD GUAR-ANTEE HIM A JOB. . . BASS PLAY-ERS WOULD SAY,'NO GOOD, MAN.I CAN'T DEALWITH THAT.' "

The Evolutionof the DrumSet: Part 1by Danny L. Read

The drum set is uniquely an American phenomenon. Al-though individual components were originally imported; i.e.,the bass and snare drum from England and Germany, the tom-tom from China, and cymbals from China and Turkey, theseinstruments had never been combined in such a way as theywere by dance band, jazz, and theater drummers in the late1890s and early 1900s. Other items, such as the bass drum andhi-hat pedals, the throne, and various drum and cymbal stands,were invented in the United States and reflected the needs ofthe drum set player. The drum set was not "invented," butrather it evolved over a period of time, its hardware beingnecessitated by the requirements of the players and the musicitself.

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, military bandinstruments became readily available. Field bass and snaredrums could be easily and cheaply purchased in pawn shopsand elsewhere. Parade and circus bands would, of course, usedifferent players for bass and snare drums, as did the earlyragtime bands of the 1890s. The procedure of using only onedrummer to play both the bass and snare drum was soondeveloped and in its earliest form, without benefit of a bass

I) An early Chinese cymbal and handpainted tom-tom; two items often usedby the early jazz drummers.

3) A typical trap set-up in-cluded a Chinese cymbaland tom-tom, plus wood-block, cowbell and holderby Duplex.

2) Hand painted,solid-brass templebells, circa 1925.

Photos 1-10 by Ken Mezines

drum pedal, was quite awkward. William F. Ludwig describesthis method which was in common practice up unti l about 1920:"The bass drum was placed to the right of the player with thecymbal on top. They would strike the bass drum and cymbalwith the snare stick, then quickly pass to the snare drum for theafterbeat with an occasional roll squeezed in." Double drum-ming, as it was called, was used in dance and jazz bands as wellas by theater drummers. It offered the drummer little chance forimprovisation.

New Orleans was founded by the French about 1718 and thepopularity of the mili tary band in France reached its peak aboutthe mid-1800s. These facts, coupled with the availability ofpost-Civil War instruments after 1865, made New Orleans quitea hotbed for band activity. Bands were used for parades,picnics, secret society ceremonies, concerts, dances, funerals,and on riverboats. Thomas Shultz has said that "these Frenchand Spanish influences (New Orleans was governed by Spainfrom 1764 to 1800), plus the addition of slaves from Africa andthe West Indies, gave New Orleans an environment which wasdecidedly different from the rest of the United States at thattime." Jazz was given birth when the music of these predomi-nantly outdoor bands was brought indoors to be played in dancehalls, brothels, sporting houses, barrel houses, and saloons.

Prior to the increasing availabili ty of mil i tary percussioninstruments and before the resurgence of civilian bands, NewOrleans and other areas of the South were home to anotherbrand of band.

This was called the skiffle or spasm band and its playersperformed on such homemade instruments as the kazoo, Jew'sharp, washboard, comb and paper, tin cans, garbage cans, andany other items which could be easily found around the housewith little or no expense. Many of these instruments werepercussive in nature, in that they were played by being struck.Several early blues singers recorded to the accompaniment of aspasm band, with the harmonica and washboard being the mostcommon instruments. Prior to 1900, many black youngsters gottheir early musical training in this manner.

The function of the early jazz drummer was to mark the beatand, as Theodore D. Brown has said, "to supply the rhythmicfoundation for the various dance steps." The military andrudimental orientation of early drummers and the resultantrigidity of performance frequently did not blend with thepolyphonic improvisation of the wind instruments in NewOrleans jazz.

In an attempt to find new sonorities which would not onlycomplement the rhythmic nature of the music but would alsoprovide novel and coloristic effects, the drummer began to addvarious "traps" to his outfit. Cow-bells, woodblocks, gongs,triangles, anvils, castanets, temple blocks, chimes, and variousother paraphernalia became part of the trap drummer's equip-ment. The use of traps to avoid monotony was, in part,necessitated by the drummer's lack of skill and lack of equip-ment to perfect his skill , in regard to the use of bass drum, snaredrum, and cymbals. Trap drumming reached its peak with thebig-bands of the 1920s, such as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunce-ford, Chick Webb, and others, and the theater drummers, whoprovided accompaniment for live acts and silent movies.

A possible origin of the word "traps" was advanced by H. O.Brunn in his description of the original Dixieland Jazz Band'sdrummer, Tony Sparbora (Spargo): "He was the first drummerto use cowbells; and his famous kazoo, which he picked up in anovelty store in Chicago, immediately set him apart from allothers of the period. The collection of dolls, teddy bears, andmiscellaneous gimcracks with which he decorated his druminstallation established him as a forerunner of the modern 'hot-

4) Basic set-up for 1925. Note the cymbal holder device on thefar right, and cymbal attached to the bass drum on the lowerleft.

6 ) L u d w i gbass drumpedal withsmall cymbalbeater made in1919.

5) A back view of thesame set showing6 1/2" all-metal snaredrum.

rodder.' Possibly his hoard supplies a clue to the phrase 'trapdrums,' as anyone falling headfirst into this assortment of junkin the dark would certainly consider it a trap." Through the useof these traps the drummer developed the image of being a"musical comedian." As Abel Green and Joel Laurie point out,at one time the drummer's trap collection was more importantthan his drumming ability. "In 1915, Earl B. Fuller, drummerwith the Banjo Wallace Orchestra, was given 64 square feet offloor space for his traps, which were worth $1,000."

Once the enchantment with the trap drums was over, drum-mers could turn their attention more to becoming an integraland artistic part of the jazz ensemble rather than serving asfreakish exhibitionists. Needless to say, the fact that all of thosetraps made travel quite inconvenient and complicated alsocontributed to its decline. Probably the first drummer to extractthe full potential of the drum set was Warren "Baby" Dodds.His set, which was put together by bits and pieces, consisted ofa 28-inch bass drum, a 6 1/2-inch all-metal snare drum withdouble tension rods, which allowed him to tune each headseparately, an overhead pedal, 4 tuned cowbells, a woodblock,a slapstick, a 16-inch Zildjian cymbal, and a 10-inch Chinesetom-tom. Primitive recording conditions prohibit a just analysisof what drummers really sounded like through the 1920s. InDodds' era, drummers were put in the back of the recordingstudio and could not use the bass drum or snare drum heads atall. Most of their playing was done on the snare drum rim, thebass drum shell, the woodblock, and a choked cymbal.

According to William F. Ludwig, Sr., the first drum factory

in America was the Excelsior Drum Company of Camden, NewJersey, which was started in about 1885 by Joseph Soistman."Soistman was a famous Civil War drummer who designed andinduced the federal government to adopt the Civil War EagleDrum for all mi l i ta ry use." They published their first and onlycatalog in 1899.

Another early drum company was started by Emil Boulangerin St. Louis in 1887. It was called the Duplex ManufacturingCompany and in its catalog of 1892 it stated that "our house isprobably the only one in the world devoting its entire attentionto benefit the double drummer." This was the first drum catalogpublished in America. The Duplex snare drum "was the firstdrum to use transparent heads on the snare side. They werecalled kangaroo heads."

V. G. Leedy, father of early theater drummer Eugene Leedy,started his own drum company in Indianapolis in 1895. Heinvented and patented the first practical folding snare drumstand. The Leedy Drum Company also had one of the first drumset patents in 1921. This set consisted of a snare drum and onetom-tom, both clip-mounted onto the bass drum.

In the very early 1900s, "the only drum factory in Chicagowas Wilson and Jacobs who purchased the drum departmentfrom Lyon and Healy. (They) made only drums, mostly rope,including the then famous Monarch Mil i tary Drums. They made

8. 8) A set of WFLdrums from around1930. Note the ad-vancement in engi-neering and designof tom-tom andcymbal mountingsystems.

7) An assortment of some popular snaredrums of the day. Slingerland snaremade sometime between 1928 and 1933(left); early Ludwig & Ludwig (right);Wurlitzer snare drum of 1900 (bottom).

no pedals."The Ludwig Drum Company was formed in Chicago in 1909.

At that time it was known as Ludwig and Ludwig. It wasformed as a result of a new development in the design of thewooden foot pedal. This new design, created by Wil l iam F.Ludwig in 1908, used the forward part of the foot rather than theheel to manipulate the pedal. The wooden-heel pedal had beenhand-made since at least 1894. In 1909 Robert C. Danly,brother-in-law of William F. Ludwig. made a metal foot pedalfrom Mr. Ludwig's design and thus the origin of the LudwigDrum Company.

Several drum catalogs were produced between 1900 and1910. "George B. Stone and Son of Boston, about 1900; TheDodge Brothers, also of Boston about the same period; YerksManufacturing Company of New York, about 1905; NovakDrum Supply Company of Chicago; Frank Rice Drum Compa-ny of Chicago; and Dixie Music House of Chicago, all publishedabout 1910."

Two early drum shops were Hammond and Gerlack inPittsburgh (about 1906), and Wright and Kackman, who had thefirst drum shop in San Francisco about 1910. The lat ter market-ed a wooden-heel pedal with a double foot board which couldplay the bass drum and cymbals either together or separately.Currently, one of the few drum shops to deal in antiquepercussion equipment is the Ken Mezines Drumshop in St.Louis. In this shop can be seen such items as a Duplex BassDrum with a metal shell and inside tension rods; a bass drumand Chinese tom-tom of the Baby Dodds era with multi-coloredpaintings on the drum shells; a 1920s Ludwig Black Beautysnare drum; and an 1880 snare drum called the 20th CenturyProfessional. The owners are also assembling an educationalclinic which, through audio-visual filmstrips, lectures, displays,and live performance, will demonstrate the history of drummingstyles and equipment.

The first and st i l l the largest cymbal manufacturing companyin the United States is the Avedis Zildjian Company, whichbegan production in Constantinople ( Is tanbul) , Turkey in 1623.The current factory is located in Norwell, Massachusetts.

9) Early set-up featuring 28" Duplexbass, single-tension toms with tackedbottom heads, trap table for templeblocks, multiple cowbells and cymbal,and intricately hand painted bass drumhead.

9.7.

As the drum set evolved, the use and disuse of equipmentwas, to a great extent, determined by the style of music i tselfand by the capabilites of the performers. As new techniqueswere acquired, design changes and improvements in equipmentwere necessitated.

By the early 1930s, complete drum sets including cymbalswere readily available. The use of traps was beginning todecline; the large field, bass and snare drums were no longerused; and cymbals were becoming larger and more of anintegral part of the drum set. What traps were used "were beingincorporated into the music as an intricate and appropriaterhythmic accompaniment rather than just for the novelty ef-fect." The Chicago drummers, George Wett l ing, Dave Tough,and Gene Krupa being the three most important, began toexperiment with the open cymbal. Dave Tough was particularlyinf luent ia l in making effective use of the ride cymbal and inusing larger cymbals than had been used previously. GeneKrupa was influential in increasing the importance of the bassdrum by playing it on all four beats wi th in the measure.Leonard Feather has commented that "a mild sensation wascreated upon the release, early in 1928, of four t i t l e s byMcKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans in which Gene Krupa seta precedent by including a bass drum in his equipment."Krupa's set, circa 1938. included a snare and bass drum, twotom-toms, a hi-hat cymbal consisting of two 11-inch medium-th in Zildjian cymbals, and four other cymbals: a 16-inch Zildjianmedium-thick; a 14-inch Zildjian medium- th ick ; an 8-inch th insplash cymbal; and a 13-inch Zildjian crash cymbal. Krupa wasalso largely responsible for developing the drum solo.

Jo Jones, with Count Basie in the mid-l930s, was one of thefirst to eliminate traps from the drum set. He also reduced thesize of the bass and snare drum and used the hi-hat cymbal as it

10) Gene Krupa on the cover of alate thirties Slingerland catalog be-hind the popular model set of theday.

11) A youthful Chico Hamilton onan early fifties Progressive JazzOutfit by Gretsch which featuredsmaller drums, larger cymbals andthe famous Rail Consolette smalltom mount.

12) Some eighty years later, the innovative Billy Cobhamstands behind his massive triple bass/triple snare set-up, clearlydemonstrating just how far the drummer of the '80s has come.

had never been used before, making it the most important partof his set.

The bebop drummers followed Jo Jones in using smallerdrums and larger and lighter cymbals. "The drumsticks grewlonger and thinner, and wire brushes fell from favor."

In the 1950s, West Coast drummer Shelly Manne developed"a 'melodic' means of expression abounding in exotic flavoringand brilliant colors. Using mallets, brushes, sticks, silver dol-lars, and fingers, he has pushed back many tonal barriers."Because of their versati l i ty in producing coloristic effects andsofter dynamics, brushes were used frequently by the "cool"drummers of the 1950s.

Swing, bop and cool drummers relied more on cymbal soundsfor keeping t ime, rhythmic accentuation, and coloristic effects.The hard bop drummers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, aswell as the current avant-garde drummers, have once againemphasized the drum sounds and have placed less emphasis oncymbals. This is no doubt the result of an increased Africaninfluence on jazz which has also resulted in the more frequentuse of mallets and sticks to evoke this African heritage. Moresubtle techniques, but s t i l l of African origin, are the use offingers and hands to str ike the drum head and the use ofAfrican, Oriental , and Indian traps, such as gongs, the Chinesecymbal, camel bells, and other exotic paraphernalia. At leastone avant-garde drummer. Milford Graves, has at times used aset with no snare drum. It should be noted that on someoccasions the small and/or uniquely equipped sets of someavant-garde drummers are the result of financial hardship.

Jazz-rock drummers have both changed the appearance ofthe set and increased its size. Some rock drummers, in order toplay louder with a more deadened sound, have removed thebottom heads of the tom-toms and the front head of the bassdrum. It is not uncommon for some drummers to use up to eighttunable tom-toms, two bass drums, and six or seven cymbals.One very practical reason why rock drummers can maintainthese large sets is that they usually have a band-boy or"roadie" to carry and set up all equipment .

The rock drummer, in further exploitat ion of the visualelement, has also used a see-through, clear plexiglass set whichis available in a variety of t in ted colors and allows the audienceto view his gestures from head to toe.

The ultimate in tonal color and volume was introduced in1977 with the creation of the drum synthesizer. B i l l y Cobhamhas been a leader in the use of electronic drums as well as inexpanding the size of the drum set.

In Part Two of this series, we'll take a detailed look at thehistory and evolution of each individual component of the drumset. Part Two will appear in the Feb./ Mar. '82 issue of MD.

by Robin TollesonBurnin'

TerryBozzio:

Photos by Paul Jonason

Terry Bozzio has the chops to be anorchestra percussionist, a jazz fusionburner, or a rock and roll showman, andhe's shown off each of those sides of histalent during an eventful career.

Bozzio was born in San Francisco 29years ago, and his accordion-playingfather moved the family to nearby Fair-fax when he was in third grade. Heattended Drake High School in San An-selmo, and the College Of Marin inKentfield, California. After playing inthe pit orchestra of Godspell for eightmonths in 1973, Terry joined the Latin-fusion hand Azteca. From there, he au-ditioned for, and was picked to join,Frank Zappa's band, beginning whatTerry calls "unbelievable musical edu-cation, beyond my wildest dreams."

Terry did an album and a short tourwith the Brecker Brothers in betweendates with Zappa. After leaving Frank,he auditioned for Thin Lizzy, and wasoffered that gig, hut couldn't quite agreeto terms with the band. Terry then joinedex-Zappa colleague Eddie Jobson inU.K., recording a couple of albums andagain touring the world. The drummernow seeks a record deal for his new bandin Los Angeles, Missing Persons (KenScott produced the band's 4-song EP).Terry is also taking students in the LosAngeles area at this time.TB: The first time I got interested indrums was when I saw Ricky Ricardo Jr.on the I Love Lucy show, playing bebopwith his father, or some dixieland orsomething, and then Cubby O'Brien onthe Mickey Mouse Show. And I alwayswanted to play drums, but I could neverget a set. I think I had a toy drum setwhen I was really young, but they neverwould give me a real drum set. And thatkind of persisted on into the time of theBeach Boys and surf drum music. Bythat time I had a set of bongos, which Iwould sort of take apart, and put a sheetof paper over one of them with a rubberband, and make it sound like a snaredrum. And I had a crumpled up "HighVoltage" sign from a telephone pole thatsimulated a closed hi-hat. And I wouldwork out all the riffs and stuff. And thenfinally when the Beatles came out I knewI had to be a drummer. I sort of pres-sured my father into getting me drumlessons. I studied with this guy Todd,who's quite a good drummer and teacherwho plays with the Marin Symphonyfrom time to time. And then for about sixmonths, I studied with this other guy,Ken Blewer, who worked at "Drum-land." Then I quit and just played rockand roll with garage bands through highschool. My last year in high school Istarted to read seriously and play in theband and stuff. I made it from intermedi-ate to advanced band in one semester.You know, I really got into it. Then Igraduated high school and went to Col-

lege Of Marin summerschool. And Istarted studying traps with this teacherChuck Brown, who I stayed with forthree years or so. He was great. Hetaught me a lot about discipline andreading and everything. While I was atCollege Of Marin I played with all theirtrips, instrumental ensembles and thejazz band, and sort of turned my back onrock and roll. I just listened mainly toclassical and jazz, and those were theonly two things I pursued. I majored inmusic, and I was really gung ho—I wasalmost a straight A student. And thensome friends of mine, Mark Isham, andthis other trumpet player who introducedme to Mark, they sort of turned me on toMiles and Coltrane and Tony and Elvin,and that situation. Those guys, and thepeople who played with them, are reallymy main influence in jazz. Out of CollegeOf Marin I played Godspell for about ayear, and then joined the band Azteca.RT: Did you have to join Local 6 to dothe Godspell shows?TB: Yeah. I joined Local 6 right awaywhen I got out of college. I think I had tojoin to do some symphony gigs. My dadpopped for it , because it is hard whenyou're first starting out. I remember thatthree hundred dollar fee or something,and then they don't guarantee you anywork. It's kind of a strange thing. But Iwas real lucky with working aroundhere. Those shows paid real well for along time. And Godspell was set up in away where the band is sort of up on thesefunny little platforms, and kind of hiddenfrom the audience. There were only 16songs in a two hour show. So 16 three-minute songs leaves you tons of time,right? So I would go up there with head-phones and a cassette recorder, andpractice and work out Tony WilliamsLifetime licks from this tape thing, andwrite them all down. My whole way oflearning at that point was sort of to takeall the drummers that I loved, like Tonyand Eric (Gravatt) mainly, and wheneverthey would do a lick that I thought wasreally cool, I would write that lick out,and practice it, and learn the techniqueinvolved, and then make up my ownlicks using those techniques. And that'sprobably the main way I learned to dowhat I do, at least musically. That's agood thing to do, because that way youdon't get stuck with just doing theirlicks, but it does open up a lot of doors.Because when a lot of people start, theyhear things and they don't know whatthe hell is going on. You just have tolisten to that section over and over to getit.RT: So you did study the rudiments ofdrumming.TB: Yeah, I mean I never entered con-tests or did any of that stuff. And at thetime that I was studying, I always playedmatched grip. So I got a lot of flack, even

from Chuck Brown and students atschool and stuff, or teachers at schoolwho always thought the proper way wasthe traditional left hand thing. But Icould always do all those rudiments. I'dstudied Haskell Harr's books. And thenI got into Stick Control, which I thoughtwas a li t t le bit better practical applica-tion of that, rather than having all thefancy notation. And I studied that, and Istudied out of Ted Reed's book Synco-pation, and Louie Bellson's books, andthis other book Portraits In Rhythm byAnthony Cirone. That's a real good bookfor dynamics, and classical snare drum-ming. Chuck Brown took me through alot of that stuff. I got a scholarship whileI was at College Of Marin for ten lessonswith Lloyd Davis of the San FranciscoSymphony. He used to play with DaveBrubeck, so he was sort of like a jazz andclassical drummer. I studied with him forawhile with that Morris Goldenbergsnare drum book. I sort of went through

"I DON'T USE THE NOR-MAL RIDE SOUND. I DON'TWANT THAT. I FOUNDTHAT I SORT OF OD'D ONTHAT IN MY YEARS WITHZAPPA, AND I DON'TREALLY LIKE THE WAY ITSOUNDS WHEN YOU PLAYIT BACK. I DON'T THINK ITFITS INTO A MODERN AP-PROACH TO MUSIC."

that with him, and some other malletthings. And I was pretty thorough at thetime, you know, with reading and theclassical technique. I played Bartok's"Sonata For Two Pianos and Percus-sion." I played the timpani part for that.And I played with the Marin Symphonyfor awhile. I did a lot of things at theCollege Of Marin, lots of classicalpieces. I really enjoyed that. And Ithought I was going to continue on to dothat, but my first love was always justbeing able to sit down and burn at thedrums, and that's what's overcome mein the long run.RT: Did you record any with Azteca?TB: No. They had recorded their secondalbum, and the drummer wasn't workingout, so Mell Martin heard about me andcalled me up. And I went in and audi-tioned for them and got the gig. But itreally wasn't right. At that time I wasyoung and wild, and all I cared aboutwas Tony Williams. And so I was sort ofthrowing in everything including thekitchen sink, and they were trying tomake some commercial Latin music.And they were much older and moremature than myself. They used to call me

The Kid. "Take it easy, kid, you'replaying too much."RT: Did Zappa hear you in Azteca?TB: No. When I was in Azteca I metEddie Henderson, and I started playingwith him and all these other black jazzpeople around San Francisco. I playedwith Woody Shaw, and Julian Priester,Joe Henderson, and Luis Gasca, andreally had a ball. That was a lot of fun inthose days. And Eddie used GeorgeDuke on one of his albums, and Georgesaid that Frank was looking for a drum-mer. So Eddie turned me on, and Iphoned George. I had to fly myself downto LA just to audition l ike the rank andfile rest of the people that auditioned forFrank. It was scary, you know, it wasridiculous. I walked in, and I'm this l i t t l ekid from San Francisco. I walk intoFrank's huge warehouse with this bigstage, and all this equipment and roadcases and stuff. And these ridiculouscharts spread all over the stage. And Ithought I could pretty much read any-thing, you know. But I mean this waslike the hardest stuff you'd ever want tosee. You know, just the odd groupingsand odd times, and he had melodic thingswritten out around the toms and thedrums, so you didn't have to read justrhythmically—you had to read melodicthings as well. I thought, "Man, I cannever do this. I've lost." But then Ithought, "Well, I've spent the airfare togo down here. I ' l l give it a try." Iwatched a couple other drummers audi-tion, and they were sort of trying toflaunt their chops rather than really lis-ten to what was going on. So I said,"Well, at least I ' l l listen." I went upthere, and I fumbled through somecharts the best I could. There's not toomany drummers who could sight readthat stuff, so when a real hard part wouldcome, I would just stop and say, "Oh,this is this," and I'd play it for him. Andhe said, "Right, now stick it in with therest of it." And I would. We jammed abit and he said, "Okay, you sound realgood. I want to hear you when I'mfinished with the rest of the guys." Andeverybody there split, so he said, "WellI guess you've got the gig if you want it."It was great. He blew my mind by takingme to the Record Plant, and out to dinnerand everything, and showing me thishuge studio, and the Hollywood way ofstudio life which I had never been ex-posed to. From there it was like anunbelievable musical education, beyondmy wildest dreams. Because Frank, tome, is the heaviest at what he does.RT: If you had a drum set in front of you,could you play "The Black Page" rightnow?TB: Right now, no. But I could in abouttwenty minutes. I'd just have to remem-ber it. With Frank, the audition is a lot ofpressure, but the way he works isn't like

studio work. It isn't like having to go inand read a chart and play it perfectly intwo takes, like I would imagine SteveGadd or some of these other people haveto do. It's more like you rehearse forabout a month or two before you go outon the road. And he's constantly throw-ing everything at you. You have to bereally good with your ears, because he'llplay these really strange things, and youhave to be able to play them right back.And then do them in double time, or halftime, or put it over three. And he dis-sects things, and builds them back andforth sort of like an erector set. He'sconstantly changing the music. He wasalways bringing in bits and pieces ofmusic, and a lot of the stuff is hard, butsightreadable. And other things justaren't. And "The Black Page" was obvi-ously something that wasn't. This waslike his sadistic side going, "Okay Boz-zio, let's see if you can handle this."Because to him, at that point, it was thehardest piece of drum music he had everwritten, with the most complex rhythmsand the most bizarre things. He's almosttaunting everyone to see if the things hewrites can actually be performed. So Icould read the rhythms, but the melodicthing was nuts, because he wrote it spe-cifically for my big double bass, fivetom-tom set. And there were all thesenotes going up and down, and whatever.RT: Did Frank ever present anything tothe band that could not be performed?TB: Well, it depends. Frank hires differ-ent performers to perform certain func-tions in his band. Napolean MurphyBrock and Ray White and people likethat, they aren't necessarily heavy-dutyclassical musicians. Whereas the rest ofthe band sort of has to be, as well ashaving rock and roll and all these otherinfluences to draw upon that he kind ofdemands. So he was always bringing inthings and saying, "Okay, you guyscan't do this." But I felt I could alwaysdo whatever we did, and I did. I did hisorchestra concert at Royce Hall, this 40-piece orchestra that had four other per-cussionists besides myself on drum set.After you get your feet wet with hismusic, much of it is all the same. It's likeit reaches a point of difficulty that you'reused to working with, and then it's nosweat—once you can learn to recognizesevens and nines and put them overwhatever other denominator you want.Now he's better than that. He's got thisthing called "Herb's Vacation." I don'tthink it's been recorded yet, but it'sridiculous. Vinnie Colaiuta, who is nowmy favorite drummer, plays that with thebass player and one other person. It'sreally off the wall. It's ridiculously hard,some parts are very fast, and it's melodi-cally very difficult. It's like Zappa said,"This is to make 'The Black Page' obso-lete."

RT: Did you leave Zappa to join theBrecker Brothers' band?TB: No, I did that on a break, as a matterof fact. When Zappa's band played withthe Brecker Brothers, it was automatichook up, you know. We just really dugeach other, and had loads of fun playingin the solos and stuff. And they satbehind me, and watched me burnthrough all these shows in New York.They said, "Look, we're going to bedoing some stuff, and we'd like you tocome and play with us." So when wehad a break with Zappa—he wasn't do-ing anything all through the summer—Iwas contacted by them, and I said I'd doit. So we went out on tour. It wasprobably the most fun I've ever had inmy life, muscially, playing with them.With Zappa there's a lot of depth and

kind of a different thing. But for me,coming from jazz and fusion music, thatwas my chance to really get my rocks offand play all the stuff that I had digestedfrom listening. So we went out, and withNeil Jason and Barry Finnerty, we justburned every night for a whole month.When I finished that tour and their al-bum, I went back with Frank. And thatwas when he had hired Mars, and Wolf,and Ed Mann, and Adrian Bellew, andwe did that year, which was my last yearwith Frank.RT: Did you record anything after thatwith Frank?TB: I know Sheik Yerbouti was doneduring the last gigs I played with Frank.But then it wasn't released for quitesome time, until after I was with U.K.Frank's situation is pretty screwed up

continued on page 94

Yours Ears?gg

AreDrumsHarmingStory & Photos by Jim Dearing

Ouch!The drum advertisements read, "powerful . . . resonant . . .

increased projection . . cuts through . . . full vibrating . . .massive shells," and the cymbal ads are right behind with"strong high-end accents," and "bri l l iant crashes!"

By far the greatest occupational heal th hazard confrontingdrummers are the drums themselves. Not only are drums beingmade bigger and better than ever before, but they are also beingmade louder. Much, much louder.

But how loud is too loud? Will you s t i l l be able to hear whenyou are sixty? Are you unconsciously k i l l i ng your t iny hearingnerves? If you sometimes feel a ringing sensation in your earsafter drumming, then chances are that your hearing has alreadybeen altered to some degree. Due to the physiological make-upof our auditory system and the explosive intensity levels ofdrums, drumming can undetectably and irreversibly damageour hearing, though a variety of modern ear protection devicesprovide an excel lent alternative to serious hearing loss or evendeafness.

Our ears give us a special sense. Paul Rankin, while conduct-ing research at Ohio State University, concluded that 70% of allour time is spent communicating, of which 9% was writing, 16%was reading, 30% was speaking, and 45% was attributed tolistening. Yes, our hearing is important, and especially asmusicians, since listening and interpreting is our art and liveli-hood.

Physiological Properties of Hearing

Though the ear can adapt to an amazing diversity of soundintensity, it has not been able to keep evolutionary pace withindustrial-age noise. Noise resulting from our modern societieshas suddenly skyrocketed only during the last sixty years,whereas the ear structure has slowly evolved over mil l ions ofyears. Today, more than 16 mil l ion Americans suffer fromnoise-induced hearing loss; another half a mil l ion are thorough-ly deaf from noise exposure. What wonderful, versatile, sensi-tive tools our ears are. so that we may detect even the softesttouch of a brush on a drumhead, yet hear again and again thefreshness of a loud crash cymbal. As you might suspect, the earmust be a highly complex structure to accomplish all that itdoes. You are right.

For analyzation, the ear is conveniently divided into threesections: the outer ear, consisting of the external visible "shell"and the auditory canal which ends at the eardrum; the middleear, a hollow cavity in the skull containing the three t iny ossiclebones commonly referred to as the hammer, anvil and stirrup;and the inner ear, which begins at the oval window and housesthe semi-circular canals and cochlea. Sound transmission al-

top—This diagram shows the middle ear and inner ear. Aftertraveling through the auditory canal, sound finally reaches thestaples (stirrup) and is vibrated through to the cochlea, whereactual hearing takes place. High frequencies are picked up bynerve cells near the beginning of the cochlea, whereas lowfrequencies must travel around the turns to the apix of thecochlea.bottom—This drawing depicts the entire hearing system: outerear, middle ear and inner ear. Damage from loud drummingwill only effect the inner ear.ways follows the same path: sound pressure enters the auditorycanal and stimulates the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. Thehammer, which is attached to the eardrum, passes this sound"wave" along to the anvil , that in turn passes the wave to thestirrup, causing the oval window to move back and forth inrhythm. The ossicle bones, eardrum and oval window al lamplify the sound wave; thus the intensi ty is much strongerthan when it first struck the eardrum. As sound is transmittedthrough the oval window, it pulsates a fluid called endolymphinside the cochlea. It is here in the cochlea where the Organ ofCorti, or nerve cells, are actually located. These nerve cells lieon the basilar membrane that runs the length of the spirals in theshell-shaped cochlea. The endolymph carries the sound wavesalong the basilar membrane unt i l the waves stimulate theappropriate nerve cells; then the message is on its way to thebrain and transmission is complete. Complications occur whenthe wave passing through the oval window is too great, causing

violent undulations which throttle the basilar membrane."Overall, it would be best to look at losses in three different

ways," states Dr. James McCartney, an instructor of audiologyat California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). "In theossicular bones we have conductive loss. Another type of losswould be sensorineural, or nerve loss, and the third type of lossin the ear is a mixture of the two. If you have any type of loss inthe ear canal or if the bones are malfunctioning or slow, theconduction of sound from the outer ear to the inner will beimpeded; thus a conductive loss. Almost all types of conductiveloss can be corrected or reversed.

"Loud noise, unless it is so loud as to rip the eardrum, is notgoing to damage the ear canal, eardrum or the three tiny bones.What loud noise damages is the inner ear, by whipping thebasilar membrane until some of the nerve cells just die, and thissensorineural loss is not correctable. It is irreversible. All ofthis is something that a drummer isn't going to notice foryears."

Will Your Ears Survive Drumming?

Though humans have the potential to hear frequencies be-tween 20-20,000Hz, most of us only hear between 40-15,500,and within this range the ear is especially sensitive to certainfrequency bands. To accurately measure sound then, we mustuse a specially weighted scale which corresponds to our ear'ssensitivity. This is the A-weighted decibel scale which rangesfrom 0-140dBA. This spectrum represents the entire range ofsounds to which our ears respond.

"The pitches we use to communicate range from 500-3000Hz," says McCartney, "so our communicating is a rela-tively small band out of our 20,000Hz potential. 15,000 I canbarely hear. It is a very high, shrill whistle. You normally don'thear anything like it."

One drummer who has a particularly unique insight into thetopic of audiology and drumming is Dave Shaffer, a privatedrum teacher and an active drum & bugle corps percussionist.The twist is that Dave holds a Masters Degree in audiology.

"The difference in sound energy between 115dBA and121dBA is not a small increase," warns Shaffer, "it's a bigincrease. There's a distinct difference between loudness andintensity. Loudness is our perception of sound—intensity is theactual energy which enters the ear. 12ldBA is not twice as loudas 115, but the intensity and sound pressure has doubled. Also,as you go higher on the decibel scale, the magnitudes of energyincrease substantially. For instance, the difference between 115and 121 is much greater than the difference between 40 and 46.Anything over 100 takes a lot of energy to get that 6dBAincrease."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)is responsible for authorizing permissible sound levels in theworkplace. Currently, OSHA requires that workers be exposed

Drum set peak decibel levels

Mic in frontMic taped to head 15ft. away

Component dBA dBA

snaretom 1tom 2floor tombasshi-hatcrashridepang

overall

1101001001009396

1029299

112

1071051031009593969193

108

Dr. Don Hall, physics professor at Sacramento State Universi-ty, watches as a Moseley Autograf translates a narrow bandfrequency analysis from the Bruel & Kjaer analyzer, shownhere with a snare drum reading on the screen.

no longer than eight hours at ninety decibels, and for every fivedB increase, exposure time must be cut in half. The Environ-mental Protection Agency, however, maintains that OSHAlimits are too lax. According to Kenneth Feith, the chief ofGeneral Products Branch, Standards and Regulations Divisionof the EPA, seventy-five dBA is deleterious. Both agencies arecurrently working toward a nine hour, eighty-five dBA compro-mise.

So what about drums?Though there is a wide variance in the following drum set

dBA levels due to individual preferences in sticks, heads,drums, style and strength, we clearly exceed the OSHA guide-lines for safe sound exposure. CSUS physics professor DonHall agreed to test dBA levels of my drum set with a micro-phone taped to my head, to determine just how intense sound isat a drummer's ear. The drums I used were Pearl Wood-Fiberglass shells, sizes 8 x 12, 9 x 13, 16 x 16 and a 22" bass.The snare was a 5 x 14 Rogers Dyna-Sonic, and all drums weredouble headed with Remo CS Batters on the top sides. Thecymbals were all Zildjian: 14" hi-hats, 15" crash, 20" pang and a22" ride. The sticks were Regal Tip Rock models. Dr. Halldiligently recorded peak levels on a Bruel & Kjaer FrequencyAnalyzer type 2107, and the campus science building shudderedas I began to drum. Recorded values: snare—ll0dBA: firsttom—100; second tom—100; floor tom—100; bass—93; hi-hat—96; crash—102; pang—99; ride—92; simultaneous drum-ming—112 dBA.

Not exactly within OSHA guidelines, is it?As a matter of fact, OSHA warns that at levels of 115dBA,

people should only be exposed for fifteen minutes per day! JohnCambra, who formally mixed stage monitors for the RonnieMontrose Band, told me that with al l the amps, drums and

OSHA permissible exposure

Duration per day (hours) Sound level dBA

864321 1/211/21/4 or less

90929597

100102105110115

0-10,000 frequency spectrum reading of a snare drum. Eachtiny square represents l00Hz across; thus the high energyreading for the snare is seen at 300Hz.

monitors at performance level, dBA readings on stage typicallyexceeded 130dBA. John added that none of the musicians everwore any ear protection, although he did.

When calculating safe dBA levels, intensity (sound energy)interacts with length of exposure, but intensity is the primaryconsideration.

"Duration and intensity are both factors in sustaining hearingloss," says McCartney. "You and I could sit and talk for a verylong time (assuming we didn't get bored), and not sustain anyloss, but once we reach the higher dB levels the trade-offbetween duration and intensity begins.

"140 dBA is generally considered the threshold of pain, and itis believed that at this intensity, for no matter how short anexposure, damage will occur. At 140, no matter what pitch thesound is, I should experience pain."

"I've had a lot of noise exposure," comments Shaffer,"because I didn't understand about audiology unt i l I wastwenty, and I'd been drumming since I was six. No one evertold me that drumming could damage my hearing."

Even though we are subjected to intense sounds for longerthan recommended periods, McCartney sees our specific per-formance times as an asset.

"Any recuperation between exposures is good. By taking afifteen-minute break in between 45 minute sets, as musiciansdo, it might result in less damage than if you drummed threehours straight. Intermittent exposure is no worse than constantexposure, and in fact could be less harmful."

Casual drumming often results in a "ringing" sensation in theears, called a temporary threshold shift. When I circulated ahearing questionnaire throughout Sacramento music shops,96% of the musicians responding affirmed that at some time,they've experienced a ringing in the ears, and approximately30% admitted that such ringing was common after performing.This ringing sensation is not necessarily cause for alarm—unless it is common.

"Yes, that's a temporary threshold shift," confirmed Dr.McCartney when I described the feeling to him. "Your thresh-old is the softest sound you can hear about 50% of the time.Anything from 0-25dB is considered normal on an audiogram.

"Let's pretend your hearing is normally zero, meaning youhave really nice hearing. If you've tested after being exposed toa loud noise, your threshold may now be 30dB. which meansthat a sound must be 30dB louder before you can actually hearit. That's a "shift" in your threshold, but these shifts aretemporary, given that you stay away from that loud noise forsix, eight or twenty-four hours. Now when your hearing isretested, it will be back to normal."

0-10,000 frequency spectrum reading of all three toms playedsimultaneously. Notice the high energy peak at l00Hz., and howquickly the line drops off, indicating very little high frequencyresponse.

The casual or weekend drummer will feel the ringing sensa-tion moreso than the six-nights-a-week drummer since thecasual drummer's ears are allowed to bounce back to theiroriginal sensitivity. For the drummer who is exposed constantlynight after night, the temporary shifts accumulate and becomepermanent, resulting in a new hearing threshold. He won'tnotice the ringing as much because his hearing wil l develop atolerance to the incoming sound energy. Dave Shaffer remem-bers the feeling well.

"I can recall playing and having my ears ring like crazy, andmost all of us can. That sensation is indicative of our l i t t l e haircells being damaged or kil led. The bands that play at theseincredible decibel levels—that's just damn loud. If you need on-stage volume that loud to feel good, maybe you should th inktwice about playing. As a musician, you don't want to lose anyof your hearing, because as you age you'll really feel the loss.I'm going to want to listen to music when I'm sixty, and I ' l l betthat most musicians would agree. If we damage our hearingnow, music will sound distorted to us later.

"Ringing in the ears is another sure physiological sign thatthe sound is too loud," adds McCartney. "If you subject yourears to this volume again and again without allowing t ime forrecovery, this will certainly lead to hearing loss."

Which sound frequencies—low or high—are most annoyingto you? When I hear a screaming transistor radio or a raspy,cracking tweeter I instinctively cover my ears. A crash cymbaljust seems louder than a floor tom, but as far as your ears areconcerned, it is the low frequency energy which wreaks themost havoc on your nerve hairs.

"Whether it's trucks, airplanes, cafeterias or drums whichyou're around, it is the lower pitch sounds which will cause eardamage," says McCartney. "When the staples (st irrup) pushesinto the oval window, fluid moves the basilar membrane, whichcauses hearing. Remember, this basilar membrane has thenerve cells on it. The nerve cells on the membrane near thestapies respond to high-pitched frequencies. The low-pitchedfrequency receptors are all the way in the back, at the apix ofthe basilar membrane two and one-half turns of the cochleaaway. The reason that low frequencies are so damaging is thathigh frequencies only stimulate the receptors near the base,whereas the lower frequencies, as they travel around inside thecochlea, stimulate the high frequency receptors in addition tostimulating the lower frequency receptors."

To understand this, it was helpful for me to picture being in acorridor or bathroom at a concert. Remember how you can feelthe bass even when you're not in the audience, but the high-end

Drum are loud all over the frequency spectrum, as this overall,everything-at-once line shows. The snare and toms provide thehighest peaks, at the low-end of the scale, while the cymbalsshow a great deal of high-end activity.

disappears? That's what the ears receive—that pounding low-end, even though it seems as though the high-pitch sounds arelouder.

Another seemingly odd fact is that the powerful low frequen-cies cause damage to the high-frequency receptors.

"The way the cochlea is structured with two and one-halfturns, the force of the sound waves is directed right at the firstbend, which contains receptors for 4000-6000Hz," saysMcCartney. "All of this energy moving through the cochleaforces the fluid to hit against these cells, destroying the 4000-6000 cycle hearing range, which is quite high."

Problems of Hearing & Drumming

One of the most frustrating problems with detecting anincurred loss is that the loss goes unnoticed by the affectedperson. How do you tell a drummer who still hears fine that partof his hearing response range is lost? How do you relate theimportance of the loss?

"It is so insidious—insidious in that you don't know what'scoming when it has already happened!" stresses McCartney."The reason you don't know it's coming is because thefrequencies you lose first are not needed in communication.You'll hear people talking just as you always have."

Even though you'll s t i l l be able to hear voices fine, the 4000-6000Hz sounds of your drum set won't register in your ears. Forinstance, over a period of time your cymbals wil l begin to sounddifferent to you because they are predominant in this affectedfrequency range. Since the change will be gradual, you won'teven notice it , but your perception of the cymbal sound wil l bemarkedly different from that of your audience. This fact wouldhave devastating consequences: suppose you tune your snare towhere it sounds crisp and bright, but later when you perform,the other musicians complain about a loud, fuzzy overtone—and you can't hear it! By developing a partial hearing loss, welose control of our instrument.

"What people don't notice, they are not going to correct,"adds McCartney. "You could go five years playing the drumswithout noticing a loss if your susceptibility is low enough. Allof the documented hearing studies are based on five and tenyear periods—there's no data on hearing damage one yeardown the line, so consequently people ignore the data. This isthe problem: eventual hearing loss which is caused now, butattributed to old age."

Complicating detection is that most noise-induced hearingloss is painless. Only at dBA levels of 130 and above is painusually felt, and many people don't feel pain unt i l 140. At our

0-10,000 frequency spectrum of the cymbals played simulta-neously. Notice the contrast to the drum spectrums. Here, thebulk of energy is heavily concentrated in the 3I00-5700Hzrange. When Dr. Hall set the machine to read activity up to200,000Hz., the cymbals showed a great deal of activity in theinaudible range.

usual 105-12()dBA on-stage volume, the ears will not hurt , butpainless damage wil l be accumulating.

Sensorineural damage is irreversible, but if you have alreadysustained noticeable hearing loss, a hearing aid can assist inamplifying remaining weak sounds.

"It is an old fallacy that nerve cell damage cannot bebenefitted by a hearing aid," says McCartney. "A hearing aid issimply an amplifier."

Hearing aids consist of a microphone, amplifier, receiver,battery and ear mold, all fitted into a small usually undetectableunit. Aids vary in style, from internal (all-in-the-ear) to external(behind-the-ear). and include eyeglass-mounted aids and thelarger, "body" aids usually only recommended for extremesensory loss.

To qualify information on hearing loss, it must be noted thatnoise susceptibility varies greatly from individual to ind iv idua l .All the published OSHA and EPA guidelines are averages basedon the majority of the population. Currently, no method ofpredicting individual susceptibility has been established byaudiologists. Even so, taking the position that , "It won'thappen to me," is presumptuous. Dave Shaffer knows manydrummers who assume that since they can st i l l hear fine, theirnerve cells haven't been damaged.

"A common misconception which I run across is 'My earsare tough,' and this is an easy position to take because hearingloss is painless and very gradual."

Our working conditions and usual stage position are veritablemine fields to our ears. Just think about it: loud, high-pitchedhorn sections, the constant droning of rhythm guitars, electricpianos and the dangerous booming of the bass cabinet (which isusually postioned at our immediate side). Now add in the P.A.monitors and the drums. What an audible arsenal attacking ourears! While testing dBA levels at CSUS, however. Dr. Hall andI did discover that although sound energy is very high fordrummers, the other musicians around the drummer are run-ning an even greater risk. With a microphone placed approxi-mately fifteen feet in front of the drum set. the drum setcomponents most damaging to hearing were noticeably louderthan the levels recorded while the mic was taped to my head.These components (the toms and bass drum) project outward,so the results were predictable. The floor tom, projectingdownward, yielded results equal to the first testing. All of thesedrums produce the low frequencies most harmful to auditorynerve cells.

continued on page 78

SonnyGreer:The ElderStatesmanof Jazz

by Scott K. Fish

William "Sonny" Greer was born inLong Branch, New Jersey on December13, 1903. "I wasn't no rich kid." heremembers, "but I was always comfort-able. We were a happy family. My moth-er and father were very religious. Mymother was strict with us. My old manwas a 'glorified reprobate!' My fathercould make wine, beer or whiskey out ofa door knob! I had two sisters and onebrother, and the love was spread equallyamong all of us."

Sonny was the heartbeat of one ofAmerica's greatest orchestras, the DukeEllington Orchestra from 1923 to 1951.Certainly one of the best big-band drum-mers in jazz, Sonny played a huge set ofdrums for that era, always in a musicaland often comical manner. His replace-ment in the Ellington Orchestra wasLouis Bellson!

Sonny lives with his wife Millie, whohe met at The Cotton Club in the '20s.They are both charming, funny andsharp people with a keen memory oftheir past, and Sonny is still active. Hespends time away from his Manhattanapartment to play gigs with his friend,pianist Brooks Kerr. Kerr is virtually awalking encyclopedia of Ellingtonia andwas present for part of this interview.

I had been listening to some 1920sEllington music the night before andbegan the interview by asking Sonnyhow it was different playing with a tubaplayer and then with a bassist.

SG: There's only so much a tuba playercan do. He can't cover a lot of things likea string bass player. Impossible! Wedidn't use tuba too much. We used twobass players. See, a bass player cancover more ground than a tuba player.So there was a lot of things that he could

do. A tuba player could only do so much.A string bass player can cover a wholelot of stuff—like a piano.SF: What was the difference betweenplaying with bassist Wellman Braud andJimmy Blanton?SG: Like night and day. Jimmy Blantonwas a bass virtuoso. He was so good,that when we played in Boston, theBoston Symphony's bass player, Kous-sevitzky would come to see Jimmy. Hewas one of the head bassists of theSymphony, and he'd heard so muchabout Jimmy. Duke could always smellthe powerful guys. Koussevitzky was agood bass player, but Jimmy Blantonwas the King! Duke was slick. Dukewould put Blanton up front early. Kous-sevitzky had come backstage and got achair and had the man put the chair righton the stage next to Blanton! He neverheard anybody play bass like that. No-body!

See, Braud played different and Jimmyplayed different, but together they werea powerhouse! They only turned each ofthem loose when they wanted solos orsomething. Then in the forties it wasjust Blanton playing bass. Braud left in1935.SF: How did you first get interested indrums?SG: When I was a kid I saw this vaude-ville act named J. Rosmond Johnson. Itwas just a piano and drum. They had avery good act, and the drummer was talland very, very debonair. He could singl ike a mockingbird and I'd never seennobody play drums like that. I'd sit in atrance. Everything this guy did was ef-fortless and with so much grace. Theywere at the theater for a week and I'd seethem every night I could.

About the same time, I use to sneakinto a pool room and practice pool be-cause it fascinated me. I was only 14years old. The same man who was play-ing drums was in there and I beat him atpool. He said, "Hey. kid! Where'd youlearn to play like that?" I said "Oh.nothing to it. It's a lot of concentration."He said, "You show me how to play likeyou play, and I ' l l teach you how to playthe drum!" This man was my idol. I said,"You got a deal." I had about five or sixlessons with the guy to get the funda-mentals of it.SF: Were you listening to much music asa kid?SG: I was so busy getting into the devilthat I didn't have a chance to listen tomusic. It wasn't like it is now. I alwaysloved music. We had a pianola in thehouse, where you'd put in a piano roll. Ithought that thing was the end of theworld.

When I was in high school, we had abig orchestra for assemblies and things.All the kids had violins and the drummerwas the worst guy in the band. I didn't

pay him no mind. He was the dumbestguy! He wasn't smart in classes. He usedto use an excuse to get out of classes, "Igot to practice." He'd always tell theteacher, "I got to practice music," andhe'd get out of classes in high school. Iknew I could beat him. He was horrible.He couldn't do nothing. So the musicteacher, the woman who had started theorchestra, decided to give me a shot atthe band. She was also our languageteacher, and I was one of her goodpupils. Out of a completely integratedschool, I was the only colored boy in theband. I never in my life played with acolored band until I moved to Washing-ton, D.C.

We had a little group out of that or-chestra, eight guys. They could play andread. We had two girl singers. I used todo everything I could to make somemoney then. I also worked for a China-man delivering laundry. I had a paperroute. Fishing boats used to come intothe New Jersey shore and everyday after

Photo at left shows Sonny with the Washingtonians in the '20s. The photo at rightshows Sonny behind the elaborate set he used with Duke Ellington.

school I'd be down there running errandsfor the fishermen. They'd load my li t t lehomemade wagon with fish and I becamethe fish man of the neighborhood. I alsoused to run errands for the grocery store!I was never afraid to work. I was neverlazy. I was always on the go. Obsessed. Ialways wanted to make money to give tomy mother and father.

I also used to caddy. They rated thecaddies, and I was a number one caddyat a very private club. I used to caddy forone of the daughters of Krueger—thebiggest brewery concern in the East atthat time. One day we was out on thecourse; I was carrying a heavy bag. Theydidn't have no golf carts. So we're walk-ing along and we got to the 8th hole in therough! This girl couldn't play golf any-way. You know how them rich peopleare. They had a water hazard on the 8thhole and she knocked the ball in there.She said, "Caddy! Go get my ball." Itwas one of those golf balls that floated.So I took off my shoes and I was gettingready to step in the water when I saw asnake! He was in the water with the golfball in his mouth! I'm deathly afraid ofsnakes. She said. "Caddy! Go get myball!" I said, "No. You go get it." I quitright there on the 8th hole. Threw themheavy bags down and walked back to thegolf club.

The same woman saw me years laterplaying with Duke at Carnegie Hall. Shecame back to say hello. She told every-body, "He was my caddy." Peoplewould say, "Aw, you're crazy. He ain'tcaddied for you."

After my father saw that I was dedicat-ed to music, and that I wasn't going tofollow in his footsteps as an electricianfor the Pennsylvania Railroad, he said."I don't care what you be—but be thebest! Don't let nobody suppress you."As I progressed playing the drums Ibegan to get better and better.SF: When did you move to Washington,and how did that come about?SG: When I was a kid, one summer I gota job with four kid musicians working asthe pit band at the Red Bank Theater inNew Jersey. I grew up with Count Basieand Cozy Cole. Basie always wanted tobe a drummer. He and Cozy used to getinto the theater for free by saying theywere my helpers. They'd sit in the pitwith me. I had about three pieces. Countwould take one of my drums, Cozywould take one, I'd take one, and theywouldn't have to pay. Then I had a job atthe Plaza Hotel in Asbury Park, NewJersey. The Conway Brothers—whowere famous then—invited me to Wash-ington for a weekend after the season. SoI went down there. The second daythere, I was playing pool (my first love)in a poolroom next to the Howard The-ater. All of a sudden the manager fromthe theater came in saying, "Man, I've

got to have me a drummer. My drummerhas been run out of town by his wife.He's back on his alimony." The drum-mer was a fancy drummer named TootiePerkins—playing with an all Puerto Ri-can band. I went in there and that wasthe first time I saw Juan Tizol. I stayedthere for three years playing shows in thepit. We would play unti l I 1 : 0 0 PM. ThenI got a second exclusive gig from 12:00 to2:00 AM and that's when I met Duke.When I was headlining at the Plaza Hotelwith the Swanee Sernaders, Duke was adishwasher there. I didn't know he was apiano player! I didn't come in contactwith no dishwasher! I was a star! Henever lived that down. I used to kid himall the time.SF: Let's go back for a minute. Whenyou were in school did you study percus-sion and reading?SG: We had a very strict teacher. Shetaught everything exact—the basics andrudiments. She was very fine. She taughteverybody how to read music. It wasn'tnothing difficult, just an average thing. It

wasn't difficult music. Very simple.SF: So after high school, that was theend of your formal studies'?SG: That was i t . I knew what direction Iwas going. Nobody could tell me noth-ing. Kids in my time were more interest-ed in playing the right way. The kids nowdon't take it l ike we did. I never prac-ticed out of school when I was home.Man, ne-ver! I'd have gotten kil led if I'dbanged on some drums around thehouse. I had it down and I'd practice onthe job. I'd try something, and if I l iked itI'd keep i t . If I didn' t l ike it I'd forget i t . Inever played mechanical in my life.SF: When did you first really get toknow Duke?SG: I was standing on the corner oneday with Duke. Toby Hardwick, ClaudeHopkins, Peter Mi l le r and his two broth-ers. We were standing out there and Iwas outlying everybody! Lying like adog! But they'd never seen nobody l ikeme. Duke was always quiet and shy, butthey had a l i t t l e guy there, one of theMiller brothers. He was like Jo Jones,

always at the head of the stage. So I blewhim down, man. He ain't never been outof Washington, but I was talking aboutNew York and Fats Waller, Wil l ie TheLion, James P. Johnson. I say, "Man,they're my bosom pals!" Lying like adog, I say, "Man, we hang out all thetime." Their mouths flew open and I didspread it on real good. You know howDuke is. I took to him, and after thatwhenever you saw me—you saw Duke,and Toby. We were not a band, but ifDuke got a gig I was on it. If Toby got agig I was on i t . And I still had the othertwo jobs.

One night we had an amateur contestat the theater. The prize was somethinglike 25 dollars. Duke knew two songs,"Soda Fountain Rag" and "CarolinaShout" that he had down pat from apiano roll. I went over to the pool roomand told all the guys that I wanted themat the theater as a cheering section. Isaid. "When Duke goes on he's got towin that prize because we need thatmoney!" So Duke comes on and playshis "Carolina Shout" and those guysstood up, stood up, and cheered, andscared Duke to death. Duke said, "I gotthe money." I said, "Give me mine." Hesaid, "For what?" I said, "Didn't youhear all that noise? That was me backthere, man." So we had a big spread in arestaurant, and a jug of corn whiskey. Soeverytime they had a contest. Duke'dsay, "Hey! You going to bring on thecheering section?" I said, "Yeah."

One night at a different theater theydidn't have no money. The prize wasluggage. I said, "What're we going to dowith all this luggage? Ain' t nobody goingnowhere." So we brought the cheeringsection down and Duke won the luggage.We took it and pawned it. Duke used tolook at me in amazement.

Toby used to have this raggedy jalopythat you had to push a half block to get itstarted. There's a big park in Washing-ton called Rock Creek Park. PresidentWilson was in there, in one of those longPierce-Arrows. We had the car rollingdown a hi l l to get it started and thebrakes go out! We're rolling down and Isay, "Man, roll into a tree or something.Stop this damn thing." We're goingdown the hil l and we see all these Pierce-Arrows going somewhere. But we can'tstop the car! All the FBI and everybodyjump out of their cars. They didn't knowwhat was happening. The FBI had thewhole convoy stopped, the Presidentand everybody. Toby run the car into atree, and we get out and the FBI says,"What you kids doing?" Now we'rescared! I say, "Mister, the brakes failed.That's why we come down the hi l l thatway." "DON'T YOU KNOW THAT'STHE PRESIDENT?" "Yes sir." Oh,you talk about somebody Uncle Tom-

continued on page 68

Stickings—Part 1by Gary Chaffee

Gary Chaffee received his education at SUNY in Potsdamand DePaul University in Chicago. From 1973-77. Gary washead of the Percussion Dept. at the Berklee College of Music inBoston. He presently teaches at his home in Hyde Park,Massachusetts. He's the author of four hooks: The Indepen-

dent Drummer, and Patterns: Vol. I , I I , and I I I . Vinne Colaiuta(Frank Zappa, Gino Vanelli) and Steve Smith (Journey) are twoof Gary's former students. Ml) readers can write to Gary at GCMusic, 30 Laval Street, Hyde Park, MA.

Due to the many changes that have taken place in contempo-rary music over the last 20-30 years, it seems appropriate to re-examine "stickings," to develop a more comprehensive anduseful approach to this area of a percussionist's early training.

A "sticking" is an articulation or a way of making a group of

notes sound. Just as a horn player uses different articulations toplay figures, a drummer can play a sequence of figures in avariety of ways by using different stickings. This will have amajor effect on what the figures sound like and on the phrasing.For example:

1.

2.

In Example 1 the sequence of 16th notes is played using thetraditional paradiddle sticking. In situations where the rhythmand articulation are identical there is no phrasing. In Example 2,

the sequence is articulated with a series of 5 and 3 note stickingswhich creates a definite phrasing. There is also an implied poly-rhythmic sequence.

Using stickings is not difficult and can he applied to a singlerhythm or group of rhythms. Using stickings allows for agreater degree of flexibility on the drumset for how the varioussound sources (toms, cymbals, etc.) are combined. We will nowexamine how a sticking system can be developed.

The hands are going to have to develop a fairly high degree offlexibili ty and control. So it is necessary to understand thevarious stroking procedures. There are basically 4 types ofstroke motions, as follows:

Full (F)

Starts and ends in ahigh position

Down (D)

Starts high and endslow.

Up (U)

Starts low and endshigh.

Tap (T)

Starts and ends in alow position.

The Full and Down strokes are used for playing accents. TheTap and Up strokes are used on unaccented notes.

This lifting system is designed to get the hands to movequickly and precisely to execute a figure or phrase. Themajority of technical/control problems most students have areprimarily the result of excess motion. Every motion takes timeand energy. The more precise and specific you are, the greater

the potential for increased speed, dexteri ty, endurance, andoverall ease of playing.

The relative heights of the stroke motions are affected bydynamics. There are situations where these motions need to bealtered. They will work for most situations, however, and arewell worth the time and effort needed to master them.

The majority of compound stickings in this system are madeup of single and double strokes broken down into groups,related to their distribution. Group A contains one single stroke

Basic Sticking Possibilitiesfollowed by double strokes. Group B has two singles, Group Chas three singles and so forth. The following examples illustratebasic sticking possibilities:

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

It is necessary to understand that stickings are not rhythms.They are simply groups of notes. The goal is to be able to usestickings in any rhythmic situation. This is how phrasing isderived. Notice that all of the accents are on single strokes.This has to do with the lifting procedures discussed. Putting theaccents in other places makes them much more difficult toexecute. That is not really necessary or practical except in somecases I'll discuss later. Even though all the patterns containaccents, that doesn't mean that whenever a sticking is applied.

accents should be used. Accents are valuable in learning thepatterns because the motions give each pattern a certain "feel."The accents make it possible to interpret without additionalnotation or symbols. There are many instances—especially ondrumset—when the patterns can be used effectively withoutaccents. It would be easy to develop larger stickings of 9, 10,11, 12, 13 notes for these groupings. The motion principleswould essentially be the same.

continued on page 36

JDW continued from page 35

Examples of Sticking Usage

The following examples indicate possible uses of the stickings in various situations:

1) 3 and 5 note stickings from Group A. 16th notes.

2) 7 and 5 note stickings from Group A. Triplets.

3) 6 and 4 note stickings from Group B. 16th notes.

4) 7, 5, and 4 note stickings from Groups A, C and B respectively. 16th notes.

5) 6, 8, and 6 note stickings from Groups B, D, and D respectively. Triplets.

In the next article we will examine ways to apply these stickings to the drumset.

AmbidexterityPart 2

by Roberto Petaccia

In the last article we talked about ambidexterity in thecontext of time keeping. Let's now analyze it in contexts otherthan time keeping.

Using Ambidexterity in the Context of Soloing

Most of the time, partial ambidexterity is used within asoloing situation, even though, as in the case of Daniel Humair(see further on in this article), some drummers will occasionallyresort to total ambidexterity. The goal here is to have bothhands equally strong to be able to crash a cymbal easily witheither one.

There are two principal ways of using partial ambidexterity

The two following examples are played on the snare drum, the accents at random.

when soloing: with Single Strokes and Compound Stickings.Both ways are used extensively by many known ambidextrousdrummers; Billy Cobham (left hand lead); Simon Phillips (lefthand and right hand lead); Terry Bozzio (right hand lead);Vinnie Colaiuta (right hand lead). The following examples are 2-bar solos reflecting closely the soloing styles of the abovedrummers.

Using Single Strokes in the Straight and Triplet FeelsNow substitute a crash for every accent. Obtain a line of

alternate accents on two different crash cymbals, positionedconveniently on the left and right sides of the drum set.

CrashesSnareB.D

CrashesSnareB.D.

The following examples are variations of the previous two.Substitute a double stroke roll using 32nd notes for every single

stroke executed on the snare (unaccented notes). The 16thnotes on the crashes will remain the same.

Using Compound Stickings in the Straight and Triplet Feels

Compound stickings are combinations of single and doublestrokes. For example, a paradiddle is the simplest form ofcompound sticking.

The same procedure used in the preceding examples is

followed here. First play the 2-bar solos on the snare drum withthe accents placed on the single strokes. Then substitute acymbal crash for every accent.

continued on page 40

Rock 'n' Jazz continued from page 39

As I pointed out, there are drummers who resort to totalambidexterity to create counter-rhythms and polyrhythmicfigures while soloing.

The next example is a close representation of one of Frenchmaster drummer Daniel Humair's many soloing styles. It im-plies two related patterns; one improvised, played with the left

hand on the bell of the left ride cymbal, snare and tom-toms;and the other pattern remains constant, played in the form of16th notes with the right hand on the closed hi-hat. Daniel playsa left-handed drum-set, with hands uncrossed; right hand leadwhen playing on the hi-hat, left hand lead when riding on thecymbal. A truly unique style of total ambidexterity.

R.H.

L.H.

Ride

Snare

Toms

H.H.

Using Ambidexterity in the Context of Sound ExplorationIn my two articles I have analyzed the advantages of ambi-

dexterity and the many possibilities available for us to create avariety of patterns, grooves and figures and also to expand oursoloing capabilities. At the same time we can take advantage ofthe new technique to add a new line of sound sources to our set-up, starting with different sounding ride and crash cymbals,now easily accessible, regardless of their position within theset-up. Michael Dawe uses up to 4 ride cymbals on his set: 2 onhis right, 2 on his left; adding an incredible amount of ridingpossibilities.

Crash cymbals can be symmetrically distributed on bothsides of the set, and new equipment such as timbales, toms, andelectronic percussion can be added to the already existing set-up.

With the power of ambidexterity, you will be able to reachevery remote part of your drum-set, without losing any momen-tum in the process. You will also be able to distribute equally,and in a more balanced way, your energy and sound intensi ty,allowing you to step up to a much higher level of technicalproficiency and physical ability.

Blackwell continued from page 17EB: We used to talk about the differentplayers that we liked. Mostly it wasCharlie Parker, Max Roach and peoplelike that. That was our whole conversa-tion! All the time about music. Every-day, Ornette would write so many tunes.He would come up with a new tune andwe'd get together and go over it and overi t , play it and play it, unt i l we got it downtogether.SF: It must have been frustrating to haveall that creativity and have no one takingit seriously. How did Ornette deal withthat?EB: It was more frustrating for me than itwas for him. He took it very calmly.They had about three different clubs thatwould have jam sessions on Sunday.Everytime we would walk in there, therest of the musicians would walk off thestand.SF: It would be just you and Ornette onthe bandstand?EB: Just Ornette and I. Nobody wouldcome up there and play with us. I couldgo up by myself and they would let meplay, but if Ornette came up with methey'd say, "No, no, man." Becausethey just couldn't do i t . They couldn'tuse him.SF: Would Ornette ever play straightbebop tunes?EB: No. Ornette was writing tunes andhe was playing his tunes. That's all . Forsome reason, at that time nobody coulduse it . He was a rebel. We never couldplay with a bass player. We never wouldget a bass player to even attempt to playwith us. The only time we'd get a bassplayer was if we could guarantee him ajob. If we said, "Okay. We're going tobe working at this club. Come on downand let's do a rehearsal before we do thegig," well, then maybe we were able toget one. Bass players would say, "Nogood, man. I can't deal with that." Theycouldn't hear i t . Ornette and I had a lotof fun together though. We didn ' t missthem at all. We'd play together and we'dhave a ball.SF: Were you practicing drums by your-self as well as working out tunes withOrnette?EB: I didn't have time. Most of the timesI was on the drums it was usually playingwith Ornette. When we were awake, wewere always playing. If we were notplaying, Ornette would be sitting downwriting a tune, or we'd be discussingmusic, or listening to music—differenttunes. But that was i t . As far as practic-ing by myself, maybe I'd practice on thepad while he was writing. But most ofthe time we were practicing together.SF: How did you develop your melodicconcept on the drumset?EB: Well that started to develop when Istarted listening to the way Max Roachplayed the drums: the way he developed

melodic lines along the structure of thetunes. I just enhanced it more by playingwith Ornette. But I had a good concep-tion of how to play a solo along a struc-tured tune. The only difference with Or-nette is that the way I had been playingwas structured differently than the wayhe played. So when I started playingwith him, I had to change around to awhole new concept of playing. I thoughtthat was very interesting because it waschallenging. It kept me interested inplaying with him. There was never a dul lmoment.SF: Did things start to break for Or-nette's band when you played that firstfamous gig at The Five Spot?EB: Billy Higgins came with Ornette toThe Five Spot. Then Bi l ly ran into trou-ble with his cabaret card. They deniedhim a card, and when you didn't have acabaret card you couldn't work any-where that alcohol was being sold.That's when Ornette sent for me again. Iwas in New Orleans and I was ready toleave. I'd had some problems there. Meand my wife were put in jail for misoga-my. They were talking about giving mefive years of hard labor, just for livingtogether. I was out on bail and my wifewas pregnant. So we went to theNAACP and had them talk to the lawyer,who guaranteed that if there was a t r ia l ,we would come back. So we got permis-

sion to leave and that was it! At that timeOrnette was calling me to come to NewYork, and I couldn't wait to get on theplane!SF: How did you meet Bi l ly Higginsoriginally?EB: When we lived in Los Angeles weused to go over to this big garage ownedby a friend of Don Cherry. It was set uplike a studio. He, Don and Bil ly used torehearse in there. When we got hookedup with Don, we started rehearsing upthere and Billy was there at the timesi t t ing around digging the music. Then hebegan playing with Ornette. When I wentback to New Orleans, Bi l ly got the gig,and they made the first album. Ornettehad sent for me to make the album, but Iwas playing with Harold (Batisste) and Ididn't want to leave. I was having a lot offun. So he made the album with Bi l ly .SF: I've often read that you were a"teacher" to Billy Higgins.EB: In a way, I guess, because I was theonly one that he could dig playing withOrnette. Bil ly was hooked up playing anall-together different style from Ornette.So by listening to me play, he was able toadapt to Ornette's way of playing.SF: The first record I ever heard youplay on was Avant Garde with JohnColtrane and Don Cherry. I was listeningand thinking, "That drummer is playingwith a stick in his right hand and a mallet

in his left hand." I'd never heard thatdone before.EB: That was the way I had to play inNew Orleans. I used to wrap a Scholl'scorn pad around the edge of the stick andmake a mallet out of i t . That way, whenI'm playing I could just turn the stickover and get a mallet sound. I l ike thecontrast between the stick and the mal-let—the hard and the soft sound. I usedto play like that a lot.SF: Were you using a stick with aScholl's pad on that album?EB: No. that was a mallet. You couldplay and turn the snares off and get atenor drum sound all around the drumsetusing the mallet sound. I t brings out thereal intonation of the drum, unl ike thestick. With the stick you get that harshsound. With the mallet you get a soft,round sound that brings out the full into-nation, and that 's what I dug.SF: When you play, do you approach aparticular tune with any specific ideas inmind?EB: I always went according to wherethe music was going. I knew ult imatelywhat I wanted to do with the drumswhen I got into the tune. Then I couldhear what I wanted to do. and the way Iwanted to go with it . Otherwise, every-thing was always by ear. I never had anypreconceived idea of the way I wanted to

continued on pagc 56

Roberto Petaccia 1952-1981

by Scott K. Fish, MD Managing Editor

Born and raised in Rome, ltaly, Ro-berto Pettaccia has played drums since1968. After having spent 6 years in theFar East, he moved to the U.S. in mid'76. Since then, he has written a hook(Progressive Steps to Progressive Funk,R. P. Publications}, opened two privatedrum studios in Boston and N.Y.C.,toured and recorded with the Mark-Al-mond Band and Maynard Ferguson.

That was a "short biography" thatRoberto sent to the MD offices to use inhis articles. The first t ime we heard fromRoberto was through a letter: "My nameis Roberto Petaccia and I am contactingyou in regards to my interest in wri t ingfor your magazine." I called him upbecause he had many good ideas. Fromhis pictures, I'd imagined Roberto to bea gruff sounding ind iv idua l—but hewasn't. He was a softspoken man with adirection. We kicked around some ideasand he submitted several articles, someof which have already been published inthe Rock V Jazz. Clinic column. Theideas were great and the manuscriptsthat Roberto handed in were near impec-cable, but he would always apologize forthem!

He had an insatiable desire to learnnew things and to take on new chal-lenges. He saw ambidexterity as a stan-dard practice in the future of drumsetplaying. He would sneak his l i t t l e taperecorder into New York City clubs twoor three times every week and tape thedrummers so that he could study them,and he wasn't afraid to ask questions ofthe players he respected. One night wesat watching David Garibaldi (one ofRoberto's main influences) playing some

pattern that only David can play. Afterthe show. Roberto had David write thepattern out for him. and he passed italong to everyone in his article Ambidex-terity Part I.

When Roberto found out his time waslimited, I spoke to him at the hospital.He had interviewed drummer RolandVasquez and he was excited about thepossibilities of conducting more inter-views for MD. He had plans of goingback to Italy for recovery and told me,"Well, I guess you guys are going tohave someone interviewing all the greatItalian jazz drummers!"

Roberto's dying was far too fast. But,true to the character of the man, he leftus with many, many good ideas. In aninterview with Cheech Iero last year,Roberto said, "You have to put all thecomments behind you and try to play thebest you can. Play the music the way youhear it. There will be some people youwill be pleasing, and there will be peoplewho you will upset. Hey, tough! Whatelse can you do? Some people haveincredible suggestions. You do them be-cause they're great. It 's a lot easier tochange a concept than a technical thing.If you're versatile, you can move arounda concept suddenly if you believe in i t . Ifyou do not believe—you'll never get itright. You must search for the best one.Sometimes the composer would come tome with a concept which is different thanwhat I would play and as far as he'sconcerned, it's the best one. Then that'sthe one you are going to go for. Makesure you believe in it so that you're goingto play it like there is no tomorrow.That's the way I see it."

Roberto is survived by his wife, Pat.

Cymbals:Tips and Myths

by Roy Burns

A cymbal is a complex ins t rument .The techniques for playing cymbals mu-sically are as varied and precise as thecymbals themselves. What is required isan understanding of what each type ofcymbal can do. For example, if a youngrock drummer selects a thin 16" crashcymbal, he may not be aware of someimportant points. Most cymbal crashesin contemporary groups are played inunison with the bass drum, which may ormay not be miked. The same cymbalwhich sounded so great in the musicstore is now beginning to get lost in othersounds. Add electric bass, and a 16"cymbal begins to sound l ike a 10" splash.The drummer hits it harder to get morevolume and the result is a cracked cym-bal. All major cymbal manufacturers tel lme that in truth, very few cymbals areever defective. They do replace somecymbals, but more often than not forgood will , not because there was anyfault with the cymbal. Think of it thisway. If you were going to buy a car, youwould try to get as much information aspossible before making a decision. Acymbal in some ways is more complex,certainly more sensitive, than a car.However, drummers routinely walk intoa store and say, "Give me a 16" cym-bal." For loud players, an 18" mediumwill produce more sound and have alonger life than a thin 16" crash.

General Information

1. Read all of the cymbal literature putout by all cymbal companies. There ismuch valuable information.

2. Recognize that there is no suchthing as a small, th in cymbal that isextremely durable. Small cymbals mustbe played with sensitivity and a suretouch.

3. Loud players will need larger,thicker cymbals to achieve the volumeand durabil i ty required for their style.

4. Contemporary cymbal stands areheavy and solid. Some have enlargedtilters and extra-large wing nuts. Checkto see if the center hole of the cymbal has

enough clearance to allow the cymbal tomove. Older, lighter stands helped ab-sorb the shock of heavy blows by mov-ing a l i t t l e . Make certain that the cymbalcan move freely, especially crash cym-bals.

5. Don't muffle the sound of yourcymbals by using over-sized felt wash-ers. They act just like a piece of tape.

6. If you need to play at extremelyloud volume levels, mike the drums andcymbals carefully. A good sound mancan help you achieve the sound you wantwithout overplaying your cymbals.

Cymbal Myths

All strange theories and romanticideas are just that. They are rarely basedon experimentation, comparison, obser-vation or hard information. People l iketo feel important and will repeat vir tual lyanything they have heard without check-ing it out first.

1. Cymbals do not improve with age.They just get dirty. The dirt acts as amuffler and reduces some of the highovertones.

2. Cymbals cannot be aged. Cymbalsare made from bronze, not cheese. Apiece of metal does not change charac-teristics just because you put it in acloset.

3. You cannot improve the sound of acymbal by adding rivets to it . A badsounding cymbal will make a bad sound-ing sizzle cymbal once the rivets areadded. Other weird theories, such asburying the cymbal in the ground forweeks or months is ridiculous. And buff-ing cymbals on a buffing wheel to cleanthem wil l ruin them.

Selecting and Testing

1. Place several cymbals on stands.Mount them flat or level to the floor ali t t le above waist high.

2. Look to see if the cymbal rests levelon the stand. If it t i l t s to one side or theother, it is heavier on one side than theother, or it is not correctly shaped. Ei-ther condition will tend to produce un-

even and unpleasant sounds.3. Spin the cymbal around on the

stand. If it is correctly shaped it will bepretty level. If it dips a lot as you spin i t .it wil l probably have a distorted sound.

4. Tap from the bell to the edge. Thepitch should get lower as you get closerto the edge of the cymbal. It shouldsound l ike a musical scale. If it does notgo down in pitch uniformly, run yourfingers over the cymbal from the bell tothe edge. If there are extreme high andlow places in the cymbal it indicatesthick and th in areas and the cymbal willproduce a distorted sound.

5. Tap around the cymbal in a circle,the same distance from the edge. Thecymbal should have about the same pitchall around. Take care to tap each beatwith the same force. In this way, the testwill be more accurate.

6. Crash the cymbal to hear if it has agood mixture of sounds from high to low.If you find a good cymbal that stands upto this test pretty well , then all you haveto decide is, "Do I l ike it?"

Protecting Your Cymbals

The edge of a cymbal is the mostdelicate part. Many cymbals are crackedduring packing and set-up. Don't leancymbals against the floor tom with theedges on the floor. Instruct roadies topack up the cymbals first in leather,vinyl or padded cases that protect theedges during transport. Pack the drumsafter the cymbals are safely packed.Don't leave them lying around wherethey can be stepped on.

Last but not least, always select cym-bals with the drumstick that you normal-ly play with.

Remember, a cymbal is a complexinstrument. A good drummer is a com-plex musician. He must be sensitive tohis cymbals. A good drummer inst inc-t ive ly understands that although heneeds excellent instruments, it is themanner in which he plays that will bringgreat cymbals to life.

I ' l l have more cymbal tips for you infuture articles.

MD readers can write to Hal Blaine incare of: Staving In Tune, Modern Drum-mer Magazine. 1000 Clifton Ave., Clif-ton, NJ 07013.

Q. Although I have pretty good tech-nique, when it comes to making music Ifeel very inadequate, both in playingwith other musicians and in private ses-sions. I don't feel that my timing andsense of groove are good. I have prob-lems playing with a metronome. I amalso not very creative and it often seemslike I'm playing the same rhythms andlicks day after day. Sometimes I think itmight be because I became interested inthe drums for the drums and not for themusic. My approach to the instrumentwas very technical and had no soul ordirection. I am frustrated because I can-not play the instrument and make musicthe way I would like to. I am currentlystudying with a teacher who opened myhead up. I would appreciate ideas andadvice.

K.W.SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA

A. First of all you've got to start think-ing positive. If you start putting yourselfdown, man, you're going to be down.You've got to start putting yourself up.A good way for you to start doing that isby listening to records of all differentkinds of music and find out which musicreally turns you on. Listen to what themusicians are doing, and get in there andstudy and practice. It sounds l ike youneed practice. Practicing with a metro-nome is great and eventually that willhelp your time. You have to learn to dothings unconsciously because that 'swhen it all starts happening for you.Think back to when you first startedriding a bicycle—shaky and scary!"Wow. I ' l l never get this." Little byl i t t le, the more you practice, the betteryou get, and before you know it you'redoing it. When you have learned to playyour drums without saying, "I'm goingto put this hand over here, etc.," that'swhen you're going to start getting someof the confidence you might be lackingnow. We all have moments where wefeel inadequate. The fact that you'reworking with a teacher is fantastic. Ireally think it's a matter of practicing,keeping yourself up, and listening to lots

of music.I really don't think you sound hope-

less. Whatever you do—do it with fervorand give yourself some confidence.When you hit a cymbal—hit it! Don't justkind of "ding" at it. Give it a good cut,man. Seldom do you hit a cymbal with-out hitting the bass drum at the sametime. Give it the bottom it needs. Whenyou hit your snare—go for it! If you wantto play a back beat—play a hack beat.Give it a slam! Let's hear i t . Don't justplay like you're playing on eggshells.That's a lot of baloney. If you want to beself confident—get in there and starthitting. I'm sure your teacher will helpyou with that.

by Hal Blainekel, who would come off stage and therewould be 50,000 people screaming that itwas just the greatest concert in theworld. They absolutely loved it. AndPaul and Artie would come off stage andone old son-of-a-gun would be standingin a corner with a broom—a guy whoabsolutely hated music, and hated towork that Sunday night anyway—andhe'd be standing there sweeping andsaying, "Well goddamn these rock androll kids. What the hell does anybody seein them anyway?" And that would blowthe whole night for these superstars whowrote and sang some of the greatestmusic in the world. One old fart can turnaround and do a thing like that to you.

You can't let that happen to you, man.You have to love yourself. You know ifyou're good or terrible. It sounds to melike you're pretty good. Don't listen tothe crap and don't be a cynic. Enjoyyourself and other people. Try to likethings around you. That's what thiswhole world is made up of. No matterwhat happens—try to get somethinggood out of the experience. The worstthing you can do for yourself is to putyourself down and become your ownworst enemy.

Q. I am playing a gig at a local club. Mygroup has been there two weeks; a fairlynew band. We always get complimentson how together we are musically. Butwhen we are playing and I see peopleleaving the club it frustrates me, and Ilose my concentration. Or I might askthe bartender, "How's the crowd?" andhe'II say something like, ' 'Bad.'' It reallyticks me off and I can't seem to doanything right behind my kit.

M.B.LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

A. I've spent many years in nightclubs,and not all bartenders and clubownersare going to be your best friend. Itsounds like soon you will have a goodfollowing and the attitude will change.Certain club owners don't want to letyou know how good you are because

Q. I want very badly to be happy and tosubscribe to your way of thinking, buthere's my problem: I've conditioned my-self to play down my achievements andreject the feeling of satisfaction in orderto avoid a false sense of security. I triedto find things to complain about. Thistheory didn't really hurt me when I waslearning note values and studying thelessons my teachers would give me incollege. All I needed was perseverance.Now, I've become so cynical of every-thing, I cannot genuinely enjoy or getenthusiastic about anything anymore.My work has truly become work. I lovedrums and music and I want more thananything to play. Please help!

NAME WITHHELD BY REQUESTA. One of the things that I've alwaysenjoyed was playing my ass off andscreaming and enjoying it so much; get-ting rid of the stress and feeling wonder-ful about it. One of the things thatknocks me out is to play as good as I can,as hard as I can, and walk away with thatfeeling of elation. I think you're making abig mistake by holding back and keepingyourself from really feeling a sense ofaccomplishment. That's what is makingyou a cynic. It sounds like you're aterrific drummer who's worked hard andstudied. I think you should enjoy it.Whatever you do—do it with authority.Here's one thing that happened to me: Iwas on the road with Simon and Garfun-

you're going to want more money! Youcan't get frustrated and let that mess upyour playing. If you have a near miss inan automobile you're stil l driving. Amiss is as good as a mile. Nothing is allup or all down. Get used to it , especiallyworking in nightclubs. People come tonightclubs to drink and have fun. It's notlike a concert where everyone is watch-ing you play. The more these thingshappen the less they should bother you.Your attitude should be, "We're a goodgroup, we're entertaining, we're doingwhat we're getting paid for." You'reprobably being underpaid but that willprobably change. Stick with it and haveconfidence.Q. I have been playing drums for quite awhile and at 19, I'm at the point of givingthem up. It looks like too hard a life. Ihave diabetes and it's hard to live acarefree, spontaneous, musician's life.I'm very shy and don't relate well topeople because of my diabetes. Emo-tions have a lot to do with a tight controlof the disease and I try not to let thingsupset me. Also, travel will be hard withdiabetes. I love playing the drums, it'sthe only thing I do moderately well. I'mafraid of not being able to do somethingthat I enjoy as much. My dream is to beinvolved in commercial and movie drum-ming.

M.L.PLEASANTON, CALIFORNIA

A. Diabetes is not a simple situation, Iunderstand that , but it sounds like you'rereally hooked on drums, and the plea-sure that you derive from playing isimportant to you mentally. Being happymentally will help the physical diabetesproblem. There are a lot of people whohave diabetes—senators, congressmen,airline pilots—who have it under controland travel the world. The road is not thateasy, but by the same token, neither arethe studios, working the hours that onehas to work sometimes. I've never hadto deal with diabetes, but I know anumber of studio musicians who havediabetes. They're reliable, safe, and peo-ple hire them all the time because thesepeople are in control of the diabetes.

Everybody wants to be in the studio,but to be in the studio, you need the kindof experience gained from being on theroad and playing. You seem to have setyour goals on the studio. I think it's justa matter of sticking to it, not quitting,and not giving up. A musician's life is notalways carefree and spontaneous. I thinkyou're making a big problem out of asmall problem, but by the same token, ifyou feel drums is too tough a life . . .only you can answer the question ofwhether you should do drums or go intosomething else. I think drums will helpyour shyness, your diabetes situation,and keep you mentally stable. But, if it'stoo hot—get out of the kitchen.

just about the same weight as the RegalRock stick, but a tiny bit fatter and about3/8" longer. Maybe Regal will read this!SF: How do you feel about matched gripversus traditional grip?JK: I started off playing with convention-al grip. I started using matched grip formore power onstage. It got to the pointwhere I was playing matched grip in thestudio all the time, also. But I always feltthat I was cheating myself because I hadsuch a nice technique with the conven-tional grip. When I'd switch back to theconventional grip I'd feel a l i t t le weaker,but I felt funkier. I always feel funkierwith my conventional grip. In the lastcouple of years I've been changing backand forth to where I can truly say that Ifeel comfortable playing both ways. It'sa real nice feeling to be able to switchback and forth. That's what I wouldadvise anybody that's got a problem withit to do, especially if they already playconventional grip. I think it would begood to just go ahead and get right intomatched grip and just do it. Make itreally happen. I would tell drummersthat have been playing matched grip andhave a nice technique, that want toswitch over to conventional—don't givematched grip up entirely. It does work.I've proven to myself you can do both. Ireally didn't think I could. I thought itwould be too much of a conflict, butthat's not true. I've had people tell meyou can't roll with the matched grip. So Ilearned how to roll with the matchedgrip! I can do anything with the matchedgrip that I can with the conventionalgrip.

Another thing, in that Modern Drum-mer story on Ed Greene, Ed was talkingabout how he sits low on the drum stool.That interested me because I've alwayssat fairly high up. Jeff Porcaro sits verylow and so does Hal Blaine. ShellyManne told me that years ago, but I'mjust now discovering it for myself. I said,"I'm going to try this." I set the stooldown a lit t le lower and I got a betterfeeling from my foot than I've had in along time.SF: Whatever happened to your band,Attitudes?JK: That was a very short-lived band,mainly because the members were allreally hot-shot musicians. David Foster,the keyboard player, is now producingeverybody in sight. He's an incrediblekeyboard player, a great arranger, and agreat songwriter. He co-wrote, "AfterThe Love Is Gone" by Earth, Wind andFire, which is one of my favorite songsever. He didn't have time for a bandafter awhile. The guitar player, DannyKortchmar, is producing albums nowand making his own records. Paul Stall-worth is writing songs and doing sessionwork in North California.

Keltner continued from page 13 SF: How do you keep your own attituderight?JK: In the last year and a half, since I'vereally sort of opened up my heart to theLord, that's really made a great changein my life musically as well as personal-ly. I find that I have more fun nowbecause I remember things. I don't go tosessions and forget what I did afterwardsbecause I was so stoned, and my playingis generally better. I look forward totrying new things. I learn something newfrom each session.SF: Do you choose your own mic's in therecording studio?JK: I admire drummers who do get intothat, but I never got that deep into it. Idid a Direct-To-Disc record for DougSachs recently that should be coming outpretty soon. There are two differentdrummers—one on each side—playingsolo drums for stereo equipment testing.Doug has been talking to me about thisfor the last 5 or 6 years. I would alwayssay, "Oh, that sounds like a great idea,"and shy on it, mostly because I wasafraid. I didn't want to sit down and playdrums alone. I'm very afraid to solo. Isuppose if I had done more solos earlyon it would be more natural to me now.There are a lot of drummers who love tosolo, but a solo is real foreign to me. I'venever been able to, and never thought Iwanted to.

In the last year and a half, I have thisfeeling that everytime I get scared ofsomething—you know—it says in theBible, "Lay your burdens down at myfeet and I will take them from you." I dothat, man. It was always just words tome before, but it works in my life. It'sworking slowly and it's getting better allthe time. When I get afraid of anythingnow I just pray. I've always prayed allmy life, everytime I'd sit down behind aset of drums. Especially sitting downbehind the drums. I had this little shortprayer that I'd pray, real fast. I still do,only now I pray differently. It 's funny,there's just all these things to learn inlife. Consequently, I did this thing forDoug Sachs and I had great fun!

I borrowed a snare from Mark Ste-vens. He showed me this little 5-inchmaple snare that Pearl made and it justlooked so clean to me. So we set it upand I played on it and really dug the wayit felt. Mark's real great about loaningme things, so I borrowed that drum forthe Direct-To-Disc record, and I had aball with it. It made me feel like playing,even though they made me tape it upwhile there was no reason for it. I enjoyhaving to play occasionally on a rentalset, or a makeshift set. Sometimes itmakes you think a lit t le different.

The reason I brought this record up, isthat Doug Sachs and Bill Schnee (engi-neer and producer) are two microphonegeniuses. They make their own. Mark

continued on page 64

Blackwell continued from page 43play any tune before I heard i t . I wouldjust adapt to the way the tune was going,and adapt my playing to the way I heardthe music.SF: When you were a kid did you knowthat drums was going to he it?EB: Oh yeah. I had an older sister and abrother who were in show business. Soas a youngster I was hooked up to thisshow business thing because we werevery active in vaudeville. I would seethem whenever they'd come to NewOrleans with the show. I'd always makeit to the theaters and watch them. I'd sitbehind the drums and watch how thedrummer would play with the tap danc-ers. When I started playing in New Or-leans they had clubs and I use to playwith these different "shake dancers"and "fire dancers." That was anotherexperience. Playing with dancers, youhad to catch their movements on thecymbal. You had to catch their dramaticmovements when they'd throw up theirhands by choking the cymbal. It wasinteresting. I think drummers that don'tgo through that experience miss a lot. Iused to hear cats talk about how BabyLawrence used to dance, and how MaxRoach used to play drums while BabyLawrence danced. They would tradefours! I can relate to that. I didn't ex-change fours, but I played with thesetypes of dancers and it was a gas. Youhad to keep your eyes and ears open.Sometimes they'd be feeling happy andthey'd start improvising from the waythe act would usually go. They mighttake it completely out of the norm andyou had to be ready for i t .SF: As a kid were you listening to manydifferent kinds of music?EB: Oh yeah. My brothers used to bringhome records of Jo Jones. Gene Krupa,and Buddy Rich. As a kid I heard a lot ofbig-band drummers. Any kid in NewOrleans that showed any kind of aninclination for playing music was alwaysencouraged to pursue it. The family wasalways ready to pursue it because beinga musician was one of the better payingjobs for black people. So they wouldalways encourage you to develop yourmusical talent if you showed any kind ofinclination for playing any musical in-strument.SF: Have you ever done any swing stylebig-band drumming?EB: Yeah, I played that. Musicians inNew Orleans would always experimenttogether and put together big-bands.Cats would write and that was their wayof experimenting writing charts for big-bands. They would get musicians be-cause we were always ready to play.Everyday that I lived in New Orleansmusicians were always playing withsomebody; either a bass player, a pianoplayer, or a group of cats. Everyday you

were on your instrument, and that wayyou kept your chops up. New Orleans isthe only place I've ever been where Isaw drummers congregate together.That's a funny thing about New Orleans.The musicians have a great respect foreach other. Each instrument had theirown li t t le clique. Everybody would al-ways congregate with each other be-cause they were always trying to ex-change ideas. New Orleans is the onlyplace I've ever been that maintainedthat. Even now. you never hear onemusician putting another one down. Ialways dug that. There were bands play-ing rhythm and blues, I was playingbebop, and we all had our own set ofmusic, but we always had respect foreach other. Each one of the cats did whatthey did very well, whether it be R&B.bebop, or whatever. Whatever they did.that's what they did and they did it well.You have to respect that .SF: When you first arrived in New York,what was the reaction of the established"name" drummers to your playing?EB: They all came and checked me out.SF: The new kid in town.EB: That's right, and playing at The FiveSpot with the most controversial musi-cian in town! A lot of people weren'taware that Ornette and I had played somuch together before. They thought Bil-ly Higgins was the first drummer thathad ever come up playing with Ornette.So when I came on the scene, everybodysaid, "Where'd he come from?" Whenthey found out that Billy was havingproblems with his cabaret card, every-body was te l l ing Ornette. "Man. youain't gonna find a drummer to play thatshit, man." He was tell ing them. "Iknow somebody who can play it." Heknew that nobody else could play it.There were a lot of drummers that camearound to sit in with him, but they wereall l ike babes in the woods with Ornette.Ornette may start off with "1" here, andthe next time, in the middle of thechorus, "1" would be somewhere else!So you've got to listen to where he putsthat "1" in order to follow where his "1"is. If you're going by where your "1" isand you're playing like that AABAform—it just won't work. Ornette toldme about a lot of the drummers that satin with him before I got to New York.When I arrived on the scene, you canunderstand how these musicians comingin from out of town, playing these tunes,didn't know that I was there when Or-nette wrote them. So I knew the songs. Igot in that day and I was working thatnight. No rehearsals or nothing, and Ihadn't seen Ornette in about a year.SF: Whose drums were you using?EB: The drums that Billy Higgins hadbeen using. My drums were on the way.They got hung up in the airport. Max

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Headset Microphones forthe Singing Drummer

by Rick Van Horn

In the Feb/March 81 issue (Tips for theSinging Drummer, Part II) \ describedthe studio boom/gooseneck/pistol miccombination I've been using for the lastfourteen years on stage. Up t i l l now, thisrather cumbersome equipment providedme with the best available means to havea microphone in front of me without toomuch interference wi th my playing.Now. Shure Brothers, has introduced aheadset mic for drummers which effec-tively renders all stand-supported vocalmic systems obsolete.

What Shure has done is simply tomarket a high-quality communicationsheadset and direct their advertising tothe performer instead of the technician.Shure offers three models: the SM10A,which is the headpiece and microphoneuni t ; the SMI2A which features onemonitor earpiece; and the SM14A whichfeatures two monitor earpieces. I ' l l gointo further descriptive detail later.

When I first saw Shure's ad, it allsounded to good to be true. From theinformation contained in the ad, I agreedthat the advantages of a microphonewhich posed no obstacle to one's playingwould be tremendous. But th inking spe-cifically of a club band application, I wassomewhat skeptical about a few points.So I wrote to Shure Brothers with thefollowing comments:1. Most club bands do not employ asound engineer, but handle the mix fromthe stage. The obvious problem with aheadset mic is the performer's inabil i tyto use distance for dynamic control. It 'simpossible to back off from the mic toavoid distortion or imbalance at loudervolumes.2. The unit features no off-on switch.This makes it impossible to switch off themic for verbal communications betweenperformers onstage, or counting off atune, etc. Additionally, when the drum-mer is not singing, he should be able toturn off the mic so as not to pick up thedrums. No matter how directional themic is, it's l ikely to pick up some drumsand thus add them to the vocal mix.

Aside from these points. I saw the micas the answer to a singing drummer'sprayers. Shure's response to me camefrom their Technical Markets Director,

Mr. Ivan Severs. He offered me aSM10A unit to try on the job, so that Icould present this report in my column.After a month of using the unit, here'smy pro-and-con report.

The SM10A unit consists of the head-piece (which has already been modifiedonce for greater comfort, hence the Adesignation) and the microphone unit ona small boom. The headset is comfort-able when worn; very light, with adjust-able earpieces (actually worn just abovethe ears) to fit the individual 's head. Theboom is totally adjustable, so the mic canbe placed anywhere you want it in rela-tion to the mouth. Once adjusted, theboom is still movable in a 20 degree arc.so it can be adjusted closer or fartheraway from the mouth quickly (such asbetween tunes, or for emergency dynam-ic adjustments). What this means is, themic stays where you put i t , but you canmove it quickly if necessary. I found thisto be the answer to the vocal dynamicsproblem I'd mentioned to Shure. I sim-ply set the mic to the optimum singingposition and lock the adjusting knob. Forlead vocals I don't touch it again. Forbackground I turn the mic slightly awayand down, so as not to get quite so stronga vocal. Nothing need be done at theP.A. amp. To avoid distorting the mic onloud leads, I simply sang as loud aspossible at the closest position I woulduse, and adjusted the P.A. settings justbelow distortion level. Thus, I had amaximum setting that prevented distor-tion, with plenty of vocal volume when Isang more softly.

The cord attached to the microphoneis about six feet long, and ends in acannon plug which is designed to con-nect to a longer cable and ultimately intothe P.A. amp. Attached to the cannonplug is a belt clip. But I didn't like havingthe cable attached to my belt, so I simplylet the cord drop to the floor and con-nected the longer cable at that point. Idid have a l i t t le difficulty with the head-set cord getting in front of me and inter-fering with my playing, until I found away to keep it behind me. I have abackrest on my stool, so I use an elasticband around the vertical shaft on thebackrest and run the cord through it. It

isn't tight enough to snag the cord, orpull the set off my head if I move, but itdoes keep the cord from hanging looseand getting in front of me. If you don'thave a backrest on your stool, a smallclip of some kind attached to the under-side of your seat would probably do thesame job. Just make sure it doesn't holdthe cord too t ightly, or you risk pull ingthe headset off your head if you movesuddenly.

The headset mic is low impedance. Ifyour P.A. is also low impedance, justplug in and start singing. If your P. A. ishigh impedance, you'll need an imped-ance converting transformer. There are anumber of types. The one I use is aPeavey in-line model. It has a cannon-type female jack which receives theheadset plug, and 25 feet of cable, endingin the transformer and a standard 1/4-inchphone plug. This serves not only to con-vert the impedance for me, but get me tothe P.A. amp as well. The Peavey con-verter lists around $48.00.

I mentioned that the unit has no off-onswitch. Shure has informed me that theymight develop a footswitch which wouldbe available as an option. I would as-sume it would be similar in size to thestandard guitar-type vibrato foot switch-es. For most drummers, this should befine. For me it was impractical becauseI'm already using a number of effectspedals and I simply didn't have any morefloor space. So I made a small switchbox with a 3-amp mini-toggle hookedbetween two phone jacks. I placed it onthe console I use to run my band'slighting and it serves as an in-line switchfor me, quite close and handy. Countingthe box, the phone jacks and the mini-toggle, I spent about ten dollars. I hearti-ly recommend this extra l i t t l e invest-ment, because having a l ive microphonein front of you all the time can provevery embarrassing over a five-hour gig.If you're used to being able to move yourmic out of the way, or move your headaround it in order to talk to the othermembers of your band, you'll find your-self talking to everybody else in the clubas well! So buy or make yourself aswitch.

continued on page 60

Club Scene continued from page 58I was skeptical about the fidelity of the

mic itself. It is a very small unit , and Ihave had some experience with commu-nications headsets in the past with disap-pointing results. I'm happy to report thatthe technology involved with these mi-crophones has advanced tremendously.I'm actually happier with the soundachieved by the new unit than with thatof the regular mic I had been usingpreviously. Reproduction is very faith-ful, clear, and what I would call flat anddry. These are not negative terms. It justmeans that the mic doesn't seem to addmuch (if any) sound characteristics of itsown. It projects your voice—period.Any tonal coloration will be made at theP.A. amp.

Shure offers models with either one(I2A) or two (I4A) in-the-ear receiversfor monitor purposes. Although thisseems convenient, I have certain reser-vations. These are not headphone ear-pieces, but small, pointed receiverswhich actually fit just into the opening ofthe ear. I'm not sure that the fidelityachievable in this kind of unit would besatisfactory for accurate monitor pur-poses, but the individual user wouldhave to be the judge of that. More impor-tant, I'm very dubious about having any-

thing actually in the ear. Feedback occa-sionally occurs in the best of systems,and if a high-frequency squeal is generat-ed through the monitor earpiece, with nodefense for your ear, serious damagecould result. With conventional monitorspeakers at a slight distance, you can atleast turn away or cover your ears iffeedback occurs. With the headset unit ,you'd be forced to quickly remove theentire headset, which might be difficultand certainly inconvenient while play-ing. I'm using the SM10A (with no ear-piece) in combination with my regularmonitor speaker system. I think that'sactually the best arrangement.

Personal appearance is another factoryou'll want to consider. Although itmight sound vain or petty, personal ap-pearance or intake is a very importantaspect of club performance. The headsetunit is not large or obtrusive, and I foundthat it actually revealed more of my faceto the audience than was previously visi-ble behind my mic and stand. I did get afew init ial comments of looking a l i t t lel ike Buck Rogers, but most of the com-ments have been favorable.

Now I come to the best part of thedescription; the playing freedom afford-ed by the headset mic. I've never experi-enced anything like it. Quite simply, younow have the ability to play with abso-lutely no obstruction in front of you, andstill sing. I found that I'm able to playfills previously impossible on vocaltunes, because I no longer have anythinginterfering with my access to all thedrums. As an interesting side-benefit, Ifind that my singing comfort also is im-proved, because I don't have to be di-rectly in front of a mic to sing. I can turnmy head towards my hi-hats, or over myfloor toms, or even completely to therear if I wish, and stil l be singing. I havethe ability to keep an eye on the dancefloor, maintain better contact with theband members, and generally be more ontop of the situation visually, because I'mnot locked in to a microphone position.

Once you've gotten used to the head-set mic and its unique characteristics(and made any necessary technical ad-justments for your particular applica-tion), you have a system that offers youunlimited freedom for both playing andsinging. I'd say that Shure is quite cor-rect when they state that their headsetunit may be the answer to a singingdrummer's problems. Now that I'veused one, I honestly can't conceive ofusing anything else again. Although rela-tively expensive (the SMIOA lists around$120.00, the SMI2A at around $170.00), Iwould consider the system one of thefinest investments you could possiblymake towards improving the quality ofboth your singing and your playing.

THE AMAZING BATOMby Clyde LucasPubl: Clyde Lucas

189-30 116th Ave.St. Albans, N.Y. 11412

Price: Book $5.00Record $2.00

Before discussing the book, the question which must beanswered is: just what exactly is a BAtom, anyway? A BAtomis a floor tom which has a pedal attached to its bottom head,thus allowing the player to use the one drum as both floor tomand bass drum. By careful tuning of the heads, one is able to geta decent bass sound, not unlike that of an 18-inch bass drum. Aswith many inventions, this one was mothered by necessity. Inthis case, it was the necessity of traveling light in situationswhere lugging around a lot of drums is impractical. By utilizingthe BAtom, author Clyde Lucas only needs to carry his BAtomcase and a trap case, and still have the equivalent of a four-piecedrumset.

Now that we know that the BAtom is essentially a mechani-cal device for eliminating a drum, the question becomes: why isthere an entire book on the subject? The book is primarilydevoted to exercises for the development of what Lucas callsthe "double bass audio illusion." This is achieved by playingthe top head of the BAtom with the right hand, while playing thebottom head with the pedal. By alternating the two, a convinc-ing double bass sound can be obtained. The book gives justenough examples to illustrate the author's ideas, without wast-ing a lot of paper duplicating the same old licks. As Lucas saysin this introduction, ". . . there is no need to try and lengthenmy book for the sake of size. Why write out a bunch of patternsthat are already in thousands of other drum books? I'veattempted to use a few patterns that best fit this concept ofplaying." It's too bad more drum-book authors do not use thisapproach.

The final question we must answer is: does the book have anyvalue for someone who does not own a BAtom? The answer isyes. Because the BAtom is played like a regular drumset, theexercises in this book can be used with a standard bass drum.The "double bass illusion" concept remains valid, and the bookshould give most drummers some new ideas.

Lucas has also produced a record which demonstrates theBAtom. Those with limited reading ability might find therecording helpful in understanding the exercises in the book.The record will also be interesting for those who wish to hearwhat a single floor tom can sound like when used as a BAtom.

The book then, is worth checking out. Even those who do nothave a BAtom should pick up some new ideas. Drummers whoare constantly hauling drums around to sessions, rehearsals,and club dates, or those who have to rely on public transporta-tion, might want to check out the BAtom itself. In any case,Clyde Lucas is to be congratulated on coming up with anoriginal idea. We don't see enough of those in drum books thesedays.

RM

Reviewers: Rich BaccaroRick MattinglyLyman Mulkey

CONTEMPORARY DRUM METHODby Michael LaRosaPubl: Somers Music Publications

45 Kibbe DriveSomers, CT 06071

Price: $5.00

Let's get right to the point: this is a superior drum book.Anyone engaged in the profession of teaching percussion,especially on an elementary level, should give serious consider-ation to using LaRosa's book as a foundational text.

The book is truly a method; a procedure. Starting with all theusual essentials such as music fundamentals and hand position-ing, the lessons are set forth in logical systemized sequence.Teachers should find this encouraging, as each lesson is allowedappropriate time for development, and the book can be fol-lowed in progression, without needless "skipping around."Continuity, which is so important to musicianship, is demon-strated with ease in this text.

LaRosa's approach is quite different from the run of the milllesson book; presenting duets and multiple percussion etudes tothe neophyte percussion student. In the duets, the student isgiven an early taste of ensemble or band playing, and thisprepares him for the responsibility of listening to the othermembers of the group. The etudes are written in a clear, easy toread fashion, and provide excellent exposure to vertical read-ing, and "hearing" high and low pitches. The duets and etudesappear periodically in the book, summarizing what has beenstudied to that point. Mr. LaRosa has done an honest andresponsible job here. These duets and etudes are basic, buthighly musical, using dynamics and complete phrases from thevery outset. Along with their educational significance, thesecompositions should generate motivation, accomplishment andplain old fun for a new student. Creating music should be fun.

A sufficient number of rudiments are demonstrated. Therudiments included are essentially flams, drags and rolls, whichare the basis of the more demanding rudiments, to be studied ata more advanced stage.

A feature of this book worthy of particular note is theauthor's interjection of brief lessons entitled "Anticipating theroll." These preliminary exercises "gradually prepare the stu-dent for this most important rudiment." The section on rolls isdone very well, eliminating much of the mystique. LaRosa'swritten explanation is concise and practical, and is illustratedby some to-the-point, easily understood notation. Sufficientspace for application of the rolls (5 stroke, 9 stroke and longroll) is provided throughout the remainder of the book.

As well as being a fine text for private instruction, Contempo-rary Drum Method can be used with equal effectiveness in aclassroom situation. Many of the percussion books used inschool systems are "toys," never touching upon the essence ofpercussion performance as this book does. By virtue of thecompositions found here, an inventive music educator can dowonders with an otherwise uninspired class.

RB

THE DEVELOPING SOLO TIMPANISTby William J. SchinstinePubl: Southern Music Co.

San Antonio, TX 78292Price: $7.50

This collection of solos will fill the needs of those looking formaterial which is musical as well as educational. Each solofocuses on one particular technique, or musical problem, butdoes so in such a way that the player is never bored byrepetitious technical exercises. These pieces could certainly beused for auditions or contests.

The book begins with a section devoted to 21 solos for 2timpani. A variety of musical situations are covered, includingpedaling, damping, odd time signatures, triplets, and mixedmeters, with the level of difficulty ranging from easy to moder-ately advanced. Each solo contains suggestions as to tempo andstick selection, and Schinstine has included a sentence or twoexplaining each piece.

Part 2 of the book contains 11 solos for 3 timpani. Again, avariety of situations are covered, but here the level of difficultyranges from intermediate to advanced. Part 3 follows, with 11solos for 4 timpani. These solos are all at the advanced level.

Part 4 of the book contains the timpani parts for two soloworks, both of which have full-band parts available. Bothpieces are intermediate level, and could be used for practicematerial even without the band accompaniment. Part 5 contains2 multiple percussion solos and 5 duets, all of which usetimpani. The range of difficulty is from intermediate to ad-vanced, and these seem especially well-suited for contest use.

Perhaps the aspect of this book that I find the most appealingis that it is realistic. The techniques utilized are those that onewill encounter in the band and orchestra literature where mosttimpani playing is actually done. The exercises are well-graded,but they do move towards the more advanced exercises ratherquickly. Therefore, the book is possibly better suited forsomeone who has a good knowledge of rhythms, such assomeone who already plays snare drum. Less advanced stu-dents could make use of the book in conjunction with a basictimpani method, and band directors might want to keep a copyaround for contest time. With many books coming out thatseem to serve little or no purpose, it is refreshing to see a booklike The Developing Solo Timpanist, which fulfills a variety ofneeds.

RM

TODAY'S SOUNDS FOR DRUMSETby Murray HoullifPubl: Kendor Music Inc.

Delevan, New York 14042Price: $8.00

Here is a book designed to acquaint the up-and-comingdrummer with the styles of playing he might encounter on thegig. The book begins with some very basic eighth note rockbeats, then quickly moves into some of the more complicatedsixteenth note rhythms. The author shows the reader how toeffectively use open and closed hi-hats to get the sound youhear so much in today's music.

The second half of the book begins with a jazz swing feelusing left hand independence and then going into bass drumindependence. Also presented is a taste of drum fills, Latinrhythms and 3/4 time.

Mr. Houllif ends the book with two easy-to-read solos for thedrum set. This reviewer feels this book would be good for thedrummer or teacher looking for something covering a variety ofideas.

LM

Keltner continued from page 52Stevens is a drummer that's into mic's.I'm just not electronically minded I sup-pose.SF: How did you develop your reading?JK: I took basic reading lessons when Ifirst started playing with Charlie West-gate in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He's the guythat wrote, "The Downfall of Paris." Heand my dad were both in The ShrineDrum Corps in Tulsa. I more or lessstarted by playing on my dad's marchingdrum. I'd have my sister play the bassdrum part on the edge of the snare drumwith a spoon. She would go tap-tap-tap-tap, and I would play all the little hotlicks and all. Charlie showed me thebasics and how to count quarter notes,eighth notes, and sixteenth notes. Fromthere I joined the school band and fromthere I sort of taught myself. I never gotinto chart reading until I started readingcharts. So I learned how to read chartson the job.SF: Did you ever run into a chart thatscared you?JK: Oh, of course. Shelly Manne is atremendous reader. I read somewherewhere he would sit down and look at apart and would say, "Oh, I ' l l never makethis," and he'd sail right through it. I feltthe same way with a few Roger Kellawaycharts in front of me. He loves wild timesignatures and all. My first real challenge

with odd time signatures was a record Idid with The Baja Marimba Band. Rogerdid the writing for this particular album.My friend Emil Richards was on the dateand he's a monster at reading. He helpedme on that date. There would be a bar of13/4, then a bar of 15/8, then maybe twobars of "A, and the whole groove wouldbasically be in 7, and then there'd be alittle % bar followed by a 5/4 bar twomeasures later.SF: You were expected to sightreadthat?JK: Oh man! I knew I wasn't going to beable to sightread it. My only hope wasthat somebody would break down hereand there or that the trombone playerwould make a mistake, then they'd haveto stop and I'd be able to figure it all out.It was so complex and crazy and Emilsaw the look on my face. He came overand said, "Now look, think of it likethis." He showed me different ways oflistening and relaxing rather than count-ing. That little insight into that, coupledwith being able to run the tune down 3 or4 times enabled me to get through it andmake it feel good. Each time you're ableto make something like that happen,your confidence goes way up. It's a realgreat challenge. I love reading. I lovedoing film dates and jingles. I've done afew things with Lalo Schifrin. He writessome pretty strange stuff.

SF: That's interest ing that you'veworked with Roger Kellaway and LaloSchifrin. Do you feel you're primarilyknown as a rock drummer?JK: Oh, absolutely. Larrie Londin is areal good friend of Mark Stevens, andthey hang out when Larrie is in LosAngeles. I had lunch with them one day.Larrie said, "Some people in Nashvilletold me that you couldn't read a note." Itold him I did. I probably have a reputa-tion for not being able to read, and justbeing a rock and roll drummer that playsway back on the backbeat. Laid back,and all that nonsense.SF: What's your role in a band?JK: Well, for a drummer playing in aband he's got to be supportive. Heshould make the time feel good and trynot to play fills just for the sake of fillingavailable space. That's one of the rea-sons I love Charlie Watts so much. Butthere are as many ways to approachdrums as there are drummers. I believethat our individual muscular frames af-fect the way we make a drum or acymbal sound. There are no two drum-mers with the same muscle structure ordensity. A drummer truly plays withbody and soul and is unique in everyway. That's famed biochemist Dr. RogerWilliams' theory on biochemical individ-uality and it's true.SF: In all your years of playing you've

never had the urge to let loose on stage?JK: I never have. I don't like to solo,although I love to hear a good solo. Ihear some drummers saying, "I hatehearing drummers take a solo." I alwaysget something out of a solo. If he has theguts to take a solo then there's going tobe something of interest somewherealong the line, whether it's 100% inter-esting or 10% interesting, at least that10% is worth listening to. I've listened toSteve Gadd take solos and they're sointelligent, beautiful, and so well doneand thought out while he's playing. He'sgot a tremendously fast mind. I've hearddrummers in little pickup bands in Dis-neyland play solos that would blow meout.

A supreme drum soloist that not toomany people talk about is Ed Blackwell.When he would solo it wasn't like a drumsolo. It was like a melodic instrumentplaying a song.SF: What's the difference between play-ing a session date with Roger Kellawayor Lalo Schifrin, and a session date withJohn Lennon or Ringo Starr?JK: When you do a rock album withsomebody like John Lennon, there aresongs. There are no charts really. Ifthere's any chart at all i t ' l l be a li t t lechord chart. When I did an album withYoko, she had a sheet of paper with thewords on it in poem form. It was actuallyvery good that way. I remember think-ing, "Hey, this makes a lot of sense."There was nothing different about themusic where I needed a drum chart, butwith the words written like that, donepretty much the way she was going tosing them, it made a lot of sense.

With Kellaway's music or any greatarranger, or a film score—even a lot ofcommercials—they'll have an actualdrum part with drum notation: tom-tompart, snare drum, bass drum, hi-hat,cymbals. That can be a lot of fun. I enjoydoing commercials because it's a chal-lenge to put it all together and do itexactly the way the guy wrote it. If theguy's any good, if he really knows whathe's doing, the part will really makesense. In some cases when you try toplay a part exactly as written, it'll beawkward and you'll want to change it.

There are arrangers who really have itdown good. They'll write the part out,note for note knowing in their heads howit's going to happen with another partthat will make sense. I love doing thatbecause at that point you're relying total-ly on your abili ty to read and it's great.There's no real sightreading thing hap-pening in the studios. There's no suchthing as that, really. That's not realistic.There are many, many times when a firsttake is made. I've played on many firsttakes that've either been hit records orbeen the actual product that ends up on

continued on page 82

Donald Knaack

by Rick MattinglyIf you have ever complained about the

problems of hauling around and settingup a standard drumset, imagine the prob-lems faced by a musician whose instru-ments are made entirely of glass. Inorder to do a performance, he mustarrive at the hall a full day before theconcert to set up such things as chimesmade of glass tubing six feet long andthree inches in diameter; a xylophonebuilt out of glass rods; twelve differentsets of wind chimes, ranging from glassmarbles to large panes of glass eighteeninches long by eight inches wide; glassmaracas; and various bottles and jars.Much of the time is spent just packingand unpacking the glass safely. Such atask requires patience, naturally, anddedication, surely.

The musician who possesses this nec-essary patience and dedication is percus-sionist Donald Knaack (pronounced Ka-nak). He goes through all of this in orderto perform a piece conceived by artistMarcel Duchamp en t i t l ed The BrideStripped Bare By Her Bachelors. Even(Erratum Musical). The piece is as out ofthe ordinary as is its name, which wasoriginally the t i t le of a Duchamp paint-ing. Duchamp conceived the idea of amusical composition which would bebased on the principles of the Dada peri-od in art, of which Duchamp was afounder. Duchamp's instructions calledfor the piece to be played on a playerpiano, an electronic organ, or on anynew musical instrument, or instruments,which "suppresses the virtuoso interme-diary." The idea was, anyone who un-derstood the logic of the piece couldperform it without having to practicetechnique on an instrument. Knaackchose to use "new" instruments, andbecause Duchamp's original painting hadbeen done on a large pane of glass, Dondecided to use glass instruments in hisrealization of the piece.

Knaack spent about four months ex-perimenting with glass sounds and waysto produce them before arriving at thecombination of instruments he now usesto perform the piece. At one point during

his experimentation, he had over 400bottles in his living room. (His wife,Peggy, also possesses a great deal ofpatience.)

The first step in playing the piece is to"construct" the score. Duchamp in-structs the performer to catalog each ofthe different sounds, or timbres, his in-struments are capable of producing.Each timbre is then assigned a numberand each number is written on a smallball. The balls are placed in a largefunnel. A small toy train, consisting offive open cars, is then pulled under thefunnel so that the balls drop into thecars. The balls drop at random, so eachcar ends up with a different number ofballs. Each car represents a period, ormovement, of the piece. The balls arethen taken out of the cars and are mount-ed on a rack which has five levels, onefor each car.

The performer is free to choose theamount of time each movement takes.Knaack chose three minutes because thenumber three was important to Du-champ's work. Don then divides threeminutes by the number of balls in eachlevel of the rack. For example , if the first

level contains twelve balls, he will play asound every fifteen seconds during thefirst three-minute period. If the secondlevel has only two balls, the secondthree-minute period will contain twosounds, played a minute and a half apart.

The score, therefore, consists of therack of balls. The performer simply pro-duces the sound whose number corre-sponds to the number on the ball, in theorder the balls appear on the five levelsof the rack. By using this procedure,which involves the element of chance,each realization of the piece is different.The final product is a blend of Duchamp,who conceived the idea, Knaack, whoconceived the instrument, and chance,which determines the sequence ofsounds.

In addition to the time period, Don hasincorporated the number three into themusic in another way. On his recordingof the piece (Finnadar 9017). Knaackmade three separate realizations andthen, through overdubbing, superim-posed them over one another. What isactually heard on the recording are threesimultaneous realizations. In l ive per-formance, Knaack often plays the piece

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along with a tape on which he has re-corded two previous realizations, so thathe gets the same effect that is on therecord.

When doing the piece before an audi-ence, Knaack has slides of Duchamp'sart shown during the time he is preparingthe score. He also has someone read atribute to Duchamp, written by JohnCage. The slides and the reading aretimed to conclude as the music begins.The whole realization takes 22 minutes;seven to prepare the score and fifteen toplay the piece.

Performing a work like this is not just amatter of learning notes and then playingthem. Knaack spent a year and a halfdoing research on Duchamp's work andphilosophy before he recorded the piece.This gave him an understanding of theaesthetic principles behind the piece aswell as ideas for ways to perform thework. It was his knowledge of Du-champ's interest in glass and transparen-cy that led to the instrument. It wouldhave been possible to perform the workwithout this painstaking preparation, butthe end result would not have been astrue to the spirit of Duchamp.

This attitude carries into every projectKnaack becomes involved with. He tookthe same kind of care when working on apiece by John Cage, entitled 27' 10.554"for a Percussionist. When Don first ap-proached the piece, he already had agood understanding of what Cage and hismusic were all about. Knaack had readeverything he could get his hands onabout Cage and had attended seminars atwhich Cage spoke. He had also per-formed many of Cage's works, some-times under the supervision of the com-poser himself. This piece was also re-corded, and appears on the same disc asthe Duchamp work. Duchamp had beena strong influence on Cage, and Knaackfelt that the two pieces complementedeach other beautiful ly.

The music that Donald Knaack haschosen to play demands as much fromhim as from the composer. As a result,he is starting to do much of his ownmusic, in addition to works by others.He wants to take his music into clubswhere people go to listen to jazz, believ-ing that there would be a bigger audiencefor this type of music if more peoplewere exposed to it. Knaack has beenexperimenting with the latest electronicequipment and plans to include these inconjunction with the many instrumentshe already uses. Many of his pieces aremulti-media, involving film, tape, andlive performance. He reflected. "I don'tsee a lack of ideas for a long time. It 's achance to be truly creative in the ulti-mate sense. The only problem is cart-age."

Greer continued from page 32ming. Man, I went right into my routine.It was a classic. I told Toby, "I ain'tnever riding with you no more." Thenext day I was in the same raggedyautomobile riding again.SF: Then the nucleus of what was to bethe Ellington Orchestra moved to NewYork?SG: Fats Waller came to see me. He hada band at that time, but the musicians gotto feuding amongst themselves andpulled out from him. Fats had to leavethere and open in New York. I was theonly one in Washington that he knew.He said, "Sonny, I've been in Washing-ton long enough. How'd you like to go toNew York?" I said, "Yeah, I'm ready togo back." He said, "Can you get me abar band?" I said, "Yeah man. Howmany do you want?" He said, "Five orsix." So I got Duke, Arthur Whetsol,Elmer Snowden. Four. Me and Dukewent on ahead to New York. Toby camelater. His auntie lived in New York andwe slept at her place. The first night Itook Duke down to the Capitol PalaceCafe. Wil l ie The Lion was playing. Wil-lie The Lion had seen me, but I wasn'tno close associate. So I fall in on TheLion and lay some heavy jive on him. Isaid, "Lion, my man, I want you to meetmy number one man from Washington,Duke." He said, "Sit down, kid." I said,"He's a piano player, Lion." Duke hadnever seen nobody like that. He hadheard about him. So Lion got to playing.He had a rough band and they couldplay, man. After awhile Lion said, "Heykid. Play one for me. Let me hear you."Duke got up and played "CarolinaShout" just like James P. Johnson. Lionsaid, "I like that." One night James P.came into the cafe. Lion said to Duke."Play that thing again." So Duke playedthe same thing that James P. had playedon the piano roll! And James P. said,"Oh yeah. I like that." From then on wewere all close.SF: When I listen to the early recordswith you and Elmer Snowden, a lot ofwhat you were playing with brushes is inunison with the banjo rhythm. Was thatsomething you did consciously?SG: No. We both listened to the piano.Piano was predominant. We always lis-tened to him. The bass player? We neverhad to listen to him. He listened to thepiano, too, because piano players makeso many different changes. The pianoplayer was in the middle of everything.All piano players are crazy. Yon knowthat. You give me one thousand dollarsand I couldn't tel l you what Brooks isgoing to play. He don't know what he'sgoing to play himself. No piano playerknows. They play how they feel. Nopiano player in the world goes by a setpattern. I don't care who he is. Theydon't play the same thing twice. The best

in the world don't do it.SF: Well, the best drummers don't ei-ther, right? You weren't playing any-thing the same.SG: No. You just have to be alert all thetime. When me, Brooks and Russell Pro-cope were playing down at Gregory's inNew York City, man, we use to play somuch stuff. The kids didn't believe it!They thought it was brand new. Theaverage kid thought it was brand new,man. It wasn't nothing new! Same thingswe played many years ago. We wentdown to play there for two weeks and westayed down there near four years. Thatlittle old place was packed and jammed.You couldn't even walk in there, fromMonday to Sunday, rain or shine. Man,that place has never been like that again.SF: It must still feel great to be playing,doesn't it?SG: Oh yeah. You know a funny thing?Up at the West End Cafe on Mondaynight that damn place gets bigger andbigger. That's the worst night of theweek. No club is doing business on Mon-day. You turn around and the first thingyou see is a whole lot of people, and it'sjust me and Brooks. That's hard. We gota terrific bass player sometimes. AaronBell. He's sharp. He teaches school atsome college in New Jersey.SF: What drummers did you listen towhen you were coming up? Did you ever

go out and watch certain drummers thatturned you on?SG: No.SF: Never? You never saw Chick Webbplay or . . .SG: Chick was a good friend of me andDuke. I love him. All them guys couldplay. At that time you put up or shut up.There wasn't no in-between. You eitherwas good or forgot it. There was so manygood drummers that could play. Realcraftsmen. Kaiser Marshall was a greatdrummer. Walter Johnson was a goodfriend of mine. He was a nice guy. Heused to come down to Gregory's beforehe got real sick.

Man, we didn't have no nights off! Wedidn't have time to go visit nobody. If Iran into them . . . alright. If I didn't runinto them . . . forget it. We were so busywe didn't have no time. We were work-ing every night including Monday andSunday. No nights off. Man, the CottonClub would take the whole show and theband to a hotel to play a benefit. We'd doone a night or at least every other night.The Cotton Club was the place. Highclass. All the rich people from downtownjust used to live at the Cotton Club. Youcome to New York and didn't go to theCotton Club, you ain't seen New York.They thought Harlem was heaven. Itwas! Everybody from downtown cameup and you could walk anywhere, any

hour of the night. You never heard ofmugging and all that stuff. It was beauti-ful.SF: Sonny, can you give me an idea ofthe way the speakeasys were?SG: Oh, yeah. I was singing with theband. Man, Leo Bernstein, our manager,would make so much money and get realdrunk that he would damn near want togive me the cash register. I knew whenhe was drunk. All I had to do was sing"My Buddy" and I could get anything inthe world! So Fats Waller was playingpiano for the master of ceremonies at theshow, Bert Howell. Duke ain't going togo out on the floor and play no piano. Some and Fats would go around and enter-tain, singing those risque songs. Wemade so much money in tips down therethat Duke's eyes popped open! He toldFats, "Hey man, I ' l l take the piano." Isaid, "No, no. Me and Fats got this."We had 7 or 8 girls that Leo Bernsteinhired as hostesses, but they would sitwith stag parties. So man, they wasn'tgoing to sit with nobody if their pocketswasn't straight, you know? So we'dswing around on the piano to where theywould be sitting. That'd be the first placewe'd hit. Man, the guy wants to give us 2dollars. The girl starts hol ler ing,"What're they going to do with 2 dol-lars? They can't do nothing with 2 dol-

continued on page 71

where the pro's go!

"One of the great-est educationalmaterials fordrummers todayis Modern Drum-mer Magazine.The interviews,transcriptions andexercises are avaluable referencefor professionalsand students."

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lars!" So the guy would try to impressthe girls, he would dig, and we'd lay oneof them good ones on him. But when LeoBernstein got drunk I'd say, "Man, he'sdrunk." I'd sing "My Buddy," becausehe was a war veteran. I'd sing, "Thenights are long since you went away, myBuddy." Man, he would start crying andthrow his hands in his pockets. Me andFats would say, "We got it! We got it!"It was prohibition and you ain't sup-posed to sell no whiskey . Peoplecouldn't get no whiskey until they'd seeme, because I remembered faces andpeople from all over. He'd say, "Sonny,the party over there wants some whis-key. Should I serve them?" I'd say,"Yeah, he's alright."BK: Sonny was the spotter.SG: And I never made a mistake.BK: And when the Fed's would comebusting in there the place would flip flopinto a church and Sonny'd come out andsay, "We don't serve nothing but wine.This is a church."SF: How would you know when theFed's were going to come?BK: The buzzer. It was a basement joint.SG: We had a doorman called Slim andhe could smell one of them a mile. Slimwould step on the buzzer. As soon as thebuzzer comes it was a different joint,man. In about a minute all the panelswould turn around and the whole placewould take on a different atmosphere.SF: During the big-band days, the bandsplayed for the dancers, right? Therewasn't any playing for "musicians"?SG: We never featured playing for themusicians. If they happened to be there. . . they was there! But to play directlyfor them? We never did that. WhenFletcher Henderson was at the RoselandBallroom, he played for dancers. BennyGoodman did too. I remember they'dfeature a guest band every week at theSavoy Ballroom. All the big-bandswould go up there but Chick Webb'sband would cut them. So one day it wasour turn to go up there.

Chick had such strong men. Weplayed the Apollo Theater the week be-fore we went up there to play againstChick. So everybody was running out ofthe Apollo saying, "Man, ain't nobodyever cut The Duke. But Chick can do itbecause he's been rehearsing all week."Duke just laughed. Duke paid it no mind.We didn't rehearse, we just played theshow. We didn't have time to rehearseno band. Chick opened up. The placewas packed, because the Savoy wasChick's homeground. His cats got a bigovation. We sat back and listened to it.BK: If a band ended on a C7 chord. Dukeknew enough to resolve to the next high-er chord, for the beginning of their firsttune. Like, if Chick ended on a C major

Greer continued from page 71chord, Duke would take if from a Cmajor to a C7 to an F chord. He'd notonly resolve it—he'd bring it up. So, ithad an effect that would lift the listener.SG: We went up there and Duke played alittle piano—-just me and him until it gotdown to the last four bars—until heplayed the tonic and we know what wewas going to play! We opened up with"Rockin' In Rhythm." The people in theplace stood up and cheered. Peoplewouldn't dance! They just stood aroundthe bandstand. We picked up whereChick left off and kept going higher.Chick shook his head. "Why you got toplay all that music up there?" The guythat booked us there said, "Chick, Iguess you'd better play the waltzesnow."

But Duke and I were crazy aboutChick. He was crazy about Duke. Chickasked, "Duke, what did you do that tome for?" Duke said, "Man, we're justplaying a gig, that's all." Then we had togo back to The Cotton Club where wetore them up again.

Sonny Greer conjures up a picture of amassive drumset. The set wax so impres-sive that special mention was made inJim Haskin's book The Cotton Club:"Greer and his drums provided the focusof the band's (Ellington's) music. Hehad an incredible battery of percussionequipment, everything from tom-toms tosnares to kettle drums, and once herealized the band was at the club to stayawhile, he brought in the really goodstuff. Sonny later recalled: ' When we gotinto the Cotton Club, presentation be-came very important. I was a designerfor the Leedy Manufacturing Companyof Elkhart, Indiana, and the president ofthe company had a fabulous set of drumsmade for me, with timpani, chimes, vi-braphone, everything. Musicians used tocome to the Cotton Club just to see it.The value of it was three thousand dol-lars, a lot of money at that time, but itbecame an obsession with the racke-teers, and they would pressure bands tohave drums like mine, and would oftenadvance money for them.' With suchequipment, Greer could make every pos-sible drum sound, and at the CottonClub he awed the customers, conjuringup tribal warriors and man-eating tigersand war dancers. But his rhythms wereonly the focus of the band's sound."SG: My valet had my drums shine likegold. They were chrome plated on therims and hardware except for the cym-bals and the gongs, which were goldplated. The valet kept them sparklinglike diamonds. Very expensive.SF: Did you design that set?SG: Yeah. The average drummer didn'tuse all them drums. I had everything.Timpani, vibraphone, chimes and the

continued on page 76

Have a problem? A question? Ask MD. Addressall questions to: Modern Drummer, c/o It'sQuestionable, 1000 Clifton Ave., Clifton, NJ07013. Questions cannot be answered personally. by Cheech lero

Q: What is the purpose of the air hole in the side of the drumshell?

D. A.Charlotte, N.C.

A: The air hole is to relieve the pressure of the air inside thedrum which is compressed every time the drum is struck.Without air holes, there would be many more broken drumheads.

Q: What is the origin of the castanets?P. B.

Prescott, Arizona

A: This instrument originated in Spain. The word castanetmeans chestnut, the wood originally used in making castanets.The lowest pitched pair of castanets characterizes a man'svoice, and the highest pitched pair, a woman's voice. In thehands of a master player, a musical conversation can be sentback and forth from hand to hand.

Q: Exactly how is the speed of a click track determined so thatthe music comes out exactly on time?

F. W.Wilmington, De.

A: Timing is crucial in motion picture scores, and T. V. or radiocommercials. Many times, metronome markings are used toestimate the duration of a piece of music by using the formula nx t/M. The n indicates the number of beats in a measure; the t,the amount of measures in the music; and M, the metronome orclick track marking. Assume the music was 160 measures of 3/4time, with a metronome marking of quarter note = 90. By usingthe formula 3 x 160/90 we find the music will be 5 minutes and20 seconds long.

Q: Did drummer Sandy Nelson record his first album, LetThere Be Drums for the Imperial label?

D. F.Davenport, Iowa

A: No. Sandy Nelson's first record was recorded in 1959 on theOriginal Sound label. The LP was called Teen Beat.

Q: I'm questioning the new hoop design Ludwig has justinnovated. What about it?

T. K.Honolulu, Hawaii

A: Ludwig claims their new design is the "first major hoopinnovation in 40 years." What it is, is a hoop with a cross-ribbed twin channel design that provides 360 degrees of hoop tohead contact for tom as well as snare drum.

Ludwig claims that if a tension rod loosens, there is no loss ofhead tension and it will eliminate hoop distortion even under

the most demanding conditions. The hoop features a smootherappearance because its new design eliminates the "ears"found at the locations of the tension rods.

Q: What is a sextolet?M. P.

Philadelphia, Pa.

A: A sextolet is a group of six notes generally indicated by a 6written over the top of the figure. This grouping of 6 notes is tobe played in the time of four notes.

Q: I own a 4-piece Slingerland set which was purchased new in1956. Recently I've had a problem with the heads. No matterwhat type of head I use on the small and large toms, afterawhile, they begin to loosen on one side of the drum. I'vereplaced all the lug screws, and the lug assemblies are notstripped. I've checked the wooden shells and they're notwarped. Help!

F. A.New York, NY

A: I would suggest you check the lug-screw holes in the hoop.The "bubbling" of the drum head may be caused by these holesbeing worn wide. This is not an uncommon occurrence withhoops manufactured during the fifties. If this is the case, I'drecommend you replace the rims.

Q: What is musicianship?T. L.

Manchester, England

A: Musicianship has many facets, but essentially, it is theability to read between the lines and penetrate beneath thesurface of the music to the depths of using proper dynamics;preserving a balance between the instruments; keeping impec-cable time; listening; and correctly using variations in tempoand tonal color. It is also the interpretation of musical ideas sothe music is presented articulately, in order that its messagecan be appreciated by the listener.

Q: Can rests be syncopated? Also, what is the differencebetween "tempo" and "time"?

J. W.Winnipeg, Canada

A: Rests cannot be syncopated. Syncopation depends uponstressed sounds, although silence can be a contributing factor.Writing rests in a syncopated rhythm is an incorrect use ofnotation.

Tempo is the pace at which the music is played and isindicated either by musical terms such as Allegro, Moderato,Presto, etc., or more accurately by metronome markings."Time" refers loosely to the duration of sounds, or is used toindicate the pulse in the music.

Ed Blackwell—"Bemsha Swing"From the albumAVANT GARDEwith Don Cherry andJohn Coltrane

Transcribed by Skip Shaffer

Skip Shaffer performs and teaches in Burbank, CA.

other drums. I only used the vibraphonefor chords to back up singers. I'm noLionel Hampton. Duke used to like tocome there and play them all the time. Idesigned a lot of drums for Leedy. Whenthe first timpani pedal came out I helpeddesign that. A lot of snare drums, tom-toms, and different ideas about brushes,and a line of cymbals.SF: Leedy manufactured their own cym-bals?SG: No. Zildjian up in Boston. I gavethem a lot of ideas. The average drum-mer—very few of them know—you cantell a good cymbal by the cup. If the cupis not too pointed—more flat—you'll geta better sound.SF: You used to use a lot of cymbalchokes for accents.SG: Oh yeah. Man, that's so long ago I'dforgotten all about it. It's just somethingthat I done, that's all.SF: Were you able to use your Leedy setin the recording studio?SG: No. They always have a set ofdrums at the recording studio. If I wantsome special thing I take my own stuff.But they always had a technician whowas very exact. He wanted everythingperfect. It ain't like you hear now. Someof these people that's doing it now don'tplay. You hear them country cats, man,they ain't playing! Can't sing. Can'tplay. They're pathetic.

Greer continued from page 72

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BK: Sonny had a valet named Jonesywho always tuned Sonny's bass drum toa "G."SG: Always. He knew more about mydrums than I did. Boy, he was somethingelse. Him and Ivy Anderson didn't hit itoff at all. They weren't enemies—theywere friends. Everytime she wantedsomething she wouldn't let nobody gofor it but Jonesy, and Jonesy never gaveher no change. She'd give Jonesy a twen-ty-dollar bill for some barbecued chickenor something, and she'd say, "Jonesy,give me my change." He's say, "Ain'tno change." She'd blow her top! Ivy wasfiery, man. Jonesy would never giveDuke no change, never give me nochange.

One time a guy gave Duke one of theprettiest accordions as a present. Theykept it in the baggage car. We alwaystraveled with our own Pullman. Jonesysaw the accordion and sold it! Someweeks later Duke said, "Jonesy, get myaccordion." Jonesy says, "Man, I can'tfind it nowhere." He had sold it! He wasa character. He'd been a bellboy at theCotton Club and he was so nice thatDuke asked him, "How'd you like tocome on the road with us?" He said,"Yeah." So we took him. He was great.He'd do anything to try to be at a certainplace at a certain time. He and I were thefirst ones in the theaters. When the bandcome we had the whole stage set up.Everything. All the dressing rooms wereput out. You could trust Jonesy withyour life. He wouldn't let nobody touchmy drums. He knew them backwards.SF: Is it true that you used to use timpaniheads on your bass drum?SG: Yeah.BK: That was so he'd be in tune with thebass player. The bass player would hit a"B" and Sonny would hit a "G" on thebass drum and they'd be in harmony. Ora "D" in harmony with "G." Blantonalways hit a "D."SG: It was my idea to use the timpaniheads, and Duke and I thought of thetuning idea. I was the first one that triedthe hi-hat. Leedy made the first hi-hatand they sent me one of the originals. Iused it at the Kentucky Club.BK: They sent it to Chick Webb thesame day and Chick didn't like it! Sonny,who was the first drummer you everheard play the jazz ride cymbal rhythm?SG: I think it was Kaiser Marshall whenhe was with Fletcher Henderson's band.SF: Was there a closeness between thedrummers in the thirties and forties?SG: We were all friends. Close friends.We all socialized. The musicians werecloser together at that particular time.Everybody visited everybody and theyhung out together. Today it's a differentatmosphere. The kids? You can't tellthem nothing now. You either put upthen or shut up. If you were lame you

had a hard time. But if you could play,they would come to see you. They'd tellyou if you could play. It was a pleasurebeing around guys like that because theywere close together. I used to be called"The Sweet Singing Drummer." Boy, Ihad more people that hated me.SF: Why?SG: Because we used to broadcast overthe radio from coast to coast everyweek. I was singing with the band andwe had a few of the best announcers inthe business. Man, we played all the bestof our numbers for an hour. If you were aguy who worked past 7:00 PM . . . well,nobody would cook dinner for their hus-bands! The husbands would be workingall day and they hated our band. From6:00 to 7:00 everything stopped. If youhadn't ate before our radio show comeon you were out of luck.SF: When the Ellington Orchestra wouldwork out tunes, how did you handle thearrangements? Was there much rehears-al prior to performing the songs?SG: We were the only band that neverplayed the same concert at Carnegie Halltwice. Duke would write special musicfor it. Every concert we played weplayed different tunes. You didn't comethere to hear "Oh, Susanna" or one ofthose songs over and over. We hadbrand new music for every Carnegie Hallconcert and we played there every year.For us everyday was a new day and anew challenge.SF: Were you using drum charts for thefloor shows at the clubs?SG: Man, no. We just played it like wefeel, just like we play right now.SF: When did you first meet Jo Jones?SG: Jo was out West in 1936. He's mynumber one man. He's something else. Isaw him with Basie out in Kansas Citysomewhere, with the Bennie Motenband. I liked Jo right away. He's thesame Jo Jones that you know now. Hecalls me "Mr. Empire State Building."One Christmas he found the oldest pairof shoes that he could find, giftwrappedthem and said, "Here's your Christmaspresent. It cost me a lot of money."Man, he must've had those shoes a thou-sand years! They were all wrapped upnice, man. I threw them in the garbagecan. Next time you see him tell him,"Sonny told me about the Christmaspresent you gave him!"SF: As drums progressed through the'30s, '40s and '50s with people like JoJones and then on up, did you dig whatwas happening?SG: Well, Jo Jones played then like hedoes now. He never changed his way ofplaying. Not that I know of, and I'veseen him many times.BK: How about Davey Tough?SG: Well, when Davey got out of theNavy, we was playing the Chicago The-ater and he stopped in Chicago and

found out the hotel I was staying in. Themanager called and said, "There's a boyhere that just got out of the Navy, hisname is Davey Tough. He said that he'sa good friend of yours. Should I let himgo up to the room?" I said, "Yeah. Givehim anything he wants." He was halfsick then. That was the last time I sawhim. A beautiful guy. Good drummer.He was one of the good ones. Not onlyplaying, I mean personally. He wasgreat. I didn't think he was that sick. Hedied shortly after he got home.SF: Did you get a chance to see peoplelike Kenny Clarke at Minton's, and Max,and Art Blakey?SG: No, you see when I get throughwork I never hang out anyplace after-wards. People would always say, "Comeon by." But they were mostly horn play-ers that went to those places. Real drum-mers and bass players, they duck thoseplaces because everytime they go inthere, somebody wants them to sit downand play, accompany somebody.BK: And you've got to play 99 millionchoruses of "I've Got Rhythm" to ac-company somebody.SG: I never went.

One time we were playing the StanleyTheater in Pittsburgh. I come off thestage and this little kid was out there. Hesay, "Mister, you got a drum head?" Isay, "Yeah." I always liked kids. I took

him backstage and I gave him a wholedrum. I forgot all about it. Years later abunch of drummers were all talkingdown on Broadway and one drummersays, "You remember the time you gaveme the drum? I'm the little kid who camebackstage and you gave him the drum."It was Art Blakey.SF: What's ahead for you and Brooks?Sheila was talking about a record.BK: Not only that, but she's trying to puttogether two or three weeks for Sonnyand I. Exclusive.SF: Is Sonny's book a definite?BK: Yeah. That won't be unt i l 1982.Sonny's writing it. The working t i t le is IWax There.SG: It's just the opposite to Duke's Mu-sic Is My Mistress. So many pleasantthings happened.SF: Are your still listening to music,Sonny?SG: I went down to see SophisticatedLadies. The band was very good. Theygot the stage sort of like the cafe was inthe Cotton Club. Beautiful lighting. Thesinging and dancing is the last word.Duke would've been proud of that.SF: Do you listen much to drummersanymore?SG: I don't pay drummers no mind.SF: What's that set you're playing downat the West End?SG: Leedy. Those drums are from the

last bunch before Leedy sold out toLudwig. I've got to have them done overbecause a lot of the glass mirrors arepeeling off.SF: How did you learn how to playbrushes?SG: No matter how much money theyoffered me, that's one question I can'tanswer. It was easier to play brushesthan sticks. Much easier!SF: Do you have any closing thoughts?SG: I never let the guys in the banddown. We could get a sub for a saxo-phone, trumpet or trombone, but Dukeand I were indispensible. My motherpassed away when I was working at theLayfette Theater. I said, "Duke, I don'twant to go." He said "You got to go."Duke used to call my mother "mama."You know who subbed for me? KaiserMarshall. But it wasn't the same thing.My only regret is that my mother andfather never saw me play.

Hearing continued from page 28

Recuperation periods for our ears are essential, hut juststaying at home doesn't ensure noise relief. The lawn mowerchurns out 100dBa, and an overhead jet 102; catching thesubway can reach 120, while the food blender dices and mixesat 86. Many of these noises only last a short duration: otherssuch as working at a newspaper press can tax your senses justas drumming does. Certainly drumming only exasperates oureveryday noise exposure, and furthermore, the EPA estimatesthat the amount of noise in America will double by the year2000.

Maintaining your musical instincts and enthusiasm whilewearing ear safety devices is not easy. Naturally, we want tohear everything that is going on as we drum—listening to theother musicians is of uppermost importance. How else can wespontaneously accent and accompany? After drumming regu-larly for two or three weeks with ear protection, I ' l l play onenight without any protection. Wow! How incredibly fresh,vibrant and beautiful drums sound! The whole evening becomesa reaquaintance of sensory perception, my attention riveted tothe bright tones of my drums and cymbals. This break fromwearing ear protection is necessary for me, because after toolong of not hearing my real drum sound I become bored. Youjust don't get something for nothing.

Similar to how you listen to music through stereo headphonesand shout to people instead of talk, wearing ear protectionrequires that you compensate for your drumming volume byplaying softly. When I first started wearing protection, I re-ceived some disturbed hostile stares from the other musicians inthe band. I would just be drumming along, not realizing that Iwas overpowering the other musicians. Now I've learned tocompensate and guess accurately about how loud I 'm actual lyplaying. I rely heavily on the feel of my sticks bouncing off theheads—in short, I've broadened my sense of touch, making upfor my dampened sense of hearing.

If you sing while you drum you'll have to work harder to

achieve a correct mix of vocal and drum volumes. With earsplugged as you sing and drum, the vocal will be perceived asloud while the drumming wil l sound faint: thus you'll end updrumming loudly but singing softly! This vocal perception iscalled an inclusion effect. Consciously singing loud while drum-ming soft is no easy task, especially since the sound of yourvoice will overwhelm the sound of your drums.

Since I've worn sound filters while drumming I feel livelier,less fatigued and more relaxed after the show. A few drummershave complained to me of headaches and tension, and they arenot alone.

"The question of the nonauditory effects of noise keeps beingraised," says David DeJoy of the EPA Office of Noise Abate-ment and Control. "It has reached the point where the evidenceis such that there is ample justification for further research."

The stresses which loud noise affects upon the body includeincreases in heart and blood rates, alterations in breathing,blood vessel constriction, slowing of the digestive process and ageneral increase in muscular tension. Ernest Peterson, re-searching at the University of Miami Medical School, has foundthat the nonauditory effects of noise on rhesus monkeys lingerlong after the noise has stopped, and in Japan, researchers haverecorded a higher incidence of low birth weight babies born inpopulations most affected by airport noise.

Which Drums Hurt the Most

I've already mentioned the peak dBA readings which Dr.Hall recorded as I drummed, but a more specific, narrow bandspectrum analysis of each drum set component's frequencycontribution is very revealing. Before testing with Dr. Hall, Dr.McCartney had cautioned me that the drums would produce abroad frequency range.

"The wide spectrum of sounds which a drum set makes ismore damaging than a solitary high pitch because of all the lowpitches coming from the drums," said McCartney.

As I played, Dr. Hall viewed the frequency responses on aBruel & Kjaer Narrow Band Spectrum Analyzer, type 2031,which transmitted signals to a Moseley Autograf 7001A X-YRecorder, so that I could conveniently have printed graphresults of the drum frequencies. Since the bass drum projectsdirectly away from the drummer and its peak dBA proved lowin comparison to the other components, its harmful potential isminimal to the drummer. The bass drum response proved to bevery low, with a decibel peak at 60H/_. This makes the bass themost harmful component to be in front of—luckily we're behindit!

The three toms, played simultaneously, showed a dBA peakat l00Hz, with a lot of frequency activity up unti l 2500Hz. Thisinformation, when coupled with the high dBA level recordedfrom tom-toms, shows that a long, loud tom roll around the setis devastating to hearing. Again, I'm glad that we're behind thetoms rather than in front of them!

The snare drum has all the qualifications necessary to benamed "Most Harmful Component." Its sound is concentratedin the lower frequencies, showing a dBA peak at 300, but thesnare also projects a noticeable amount of mid frequencies up to3000Hz, and slowly fades at 7000. For comparison, at 3000Hzthe toms show lit t le activity, and at 7000 they're substantiallyfaded from importance. Due to the snare's recorded 110 decibellevel and its close proximity to the drummer, it presents a realhealth hazard to our long-term hearing.

The cymbals (hi-hat, ride and crash played together) show avery broad frequency range, but the energy is no longer in thelower frequencies as with the drums. They peaked at 3100 and3500Hz, with a concentration in the 31()()-5700Hz range, butcontinued to make a strong showing until 10,100. Then came aresurgence of energy at 15,500 and 19,500Hz, both of which areinaudible to many listeners.

While examining a composite drum set component graph, thehighest frequency energy from each component can be easilydetected. The first peak is the bass, the second the toms, andthe third and highest is the snare. Following those 60-400Hzpeaks the graph shows a dip until 3150, at which point thecymbals are represented by high peaks.

The trick for each of us individually is to find out how we caneffectively block out those damaging peaks and still retainenough hearing to drum by.

What You Can Do

If you are concerned about your hearing, the first course ofaction is to have both ears monitored.

"What they do in industry is called a baseline audiogram,which is just a graph showing how well you hear," saysMcCartney. "Ideally, this measurement is taken before youstart drumming. Then, every year you have a re-test so that wecan compare Spring of 1981 with Spring of 1982 to see if yourhearing is still the same. If the test comes out well, then eitheryour job doesn't require ear protection, or the ear protectionyou're wearing is effective. If after two or three years you startshowing a loss in the 4000-6000Hz range, then you beginwearing ear protection while drumming. Audiograms are inex-pensive. Here at the university they're free for students, and$10 for non-students."

Having a hearing check-up was a threatening idea to meinitially, because I was afraid that the results would tellsomething that I didn't want to hear (or couldn't!).

"I think that drummers should get regular check-ups,"agrees Shaffer. "Then the evidence is in black and white right infront of you on a graph."

Many times community services offer free hearing tests inaddition to the college alternative. A private audiologist or anylarge health care clinic can also perform an audiogram.

Most safety devices can be divided into four categories: stock

ear plugs; ear muffs; sound filters and custom-made ear molds.Stock ear plugs are inexpensive and available virtually any-where. They are often sold as swimming ear plugs. Plugs cut outa lot of sound—with a correct fit they effectively block theauditory canal, but regular plugs don't discriminate betweenwhich sounds they block out. Instead, everything is dampened,from talking to cymbal crashes. The plastic which many of thestandard plugs are made of tends to harden after a long period oftime, leading to an irritating fit. When I first used plugs, theyfelt strange and kept popping out of my ears, but on the otherhand, Dave Shaffer told me that he is very comfortable wearingthem. Ear muffs typically block more sound out than plugs, butmuffs are bulky and expensive. For me. sound filters haveworked out well. While looking like plugs, these mid priced ($6-7) ear inserts possess a tiny diaphram which automaticallycloses when high-energy sounds assault the ears. The onlymanufacturer of sound filters to my knowledge is the NortonCompany, 16624 Edwards Road, P.O. Box 7500, Cerritos, CA90701. The devices, called Sonic II Sound Filters, are the onlyear protection device sold nationally in music stores. Currently,music distributors in twenty-six states and Canada carry Son-ics, and the same filter is sold through many sporting goodsstores under the name Sonic II Hearing Protectors, for huntingenthusiasts. While wearing Sonics, I can hear conversation finebecause the diaphram is wide open. When the intensity raises,however, the diaphram closes to shield my ears from loudnoise. The frequencies which Sonics most effectively attenuateare high, primarily from 1000 to 8000Hz, so Sonics block out theannoying highs moreso than the damaging lows. You mightneed a device with more protection. Shaffer tried Sonics whenhe was searching for ear protection, but he didn' t like them.

"The Sonics are a mechanical system with a l i t t le diaphraminside, but I think they respond too slowly to incoming loudsound. I found them annoying. I prefer the cheap, dollar and a

continued on page 93

"I FORGOT TO BRING MY DRUMSTICKS!"

Future Soundsby David Garibaldi

Rock drumming has a tendency toward being colorless attimes. This, I believe, is due to the constant use of H.H., S.D.,and B.D. in playing time. The addition of other sound sources in

the proper context can be quite useful in today's music. Thefollowing concept will show one of the many ways a moremusical approach can be achieved.

(Cym.)R.H.

L.F.H.H.R.F.B.D.

H.H.L.H.S.D.

optional

(Cym.)R.H.H.H.L.H.S.D.T.T.

(omit when pattern repeats)

In Pattern 2 the L.H. and the R.H. move to different soundsources but each plays the same rhythms as in Pattern 1 . Theonly difference between 1 and 2 are the surfaces struck by

each hand. Moving on with this concept, let's change PatternQ] from sixteenth notes to eighth note triplets.

R.H.H.H.L.H.S.D.

R.H.H.H.L.H.S.D.

(EX. 3) Now switch sound sources as was done in Pattern 2.

L.H.H.H.R.H.S.D.

The point is to get your mind to where it's not confused whena new sound source (other than the traditional R.H./H.H. —L.H./S.D.) is introduced into any rhythmic phrase. Because ofthe possible polyrhythmic effects produced by the use of many

sound sources, it becomes necessary to first key in on therhythm being played. Once this is "locked in," you canconcentrate on the placement of more sound sources. Let's usePattern [4] as an example.

L.H.High BellLow Bell

R.H.S.D.T.T.

*The T.T. voice here could be played on the B.D.This variation utilizes two sound sources in each hand which

now takes two full bars to complete. It's the same rhythm withchanging sound sources. The two bells are for example only

and, if used, should be placed on the left side of the drum kit.Two cymbal sounds would work as well. Another variation ofthis is three sound sources in the L.H., and one sound source inthe R.H.

L.H.3 cym. sounds

R.H.S.D.

As you can see, any number and type of sound sources can beutilized. Remember, the rhythm played stays the same. The

only variation is in the number of surfaces played on.Oh, I almost forgot the feet! Try these!

a.L.F.R.F.

b.

c.L.F.

R.F.

Enjoy!!!

This one works great!

Keltner continued from page 65the film. But that's not a rule! You don'tgo looking for first takes. That just hap-pens by accident. There's plenty of timeto get it together. You don't have tosightread. The better you are at sight-reading, the better reader you're going tobe. Period! If you're doing a commercialor a filmscore and the reading is verydifficult, you're going to have a chanceto run it through several times to get itright. If you can read at all , those severaltimes are going to be very helpful.

I took about six lessons with ForrestClark, mostly to get my hands straight. Ihad a real bad hand habit . My left handwas all turned over backwards. I playedsort of with my palm facing up. It didn'tmake any sense. As a consequence I hadno power and no control. I knew I had toget it straight. I went to Forrest and hehelped me a great deal. I went on myselfand developed a nice finger techniqueexercise. I t gives me a good feeling ofcontrol. I love to just sit down with a pairof sticks and practice this exercise.Nothing is moving but my fingers. It'sfor control.SF: I know you have some strong feel-ings about "the road." Could you sug-gest any "do's" and "don'ts" for drum-mers who are considering going on theroad?JK: I don't know what I could say aboutthat without sounding like a mother. Adrummer is so physical with the instru-ment—we strike the instrument in everyway. It 's us we're playing, basically. Soyou've got to remember that it 's yourbody and soul that's making this music.Your body and your soul. If you screwone of them up. with drugs or too muchbooze, you're defeating the whole pur-pose of making the best music you can.I'm a testimony to that. I can listen tosome records that I've played on whereI've been recorded playing with a bandlive, and I'm so wiped out from variouscombinations of drugs and booze that itdoesn't sound good. I don't understandhow I could've disgraced myself in sucha way. It's things that maybe I got bywith at that t ime. Maybe there's a waytoday that people feel they can get bywith it , but basically you're not gettingaway with anything. You're k i l l i ng your-self slowly. All drugs and alcohol arespirit killers. They ki l l your body slowly.But more importantly, they k i l l the spiritwithin. They're a l l a bad trick. You takea certain kind of drug, maybe in combi-nation with alcohol and you think. "Ah,this is i t! This is the combination for mebecause I played my ass off last night."There's always going to be a l i t t l e isolat-ed thing which you did great, but it'snever going to be—and this is from per-sonal experience—because of a chemicalcombination. If you keep on trying thatsame combination, you'll find out real

quick that the combination is not magic.It's a trick. A trick on you!

If you're going on the road you shouldtreat your body even better than you doat home. You should do some running ifyou can, or a lot of walking. Some peo-ple don't l ike the road. They would rath-er stay at home and work. I was l ike thatfor years, but it was mostly because ofmy bad habits and missing my family somuch. I've been fortunate recently tohave my whole family, or part of myfamily, on the road with me from time totime.

I've always had this fascination forplaces like upstate New York where theyhave those l i t t l e stick houses and thestick trees in wintertime. I get a car anddrive and see those places. It just knocksme out. Or being down in New Orleans,San Antonio, and walking along thoselittle canals they have. Omaha, Nebras-ka, for God's sake! Bob Dylan and Iwent for a walk in sort of a semi-blizzardin Nebraska all wrapped up. I just loveit! If you really take good care of your-self and you have a good purpose forbeing on the road, then you're going tofeel a lot better about it . I like to walkaround the cities, check out the people,go to stores, look in pawn shops forcymbals. That's one of my favoritethings. That's another reason why I end-ed up with so many cymbals, snaredrums and things. You can buy stuff realcheap in the Midwest, and somethingyou may never find in Los Angeles orNew York. People say they get on theroad, they get bored and that's why theytake drugs. There's no reason to bebored on the road if you really do it right.I don't know if this comes with age orwhat, but you have to learn to respectyourself. You've got to respect the bodythat you've been given and the mind thatyou have. If you think you're good musi-cally—all the more reason to make itbetter than good rather than trying to k i l li t . That's coming from first hand experi-ence.SF: What do you l ike to do when you'renot playing music?JK: Well, I like to read and I like work-ing in my yard. I can't read novels any-more and I used to do it all the time. Iwent from novels to reading autobiogra-phies and then "real" things, like docu-mentaries. The last good book I read wasThe Gentle Tasaday, about this group ofcave people in the Philippine Islands—the last known cave people to have beendiscovered. I savored that book—everyword. I didn't want to put it down. Ihated it when it was over. From then on Icouldn't read anything except thingsabout people. The only things I readanymore are the entertainment section ofthe newspapers and the Bible. There'san awful lot of good stuff in the Biblefrom the beginning to the end. I've got a

lot of reading to do there. Also, BibleStudy classes are lots of fun and verynecessary.

I'm trying to use my time more wisely.I like to try to do things with my family ifI can. I don't go to parties as much as Iused to. I like to play bebop jazz on theside.SF: Where do you see yourself in thenext five years?JK: I would like to possibly get a projectgoing of my own. Producing or doing myown kind of album. I have in mind a"sound" album with some funny bellsthat I've run across that I like playing. Acombination of bells and drums and sing-ing, if you want to call it singing. I have alot of fun. I do these things in my roomand I put them on tape, and my kids andmy wife hear them and they love them. Itmakes them laugh.SF: Do you write songs?JK: I've got a publishing company andI'm listed as a writer and I've co-writtenseveral songs. Yes, actually I have writ-ten a couple but I haven't gotten thatserious about getting them down. I'vebeen told that they're good enough that Ishould do that. I'm not real great atlyrics. I've been told by some of thegreatest songwriters in the world that Ishould write because I have a colorfulway of talking sometimes, and all I haveto do is write about my experiences. Itjust doesn't come easy to me. I think it'sa matter, probably, of forcing myself toget down and do it. It's basic insecuritiesin me that make me not appreciate a lotof the stuff that I'm good at. I think mostpeople are that way to a degree. Youhave to learn to develop a respect foryourself in a lot of ways.

I'm fascinated how most great songsare usually so simple in their basic struc-ture, and how some songs are basicallyself-arranged while other songs seem toneed a lot of work. Donald Fagen (SteelyDan) says that when he's trying to recordone of his songs with players that hewants, who are not able to get the basictrack down within a few takes, he sayshe figures something is wrong with thesong. He puts it away and moves on tosomething else.

You know that great article in MD onweightlifting? I loved it. That was some-thing I always had questions about. Iworked out for a long time as a teenagerand I thought it did me good. Then Istarted feeling guilty that I was stretch-ing muscles that I shouldn't be; that Iwas hurting myself somehow in my play-ing. I wasn't real sure. Nobody couldreally tell me. Who knew? I'd talk to onedrummer and he'd say, "Oh my God.Don't do that man, you'll hurt yourself.Practice only with the sticks that you'regoing to use on the gig." Then I'd hearanother drummer say, "Well, I practicewith these baseball bats and that helps

me." I never knew one way or the other.So, that article was great to read. Now, Idon't feel so bad when I feel like liftingsome weights. Occasionally I have acraving to do that. My body feels like itneeds to get tight. My son and I wil lwork out together.

Another thing I'd like to share: occa-sionally I ' l l go out in the backyard andchop down a cactus. I never would chopdown a tree because I love trees toomuch. I plant trees all around my house.There are some huge cacti. This is Cali-fornia, it's a desert. They grow real fastand I have to chop them down from timeto time. I get out there with an axe, Iswing away, chop like crazy and itmakes me feel good all over. I get realhot and warmed up. A few times I'vecome upstairs directly from choppingand played the drums and I have somuch speed, facil i ty, strength—it's justincredible. I always wanted to share thatwith somebody.SF: Could you give us a rundown ofyour present drum set-up?JK: Sure. I've been using Yamahadrums since about 1976. I have four sets.One is a blue prototype set. It's one ofthe first sets they made, I believe. Be-cause it was a prototype, I'm just nowbeginning to discover some things thatwere wrong with it and I 'm having themcorrected at Don Lombardi 's DrumWorkshop. For example, I had all thetom-toms trued. I've had the entire set

done and also I've done that to mysecond set, which is a chrome Yamahaset. I had it done after I read the article inModern Drummer on truing shells. Thelast two sets I have are black. Jeff Por-caro had the same kind of finish on adifferent make set and he called it a"black Steinway" finish. It's almost likea piano finish, so smooth and beautiful.It's the same set Steve Gadd has but thelugs on Steve's set are the original lugswhich stretch all the way across theshell. I have conventional lugs. I figuredit would be better to have less metaltouching the shells. They sound good.They're made better, they sound better,and I didn't have to do as much work onthem as I did on the other two sets.

Mostly I use a 12" tom-tom on the left,and the right tom-tom varies from a 10"to a 15". Sometimes I have them allbackwards, like a 12" and a 10", or a 12"and a 14", or a 12" and a 15", but usuallyalways a 12" on the left.SF: But primarily, you're using a doublemounted tom-tom kit?JK: Right. However, in the Yamahadrum catalog they have me listed asplaying four tom-toms piggyback styleon the bass drum. I only did that brieflyto see how it felt , but it was too far toreach and felt awkward. Somebody re-cently suggested I try a 15" tom mountedon a stand instead of using a 16" floortom. I tried it and now—at this time

continued on page 84

anyway—I prefer it to the sound of my16" floor toms. I used to always use a 14"floor tom which was very easy to getsounding good. I hated 18" floor toms fora long time. But lately, I've got a realgood sound and feel on a couple of 18"toms that I use in the studio. One has aPinstripe head and the other has a Remo/Yamaha Ambassador head on the top.For now, all the bottom heads on mytom-toms are coated Diplomats.

I guess that I can't really say that Ihave a particular drum set up of my veryown. When the engineers see me comingthey say, "Oh no! What's he got thistime?" They never know whether toexpect a bunch of tom-toms and cymbalsor a very simple little set-up.

A lot of drummers are just using onetom-tom on the bass drum and a floortom. That's the old bebop style. I kind oflike that. That's the way Charlie Wattsplays and he gets all the tom-tom soundsyou'd want to hear. On the other hand,the more toms you have, the moresounds you can get. I'm sure it comesdown to how you handle what you have.Some people strive for taste; other peo-ple despise taste; I feel somewhere inbetween.

I'm using all Yamaha hardware. Theymake a great cymbal stand. I've gotcombinations going that are like an erec-

Keltner continued from page 83 tor set. On one large cymbal stand base Ican have two cymbals, a pair of hi-hats,and one tom-tom. On the other side isanother cymbal stand with possibilitiesof several cymbals and a couple of tom-toms. Everything is mounted with justtwo cymbal stands. I can have up to sixcymbals, a pair of mounted hi-hats, andseveral toms. I actually use two pair ofhi-hats. One pair open all the time in theconventional way. Over to my right is apair of permanently closed hi-hats,mounted on the cymbal stand. The rea-son I do that is because I've been using adouble-beater bass drum pedal for abouttwo years. I'm working with Don Lom-bardi on a prototype of one of his pedals.His chain-driven pedals are far superiorto what I'm using now.

I don't really use the double pedal forspeed. I think there's nothing faster orprettier than just one foot. Buddy Richexemplifies that. Most drummers thathave good technique can play great fastthings with one foot, so you don't reallyneed an extra pedal for that. I use itsometimes for punctuation. It's a diver-sionary tactic. When I put it on thedrumset for the first time, I took it to asession. I said, "I'll just put this up andscrew around with it. Maybe it ' l l keepme from being bored from playing thesame old stuff all the time." It changedmy whole way of thinking. It gave me

options. I love playing backwards nowa-days. I've gotten real comfortable withthat. I can play the hi-hat with the lefthand and everything else with my righthand. I think Steve Gadd does that a lot.It's something I've been toying aroundwith for years and now it's real comfort-able. I'll play a whole song backwardssometimes. It makes my time sound alittle different and I ' l l go for fills in adifferent manner.

As far as a snare drum goes—I'musing two snare drums at the same time;onstage and in the studio sometimes. Iused it on Ry Cooder's album Border-line. I don't know which songs though—I've forgotten. On some of that albumI'm using two snare drums, two hi-hats,and two bass drums. It sounds like a lotof equipment, but I try not to make ifappear that way. I use it for the differentsounds. Also, when I play with Ry I useanother tom-tom or a Roto-tom for atimbale sound, instead of an actual tim-bale.

I use a 22" bass drum live, but a 24" inthe studio which is kind of backwardsfrom the way most people do it. I'vebeen real happy with the 24" in thestudio. Mostly I use a 22" onstage butsometimes I ' l l use a 22" in the studio. Insome cases I might use a 26" or a 28" inthe studio! I've got a 28" 1930s Ludwigbass drum that's like an old dance drum.It's an incredible old bass drum. I usedthat on a lot of stuff in the early '70s.There's a snare drum that I have thatgoes along with it, a real beautiful oldpale-green pearl snare, and it's got dou-ble snares under the top head. It's justreal immaculate. I put real thin heads onit, the Mark V Diplomat. It sounds realpretty.

Stan Yeager, from Pro Drumshop inLos Angeles fixed up one of my 15" tomsinto a snare drum with the tom-tommount still intact, so I can mount itanywhere on the set! I call it a "snom."It sounds great. Not necessarily any big-ger or fatter, just real good and solid. Iused it on "634-5789" on the Borderlinealbum.

I have about 60-65 cymbals. They'relike friends to me. It's really silly. I don'teven put them away, I just leave themout. I've got like 50 cymbals sitting in myroom. I like to have the choice andoccasionally I ' l l pick out a couple that Ihaven't used in a long time. I've checkedout all the drummers over the years andwhat kind of cymbals they use. For me,basically, it's 15" or 16" crash cymbals.I've got two 15"s that I really love forcrashing. I've got a beautiful 16", 17",and an 18". Those are crashes that Ichoose from lately and those are all newA. Zildjians. As for ride cymbals, I havea 24" that I use sometimes, but mostlyit's a 22". Occasionally I'll use an 18".

continued on page 90

Roach finally gave me a beautiful set ofGretsch with an 18" bass drum.SF: Max dug where you were comingfrom?EB: Yeah. Every interview I've everhad, I've always mentioned how muchinfluence I got from Max. He still knocksme out. He's still the man to me.SF: Was The Five Spot a good scene?EB: It was a very happy scene. We werethere about three or four months andevery night it was packed. A lot ofpeople really began to hear Ornette.SF: Would horn players sit in with theband?EB: No. The only person that sat inwhile I was doing the gig was LionelHampton. He came in one night andwanted to play the piano. So he sat inand played the piano!SF: How about John Coltrane? Did heever come down to check out the band?EB: Coltrane would come down but hewouldn't sit in. He'd sit down and listen.During the break he and Ornette wouldtalk quite a bit, but he never sat in. Hejust wanted to listen and he did a lot oflistening. The scene was phenomenal.The same people that owned The FiveSpot owned The Jazz Gallery. That clubwas about two blocks away, around thecorner. When Ornette was at The FiveSpot, Thelonious Monk was at The Jazz

Blackwell continued from page 56 Gallery. He had a very good group:Charlie Rouse on tenor, John Ore onbass, and Frankie Dunlop on drums.They stayed there for quite awhile. AfterMonk left, John Coltrane went into TheGallery and he had a lot of differentpeople playing with him. We used to goaround and listen to him. We were off onMonday nights, so on Monday nights Ialways made it a point to come down andlisten to John. Billy Higgins was drum-ming with John then. He was the drum-mer before Elvin joined the group.SF: Can we talk about that band withBooker Little and Eric Dolphy?EB: Yeah. That was 1961 or '62. Thatwas fantastic. When our band played this"Rebel Session" in Newport with MaxRoach and Booker, that was really thefirst time that Booker and I ever reallyconversed with each other. He used tosit around when Ornette and I wereplaying and he was always digging ourmusic. So when I came back to NewYork, Max and Booker Little were play-ing at The Jazz Gallery. Booker wastalking about getting a group togetherand he asked me if I would be interested.I said, "Of course." So I was standingon E. 10th St. and my telephone hadbeen cut off. I hadn't been working—Ihadn' t been doing anyth ing! EricDolphy's lady brought a telegram upthere to tell me to report for rehearsal.

They were getting ready to go into TheFive Spot. We rehearsed and rehearsedat The Five Spot. We went in and didtwo weeks and they recorded the lastnight of the last week.SF: So it was Booker Little 's band?EB: No. It was co-led by Booker andEric Dolphy. We must have rehearsedthree or four days. Booker and Eric werewriting all these new tunes, so we want-ed to really get it together. They wantedit to be tight. I enjoyed it , man. I enjoyedthe rehearsal with those cats. They re-corded that whole last night; about foursets of music. They must have enoughfor seven or eight albums just out of thatone night.SF: What kind of things did you learnfrom players like Dolphy and Litt le?EB: Well, the only thing I can say Ilearned from the guys is the love ofmusic. The love that they had for musicwas generated so much that you had tofeel it . Booker and Eric were of the samecaliber as Ornette. They were true totheir art, man. The music was their firstlove. You could feel it—and I got thesame feeling from them that I did when Iwas with Ornette. The music was it! Themusic came first, and there was the lovethat they played with, which was soobvious that it's luminous.SF: I've read that you felt your trip toAfrica freed up your drumming.

continued on page 88

Blackwell continued from page 86EB: It did. I learned that the Africandrummers play a rhythm in such a waythat it's continuous. Individual ly theywere very simple rhythms that wouldbecome complex when they wouldmerge. But if you had the chance to walkaround the group while they were play-ing, you could see each cat playing adifferent rhythm. It was a very simplerhythm that they played, but when youhear the overall thing . . . man! It re-mined me so much of the way the guysused to play in New Orleans. In fact, bygoing to Africa I was able to really dighow much the African culture was main-tained in New Orleans as far as theirfuneral parades. In Africa, when theyhave funerals, everybody dresses up realcolorful and after they're through witheverything they have dancing and a bigcelebration! That was the same thing inNew Orleans. They'd march to thegraveyard with the body and they'd putthe body down. Then they'd come backdancing! Africans, I guess, had the con-cept that death brings on another life, soit was not anything to be sad about. It'sjust that the soul is gone to another life.That's the same concept they have inNew Orleans. I didn't realize that unt i l Iwent to Africa and I was able to reflecton the way the funerals were in NewOrleans. We had a chance to see a cou-ple of funerals in different places in Afri-ca. The people were just dancing andeverything. It wasn't this weeping, wail-ing and crying. It was happiness. Youcouldn't tell the relatives of the deadperson from anyone else. Everybodywas happy.SF: Did you get a chance to talk withmany African drummers?EB: We had a chance to play with anAfrican troupe from the Cameroons. Itwas a dance troupe and they were travel-ling with only one log drummer. We did aconcert with them. I had a chance to playwith the guy and talk to him. There weretwo women and two guys dancing, andthey were fantastic. They really had thewhole show with just that drummer!SF: Did you start to incorporate Africanrhythms into your drumming?EB: Of course. But there's only so muchyou can retain. I was able to tape someof the stuff on my tape recorder until Iran out of batteries. It was difficult find-ing batteries around Africa! Some of thethings I taped I was able to retain, butafter traveling to so many differentplaces, you hear something new and itwould just wipe out what you'd justheard. I was exposed to so much stuffthat I was able to retain very l i t t l e . I wasable to retain the overall effect of theAfrican drummers as far as how therhythms would affect an individual , andhow to try to relate my own rhythm tothat way of playing. But that was all I

continued on page 91

Then, I like to use the swish cymbals.I've got a bunch of those and my favoriteswish is dying right now. It's looking atme with a big smile. The smile just keepsgetting bigger—and I hate that! One ofthese days I've got to meet some of thosepeople back at Zildjian so they can copythis for me—maybe. I've got a 39" Wu-han gong also that they used in the KingKong movie.SF: What's it like playing drums withRingo?JK: Playing with Ringo is definitely atreat. He's a much better drummer thanpeople think he is. I'd l ike to get thatstraight if we could. A kid called me theother day asking me that same question:"Did Ringo really play on all the Beatlesstuff?" The answer is: ABSOLUTELY.I think there were two songs, very earlyon in their career, that Ringo did not playon. Some English studio drummer did.But two songs out of their whole career?

You asked me earlier how I feel aboutthe role of a drummer in a band. Youcouldn't ask for anything better than tohave done what Ringo did. To play 12years with the same band and have thatkind of success! Not just commercialsuccess—we all got off on those records.You can hear those records and you heargreat, great tasty drum things. There'snothing to astound you paradiddle wise,or anything like that, but it's perfect.Nobody else could have done it anybetter. I'm sure.SF: Has your association with all ofthose great minds that you've playedwith helped you or influenced you?JK: Sure! I've been so fortunate it'sridiculous. One night after a session withLennon, I told him that I would l ike toproduce a record for someone someday.He said I should. He told me al l you haveto do is act like you know what you'redoing! I loved that. He was a genius atthat for sure. Dylan is the same way inthat respect.SF: How did your gig with Bob Dylancome about?JK: Well, that's kind of a nice littlestory. I did a few tracks on an album ofwhat they would call "Jesus music" witha Christian artist in 1975. He got severalstudio guys to do i t . We were recordingand I noticed that the songs are songs oflove for the Lord, and for what He'sdoing in this guy's life. But they werereal pretty songs. So I 'm th ink ing , "Thisis great that this guy can do this." Then Ifound out that he doesn't make muchmoney doing i t . He makes a l iving, butit 's nothing l ike Rod Stewart wouldmake. I came home and told my wifeabout the session. She is really responsi-ble for turning my head around as far asaccepting the Lord and lett ing him workin my life. But at that t ime, I just wasn'table to use it . When I played this session

Keltner continued from page 84 \ told the guy, "There's got to be someway that I can serve the Lord the wayyou're doing it. I feel like I should some-how." I didn't know why exactly, I justhad that feeling.

Then I realized that every time youhear some kind of Christian music, it'susually really boring. I 'm sure theirhearts are in the right place, but therejust didn' t seem to be any way I couldget involved in it. Consequently, Ithought, "How in the world will I everbe able to do this?" So I just forgot aboutit for a long time.

One day I 'm at a session at KendunRecorders in Burbank, and I get a callfrom Dylan. I hadn't heard from him in along time. The last t ime I had workedwith him was on "Knocking On Heav-en's Door" from the Pat Garrett andHilly the Kid soundtrack. It turned out tobe a mild hit on the radio. It was sopretty, I remember crying while I wasplaying—the first time I ever cried whileplaying. We were watching the film andplaying l ive. No overdub. The song wasbeautiful and sad and haunting. On thescreen was Slim Pickens dying, holdinghis stomach, and Katy Gerrato and hersoulful eyes looking sad. Dylan evokesso much emotion from certain people,and I'm one of them. So he calls andsays, "I have a new album. It's not outyet but I want you to come by and hear atape of it. If you like i t , maybe you willwant to go on the road with me."

He had asked me a couple of timesbefore to go on the road with him and Icouldn't. I never felt l ike I wanted tomake it . The road had never held anyfascination for me, especially after allthose years that I almost kil led myselfout there with the Mad Dogs and En-glishmen, Delaney and Bonnie, and allthat. It was really hard on me—physical-ly. The road was synonymous with allthings that would k i l l you. So I'd alwaystold Bob, "Sorry man. I've got my fam-i ly. I'd rather just stay in town andwork." But I always have loved him somuch. The first session I played withBob was on a song called "Watching theRiver Flow." I was always very im-pressed with Dylan, so when he wouldcall. I always would go down and playjust so I could see him. I just wanted tosee him and talk to him, and hang aroundhim for a minute. So this time I said,"Well sure, I ' l l come down and hear thealbum." But I definitely wasn't going togo on the road. I knew what I was goingto do. I was just going to go down to theoffice—it was another chance to see Dy-lan.

I go down, and the secretary puts mein this l i t t le room. She says, "I'll turn thetape on and let you hear i t . Bob said assoon as you finish listening just come onup. He's up talking with some peopleright now." She turns on the tape and

the first thing that happens is that I starthearing what Dylan's lyrics are saying.The words are about the Lord again.This feeling comes over me and it justgets stronger and stronger to where I'msitting there sobbing like a fool!SF: That was the Slow Train Comingalbum?JK: Yeah. I just couldn't believe it.Song after song, it was just amazing!When it was all over I went and washedmy face, went upstairs and said, "Wher-ever you want to go, whatever you wantto do, I'm with you. Let's go." That'show it began. I've been with Dylan now,actually longer than I've been with any-body. Almost two years.SF: I thought it strange that you weredoing the road gig in addition to thestudio albums with Dylan.JK: Lots of my friends did, too. Theywere all saying, "What're you doing?"They know how I use to talk about theroad. But it's one of the greatest thingsthat's ever happened to me. I just prayconstantly that Bob stays strong. He getssuch bad press sometimes. I think a lotof that is because he refuses to talk tosome of the reviewers at times. We getincredibly good press when the show iscooking. It starts to happen usually afterthe first night. You don't go onstage withBob and play a show that's pat. Youdon't have a set list or know exactlywhat the beginnings and the endings are,or exactly what the arrangements are.He doesn't want that. He discouragesthat. It makes sense for him. The wordsare the most important part of his wholeshot. The melodies are pretty and uniqueenough to hold up on their own, so whatBob needs is people to play them with acertain kind of force. No high arrange-ments, or at least not too complex.SF: The same kind of approach youmight want in a jazz band?JK: I ' l l tel l you something about that.Speaking of jazz—Dylan plays the har-monica like Coltrane played the saxo-phone! I 'm tell ing you.SF: The harmonica solo on the end of"What Can I Do For You" is one of thebest solos I've ever heard, on record oronstage, in any medium.JK: I wish you could've heard the firsttime he did it onstage. He surprised us alland we just sort of had to go with him onthat. That particular night was a mind-shattering thing. I've got it on cassette. Ilistened to that for the rest of the tourand it was mind-boggling. The cat getssounds and notes that—I just comparehim with 'Trane. On a harmonica? No-body does that. But you don't ever hearanybody talk about that in reviews. Hereally stretches when he does that live.He never does anything twice the same.If you hear something he does on rec-ord—that was one time only. He changes

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was able to retain.SF: I've read statements like, "EdBlackwell is a walking encyclopedia ofAfrican rhythms." Was there ever a con-scious effort where you decided, "Let'ssee how I can break down these Africanrhythms and apply them to the drum-set"?EB: I have some African rhythms that Ido that with, but there are so manymore. I have a book of African rhythms.You look through that book and see therhythms. There's very l i t t l e that you canjust convert over to your own way ofplaying. You have to get the overallconcept of what they're doing and relateit to whatever you have to play with.That's what I did.SF: What about those rhythms you playon cowbells'?EB: A lot of that is my own stuff, butthere's a couple of rhythms that I heardand retained. There's a rhythm on cow-bell that they call Amagello that Ilearned from a guy in Ghana. I use thatquite a bit. Most African rhythms arewritten in 12/8. The main African cow-bell beat is 12/8. You can adapt that to alot of different things. Most of the thingsthat Africans play—you would have tospend much longer than three months inAfrica to really retain an overall conceptof how they do the different rhythmsbecause there are so many. It 's an end-less thing the way they change them andthe way they apply them to differentdrums. They have a family of drums. Amale, female, son, and daughter. Ac-Tu-Pa is the main drummer or the leaddrummer. He plays the lead rhythm andthe other drummers play according towhat he plays. He might go into a differ-ent rhythm and then the whole thingwould reverse and go into somethingelse. The other drummers know when toturn it around just from the rhythm thatthe lead drummer is playing. It's amaz-ing. The drummers do it all together. Soyou have to really spend a lot of timehooked up to that to retain exactly whatthey're doing.SF: Max Roach has written some greatsolo pieces for drumset like "For BigSid" and "Conversations." Have youever written anything like that?EB: Yeah. I used to use a lot of it up hereto teach the students that I have. In fact,I've transcribed a lot of things from Maxfor my students, to try to teach them themore melodic concept of the drums rath-er than just the technical. Instead of justsitting down and playing a bunch of 16thnotes, break them up into the way thatthey will sing something. Sing with thedrums. A guy can sit down and go allover the drums all night long. But what isit? If he sits down and breaks the notesup and tries to sing with it , then itbecomes more melodic and more listen-

Blackwell continued from page 88 able.SF: Is that a difficult concept to teach?EB: It's the kind of thing that studentshave to really develop on their own. Youcan only suggest to them that it's there.It's there to be done if they can developit. I show them the different exercisesthat I use to demonstrate that concept,but there's so much more to it that theyhave to really develop on their own.SF: What exercises do you use?EB: Usually I use the paradiddles aroundthe drums—paradiddles, four-strokeruffs, rolls, breaking and playing the sin-gle-stroke, five, six, seven-stroke rollsand triplets. All different ways of playingthem around the drums so that theybecome more or less a melody instead ofjust an exercise.SF: How long can a student at Wesleyanstudy with you?EB: They can study as long as they wantto while they're here. They're here forfour years and if they want to, they canstudy for the whole four years.SF: Do you turn them on to the great jazzdrummers?EB: I turn them onto the drummers I dig:Max Roach, Big Sid Catlett. KennyClarke, Phil ly Joe Jones, Roy Haynesand Elvin Jones. Those are people that Idig. If they can listen to these people andcan't get anything from listening to them,then they won't get anything from listen-ing to anybody.SF: What is the one thing that you hope astudent takes with him after he com-pletes his study with you?EB: The concept of being able to practiceand listen continuously. I feel that conti-nuity is the answer for playing. I alwaysfeel that if a drummer's sitting down, heshould have his hands playing or work-ing on something, some movement ofplaying the drums. You can practice withyour mind! You don't actually have tohave drumsticks or a set of drums to sitdown and practice drumming. You canpractice mentally. I would hope that thestudents would take that concept awaywith them when they leave, and try tobroaden their scope.

The editors are proud to an-nounce with this issue, the additionof DANNY GOTTLIEB to the Mod-ern Drummer Magazine AdvisoryBoard.

We'd like to extend our kindthanks and gratitude to our newmember.

EDITORS

BobbyRosengardenby Joe BuergerJB: I'd like to know more about yourmusical background.BR: My mother was a pianist in a silentmovie theatre so there was music in ourhome constantly. We had a baby grandpiano in the house and I thought every-one had a piano in their home! This wasduring the Depression years, and thoughwe didn't have much money for food, wedid have a piano.JB: What kind of formal training did youhave?BR: I started taking lessons when I wasfive years old. Fortunately, I 'm from themidwest, which is very good drum terri-tory. My first teacher was a guy namedRuss Gatey and he gave me a good start.When I was twelve we moved to Chica-go. That's where I heard Duke Ellingtonwith Sonny Greer and decided that th iswas what I wanted to do. Duke was a biginfluence on me, and s t i l l is.

In 1938 I studied with Oliver Coleman,the drummer with the Earl Mines band.He took me as far as he could and thensent me to Roy Knapp. There wereabout eight of us studying with Roy atthe time and we all turned out to beprofessional musicians, which says a lotfor Roy Knapp's teaching. Louie Bell-son, Sam Denoff from the Chicago Sym-phony, the Anderson brothers with theL.A. Symphony; we all studied with Royat the time. After the lessons, we'd all goout to hear the great big-bands that wereappearing in Chicago. You could go outand hear Jimmy Lunceford. Duke Elling-ton, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman,Tommy Dorsey—they were all there.

Later, I won the Raleigh Talent Con-test and appeared with the Tommy Dor-sey Orchestra at the Chicago Theatre.That band had some great musicians:Yank Lawson, Pee Wee Erwin, BudFreeman—all the guys I work with to-day.

I remember hearing the Chick Webbband. With all due respect to Buddy,though I think Buddy would be the firstto say it, Chick was the most excitingsoloist in the world. He knew how to set

up a band. He could lay it right in theirlap. I learned so much from him, and I'mstill using what I learned. I play for theband. You have to learn this. I 've hadmy head handed to me on a platter manytimes, until I finally learned to play musi-cally.

When the War broke out, I movedback to Illinois. I soon got drafted and Irealized that you could get hurt shootingguns, so I got into the Air Force band.When I came out of service I played withseveral midwest dance bands, and finallygot a job with the Henry Busse band. Ioverplayed at the time, as most youngdrummers do. We all go through thatstage.JB: How did you get into studio work?BR: My dream was to get into a staffradio orchestra. Television hadn't start-ed up yet. I wanted to play in New Yorkor Los Angeles. I finally chose NewYork and moved in with my sister andbrother-in-law who is Ray Charles of theRay Charles Singers. Our combined in-comes came to about $35 a week. Raywas doing radio spots and I was doingclub dates. But in any new town, if youshow up on time, have a decent set ofdrums, play musically and at a reason-able volume—you'll eventually developa good reputation.JB: How did you finally break into T.V.?BR: The soundtrack for the first Ciner-ama movie was cut in New York, andDimitri Tiomkin wrote the music. Theyused about 14 or 15 percussionists, andall the good players were called for thedate. I wasn't very well known so Iwasn't called. But fortunately, all thebusy guys at NBC got called which left alot of holes at NBC. Skitch Henderson,who was very big at NBC at the time,heard me play at the CopaCabana andliked my playing. He told Dr. RoyShields, head of the music department atNBC, about me. When Kate Smith 's TVshow began in New York with a liveorchestra, Dr. Shields called me for thexylophone part on the show. I went up toa friend's house and recorded the theme

to Kate's show and I stayed up all nightand memorized my part. I really wantedthat job! That band had some great play-ers like Doc Severinson, Will Bradley,Stan Getz, and many more. I played mypart flawlessly, of course—I had memo-rized it! Consequently, I worked at NBCfrom that point on as a sub, and when thefirst vacancy occurred, they put me onthe regular staff. I stayed twenty years. Iplayed in the NBC Symphony with Tos-canini and did all the shows that originat-ed out of New York. It was incredible. Idid the Tonight Show, the Dick CavettShow, and Ernie Kovacs. Doc and Iplayed in the Tonight Show orchestra,and I learned how to conduct fromwatching Skitch. A first-chair trumpetplayer and a drummer can make or breaka band and Doc Severinson is the bestfirst-chair trumpet player that ever lived.I learned a great deal from him. Eventu-ally I quit NBC and went to the DickCavett Show as conductor. I had al l thegreat players in New York in that band.It was a wonderful jazz band. I got toknow Gerry Mulligan and worked withhis sextet, and I've worked with BennyGoodman a lot.JB: What advice would you give toyoung drummers who may want to dowhat you've done as a career?BR: First of al l , go home and practice.Learn all styles of playing. I think SteveGadd and Peter Erskine are two fineexamples of the importance of that. Asfar as recording goes, you'll end up inone of several places. Film recording isdone in California: records and jinglesare done in New York, Dallas. Memphisand Nashville. Reading is very impor-tant. You don't have to be able to readviolin parts, but you must have a goodworking knowledge. Play with as manydifferent bands as possible.

Second, keep your mouth shut andplay! If you can't say anything nice,don't say anything at all. And finally, tryto play with bass players who are betterthan you are—and learn to pick theirbrains.

Hearing continued from page 79half ear plugs." Custom ear molds are very exact ear plugs.They are available only at speciality laboratories where a moldis custom fitted to your ears to insure a complete fit. They areexpensive ($35).

"Custom-made ear molds are probably the best ear plugsavailable," says Dr. McCartney. "Since they are personallymolded to each ear, the fit is perfect and they are verycomfortable." If you have had trouble with plugs popping out ofyour ears or fitting poorly, try the custom molds.

Two other alternatives are wax-impregnated cotton andsponge ear inserts. Both of these types can block out a lot ofsound, particularly the E-A-R Plug, manufactured by E-A-RCorporation, 7911 Zionsville Road, Indianapolis, IN 46268. Adisposable plug, the E-A-R probably stops too much sound fordrummers, but if your band plays very loud and you can rely onvibration somewhat, they might work.

Try many types of safety devices before giving up. I know ofover 30 different ear protection devices, so there is bound to beone which suits your personal requirements. If one type blocksout the bell of your ride cymbal, try another! The frequencybands which different devices cut out vary widely.

"It's human nature not to want to wear them," says Shaffer."A drummer will say, 'Hey, I don't like this,' and take themout. You have to give yourself some time to get used to them."

"Drummers are not going to want to give up that sound, andthat's the same problem in industry too," notes McCartney. "Aworker in a canning factory will say, 'Well, I tell that mymachine's not working right by a slight change in the sound, andwith ear plugs I can't hear that change.' He needs to exhaust allof his options, because some kind of protection is going to workfor him."

Practicing hearing conservation with your band is easy. Inrehearsal, wear protection at all times. If you also sing and needto hear better than protection allows, save vocal practice unt i lafter instrumental practice, when the P.A. and amplifiers areturned off. If some members of the band choose not to wear earprotection, or feel that they can't because they must vocallyharmonize, be considerate about how loud you play. Some ofthe stages in night clubs are very small, and if the lead singermust constantly be subjected to crashing cymbals and poundingdrums, his hearing is really going to suffer—and he'l l sing off-key. Remember: those other musicians are out in front of yourbass & toms (and surrounded by amps), and receiving the mostdamaging low frequency bands at high volumes. A very practi-cal band purchase is a decibel meter, one which can be switchedto the "A" weighted scale. Give it to the soundman and votehim veto power over the group's on-stage volume. How manytimes does your band's volume just get out of control? Givingthe soundman or some other off-stage, impartial, qualifiedperson the authority to keep the musicians from continuallyturning up their individual volumes takes the heat of thatdecision off the musicians, plus it will help to keep hearingthreshold shifts temporary.

Concert goers often come away from performances withringing ears, but the people running the risk are the musicians.According to Cathleen Anne Malatino, a Pennsylvania StateUniversity graduate in audiology, for two to three hours, rockconcerts regularly exceed 150% of the amount of noise theFederal government considers safe for an entire day. While thetemporary threshold shifts of the audience will not accumulate,the musicians will be playing again the next evening, accumulat-ing permanent threshold shifts, and the drummer is right in themiddle of it al l . While sitting in his office, Dr. McCartneysummed up our predicament well:

"If your long-range goal is to play the drums for 10, 15 or 20years, you have to conserve now. You have to give upsomething in order to be able to monitor your drumming 20years from now. I just don't know if drummers have a choice.Do you want to drum for a long time—or not?"

with that. I was on a lot of those WarnerBrothers albums, but there were no cred-its or anything. Warner Brothers just didthe artwork and shoveled those albumsout one after another, with no informa-tion on them. And a lot of it was stuff Ihad done when I first got with Frank.RT: You said that you came from jazzand fusion music.TB: I was real big on fusion in the earlyseventies, but now I think it's reallysuffering. It's sort of been commercial-ized and pigeon-holed, and it's dying ahorrible death. And also, it's just one ofthose things where it's an audience ofmusicians—music for musicians. Theyinevitably either outgrow the materialthat you're doing, or else they get to thepoint where they don't want to learnwhat a certain person may have to offer,and they move on. Or at least that's thecase with myself. When I was reallykeen on learning how to play, and gettingmy technique, and learning about music,I was super-enthusiastic about thingslike the Mahavishnu Orchestra and MilesDavis and all these people. I mean I livedand slept that music. But now, afterplaying with Frank and sort of gettingback into rock and roll and developingthose aspects of my person, I reallydon't find that fusion has that much tooffer to me anymore. And I think that'ssort of the truth with that audience ingeneral. For instance, I didn't really con-sider U.K. a fusion band. I thought thefirst album was good, but I don't thinkthey had that much to say musically,compared to what Mahavishnu or ChickCorea were doing in the early seventies.But I found that U.K.'s audience was allof these young kids who were dying tohave that kind of music played, becausethey were learning how to play. Theywere musicians. And it's just not musicthat can be accepted by a lot of people.Frank kind of puts it in a funny spacetoo. He feels that people buy music orlisten to music because it reinforces theirlifestyle. So this sort of goes along withwhat I'm saying, but he thinks fusionmusic is probably listened to by peoplewho drive a Mazerati and think they're alittle cooler than the normal person. Peo-ple who wouldn't want to hear the Doo-bie Brothers, or whoever else is beingplayed or is popular.RT: You replaced Bill Bruford in U.K.I'm always interested in how thesethings come about.TB: The middle year I was with Zappa,Eddie Jobson was in the band, and we hitit off real well. As a matter of fact, Frankwanted myself, Patrick O'Hearn and Ed-die, to form a band that he was going toname "The Cute Persons." This is rightbefore Zoot Allures. He wanted us to putout our own album. And he was chang-ing the name of his band from "Frank

Bozzio continued from page 24 Zappa and The Mothers" to just"Zappa." And so he wanted to have it"Zappa and The Cute Persons." Butnone of us were together enough to sitdown and write some music. We were alljust sort of learning how to play fusionand things like that. So we never reallygot it together, and there wasn't thatmuch time. Frank kept us pretty busy.But we always liked each other, andwere real good friends, me and Eddieand Pat. While I was with the Breckers,Eddie got a call from his managementcompany saying that U.K. was going tobe formed. And it was he and JohnWetton, and Bill Bruford, and AlanHoldsworth. When it didn't work outwith Bill and Alan, because they werewanting to play fusion and jazz and Ed-die wanted to make it more commercial-ly acceptable, they asked Bill and Alanto leave under the conditions that they'dretain the name and performance rightsto the songs. Bill was compensated witha cash settlement, and the promise byE. G. Management that they would backhim as leader of his own new band. Theyhired me because they wanted me to sortof add the high-energy rock and rollthing. They were changing their direc-tion away from the more fusiony jazz-like things they had done on the firstalbum. So Eddie and I were sort of likeold friends, and when we worked togeth-er with U.K., it got kind of tough, be-cause there were a lot of ego problemsamong the three people. At that point Iwanted to start writing, but they hadpretty much established the direction ofthe band, and it was impossible for themto allow me to come in with my newdirection. They did capitalize on myshowmanship. I guess being somebody'sexciting rock drummer is what I do best,so they sort of let me share the limelightin that. It was good, but it just got to thepoint where I knew I had to come and domy own thing. And Eddie and Johnreally couldn't get along, so they sort ofbroke it up.RT: The audience on the U.K. live al-bum sounds great. Are audiences in Ja-pan much different than they are here?TB: Yeah, in general. I guess ever sincethe war they've sort of been heavilyinfluenced by the American way of life.They've become very industrialized, andman, they just have unbelievable respectand admiration for anything from thewest. It doesn't even have to be good. Imean they can tell the difference be-tween good and bad, but they just seemto be such a warm people in general.Their whole way of life, and their think-ing and upbringing is completely differ-ent from that sort of critical western-world thing. And you can go over thereand re-enact Beatle-like fantasies, be-cause there's always tons of people ask-ing for autographs everywhere you go.

It's real easy to get a big head. It's great.RT: When I saw U.K. in Oakland, youwere using your Roto-tom set. How longhave you been using those, and do youstill use them?TB: Yeah, I'm a convert. Zappa wantedme to use a full set of Roto-toms so Icould be seen more. After the first tourwith him he said, "Hey, check these newthings out." And I said "Yeah, these aregreat." But at the time I didn't have thementality or the people to build me somesort of tom-tom holder where I could getthem set up in a way that was comfort-able for me to play. They were veryflimsy, and I had no idea how to reallyengineer the whole thing. But by the timeI got with U.K., and after hearing howgood they sounded with Bruford on thefirst U.K. album, I said, "Yeah, definite-ly I want to get into this." I had anexcellent roadie by the name of GrahamDavies, and he is sort of a race carmechanic and what not. So I would givehim these ideas, and he would realizethem for me with different knick-knacksand what-nots. Mainly, he used thatRoto-tom adaptor and little pieces ofsteel rod. We got a 360-degree flexibletype of Roto-tom holder. And I used allRotos and I continue to do that. I'm nowusing Tama drums though; fiberglassbass drums and their chrome snaredrum. I use Paiste cymbals, and I contin-ue to use the Camco pedals. I use allRemo black-dot heads, and the Pro Markdrum sticks. I use the 808s or the 707s,whatever is available.RT: The Camco bass drum pedal. Is thatthe chain pedal?TB: No, I had the chain for awhile,around the time of the "Black Page"with Zappa. I did that while I was on theroad in New York. I had them all con-verted because I thought they would begreat, but to me they weren't right. Ihave a way of playing where I ' l l sort ofhit once and the bass drum will reboundtwice, and that's how I get a doublestroke. It isn't actually my foot going"boom boom" two times. I couldn'tmake the chain drive do that. I had to doit with my foot two times, and it wasvery uncomfortable for me. So Iswitched back to the nylon straps. And Iuse those Rogers black nylon beaterballs. I use those because I like theattack they have. You know how thefiberglass and wood beater balls are real-ly destructive to heads. I couldn't useone for one song without ruining thehead. What I do is, I cut out a piece of abroken drum head, about four inchessquare, and tape that onto the spotwhere the beater ball hits. You can get alittle more mileage, and also it adds alittle more to that clicky attack soundwhich is good for live. The Rotos aregreat for live too, because the micro-phone just can't hear the depth of a tom-

tom. What really gives the depth to atom-tom is a room, and unfortunatelyyou're in too big of a room for it to beeffective. The only thing that really cutsthrough in a live concert situation in a bigarena is the attack. You can sort of EQ inthe bottom and the depth to a Rota, onthe board, whereas you can't really getthe same attack out of a two-headed tom-tom to compensate for the presence thatyou need. So that's my main reason forusing the Rotos—they have a ton ofattack.RT: Do you feel that the stick response isas good on the Rotos?TB: Not as good as a double-headedtom. But I also have kind of gotten awayfrom the little notes, you know what Imean? I use mainly single strokes foreverything, and a lot of flams and stuff. Inever use a lot of fast sort of hand tohand combinations, or anything thatcould be lost with the use of a Roto-tom.And they usually don't come throughwhen you do that kind of thing on a tom-tom anyway. But in most electronicallyboosted situations, the Rotos are muchbetter, I think, than the regular toms.RT: Earlier you mentioned Mark Ishamand Peter Maunu. You did an album withthem called Group 87.TB: Right, yeah. It was right after highschool when we met. And Mark wasresponsible mainly for turning me andPete and practically everybody else on toMiles and Coltrane and all these people.We used to jam all the time and wewould play Tony Williams Lifetime mu-sic and stuff. We're best friends, andmusically we're all sort of in the samehead space. I quit Zappa to join thatband, Group 87. It was originally goingto have Peter Wolf as well, but whatultimately came about was Peter wentback with Frank Zappa. And then, whenwe had further discussions, they didn'twant to pursue a rock and roll bandavenue, which I wanted to. I had workedat all this stuff, wearing the devil's maskand everything with Frank, and had de-veloped that within myself, and I wantedto play rock and roll. I wanted to playgood music as well, but I didn't want toforfeit that side of my career. And theysaid, "Well, what we do best is playinstrumental music, and that's whatwe're happy to do if that's the case."They didn't have enough trust in myvocals or my lyric writing, which wasprobably a good thing at the time, be-cause we had never really written togeth-er as a band. So I dropped out. But sincethey're my best friends, and I love themand their music, I said, "Look, call mewhen you get the date, and I'll play onthe album. I'm just going to have to lookfor some other things because I don'tthink that this is going to be what I wantto do ultimately." They finally got thedates set up, and during a break I had

with U.K., we made that Group 87 al-bum. I love their music and stuff, butunfortunately I'm very business minded,and that music doesn't fit into any pi-geon-hole that the business people of themusic world, like the record execs, canput it in.RT: Which leads us to your new band,Missing Persons.TB: Right. I finished with U.K., andsaid, "I've just got to do my own thing."But during the last year with U.K., mywife Dale, and Warren (guitarist WarrenCucurullo), had made a few little tapes,and brought them out to me while I wason the road. I travel with Dale—I bringher just about everywhere. She has anincredible voice, and I said, "This stuffis quite interesting, and bizarre, andwe're going to form a band." The chem-istry is amazing between us. So we'vebeen writing, and have gotten it together.Ken Scott is really interested in us. Heproduced our four-song EP, and now afew record companies and distributorsare interested, and so we're just hashingout all of that stuff.RT: So you're doing a lot of composing?TB: Yeah. My wife and myself and War-ren all write. It's sort of a group effort.We sort of hash things around. Differentpeople come up with different aspects ofthe final product. We've been using dif-ferent keyboard players, keyboard bassand stuff, but pretty much all the musicthey play is my own. I tell them whatthey need to play. We've just gotten allthis music together, and we're trying tosell it now.RT: You are a lyricist aren't you?TB: Yeah, I started getting ideas aboutwriting after being with Frank. He's anamazing person, you know. And justbeing around him you can sort of seehow everything is done. If you're reallyastute enough, you can leave there withenough knowledge to really do whateveryou want. But I suppose the thing that'sagainst everyone who's played with himis that he's so strong and so popular.People compare what you did with himto whatever you're doing now. It's goingto take years of strength and keeping at itbefore it's sort of equal in the eyes of afan. Also, nobody works as hard asFrank. Out of all the people I've met inthe world, he's amazing.RT: Are you singing a lot these days?TB: I'm only singing background so farwith this band. My wife hasn't reallysung before; we've been just sort ofdeveloping her talents. She's a front per-son, and I want to get that togetherbefore I start to sing. From the audi-ence's standpoint, it's really hard to sellsomething from behind the drums. Ithink ultimately maybe I'll sing two orthree numbers a show or something,because it is a nice break, and gives

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some variation to what's happening. Butaside from that, I think the main thing toget it across should be her. I'm notlooking to do a U.K., or a Zappa, or aBrecker Brothers, or anything like that.I'm sort of trendy in what I like. I like themore modern, simpler things. Like Ireally like Gary Numan, and Ultravox,and Brian Eno—things they do. AndSusie and the Banchees have a nicealbum out right now. The Peter Gabrielalbum that came out last year is one ofmy favorite things, and David Bowie'snew stuff is great too.RT: I heard that Jerry Marotta didn't useany cymbals on that Gabriel album.TB: On tour he had a real dead ridecymbal that he used at the ends of cer-tain songs, but yeah, mainly it was justhi-hat and tom-toms and stuff, which is anice concept. I ' l l leave it at that. I'mmore drumistic than I am ride cymbaloriented. I'm not using a ride cymbalnow. I have two of these combinationChina double cymbal things. There'ssuch a myriad of things you can do withcymbals. I have one crash on eitherside—an 18" and a 20", 2002, that I usefor the normal sustained crash sound.But basically I'm using these dark Chi-nas, with an inverted thin hi-hat cymbalinside. So it's like double cymbals, andthey rattle against each other, and sort of

Bozzio continued from page 95

get this dead, white-noise thing. So theattack is there, but the sustain is gone—itimmediately dies out. I have two of thosekind of up high. And then I have, on myright side, an 18" and a 20" dark crashPaiste that are sit t ing on top of eachother, so they also get this kind of white-noise sound. And on top of that I have aclosed hi-hat that I use for ride purposes,and then a cymbal bell. I found that sinceI'm not playing jazz anymore, the onlything I want a cymbal for is to sort ofhave a click or a white noise kind ofcrash, or a ping like a cymbal bell. Idon't use the normal ride sound. I don'twant that. I found that I sort of OD'd onthat in my years with Zappa and I don'treally like the way it sounds when youplay it back. I don't think it fits into amodern approach to music. I use a lot ofhi-hat, and try to be melodic with mysounds and with the beats that I do. Sortof like what I did with U.K. on "Ronde-vous 602," and what I did with Group87.RT: You have the bell of a cymbal that'sbeen cut out?TB: No, it's what Paiste calls an 8" bellcymbal. It's quite thick, and if you hit itin just the right place, it sounds veryclose to a cymbal bell, especially whenyou're playing live. Through the PA it'sclose enough. And that way it eliminateshaving this huge 22 inches of metal thatI'm not using there, and which I'm verytempted to hit, but which washes every-thing out. So yeah, I just use that, andRotos, and two Tama 24" fiberglass bassdrums, and their deep chrome snaredrum. Ultimately I'm going to have a set-up of Syndrums. I had an interface withU.K. that allowed me to trigger my tomsand snares and bass. The microphoneswould send a signal to the Syndrums andtrigger those. So I could double my bassdrum sound. And I 'm using thoseSnypers now, by Tama. I use a couple ofthem on my bass drums, and I'm going tohave a Synare on my snare. So essential-ly I'm going to double the acoustic soundof my drum set with synthesized things,to fatten it up and also to have strangeeffects. It 's unfortunate—I've neverreally been recorded for a drum solo. Idid some great ones with Zappa, and Idid some good ones with U.K. too, butnone of them have ever gone on record.But in this film I did, Baby Snakes, withZappa, there's a huge section of a drumsolo that I did. He sort of cut out my useof Syndrums, but I do some interestingthings with them. I used to make them doall kinds of strange things, and play in akind of free space way with them. Also, Iwould set up different things with asquare wave sound that would keep kindof a pulse. I would play on top of thatand let that keep the beat. I'd alwaysmake some kind of structure like a com-position, for my solos, that I could do

whatever I wanted technically within.Just to use all the techniques I like, andall the textures that I l ike, and have sortof kept with. You learn all this stuff, andcertain things filter through that youthink are effective and you use, andother things you just don't. It seems likemarching, and buzzes, and doublestrokes, and presses, and all thesethings, I'm just totally far away from.But flams, and more African influencedpercussive things I'm more into.RT: So your solos are never exactly thesame, but you have a sort of framework.TB: Yeah. I ' l l start out with a thememaybe, something to grab the audience'sattention. I never really keep a beat inmy solos either, because I play time allnight behind the songs, and when itcomes time for a drum solo, I usuallyplay more of a free space kind of thing.Sometimes I go into certain sections oftime, but for the most part I don't. And Iwould do like maybe one statement, andthen improvise a section, or have a cer-tain section that would always be impro-vised on certain instruments. Like a cer-tain technique of maybe cross stickingon tom-toms. And then go to anothersection that would be maybe a lot ofcymbal jabs with snare drum beats inbetween, doubling the cymbals with myfeet. On other sections I would play aphrase on my tom-toms, answer with mydouble bass fills, and then sort of build itto a peak and end. It always seemed tobe fairly effective, and at least differentthan whatever anyone else was doing,which I'm proud of. Especially whenyou have to fit within the confines ofdoing a rock drum solo at a rock concert.You can't go out there and use every-thing. It's sort of hard. Most people justdo the same double bass "booga-booga"bullshit, with the Gene Krupa stuff ontop of it, that's been done for years. Theaudience sort of expects that, and whenyou do something different, and it stillholds their concentration, and they like itand accept it, it 's real pleasing. When Ifirst went out with Frank, I used to doeverything; just play whatever I wantedevery night, and be completely free. Iwas more jazz influenced and avant-garde influenced at that point. I would doa lot of just anything that came into mymind. The solos were always differentevery night. And then, because theywere a little bit more intellectual, some-times the audience couldn't relate tothem. Like if I started out with a bang,and then tapered out to nothing on thegeneral scheme of things, they couldn'trelate to that. So you have to come upwith structures and compositionalthemes and things that they can relate to,and that are effective and so-called excit-ing.RT: Are you doing any sessions in LosAngeles?

TB: Not many, no. I'm not that kind of aperson. I tried, you know. I'd love to dothat stuff. I've only done maybe a half adozen or a dozen sessions since I'vemoved to L.A. It's a weird situationbecause the sound and whether you'regood or bad is up to whoever is incontrol, and if they just happen to likewhat I do, that 's great. But for the mostpart, what I do is not acceptable for thethings that I get called for. I'm alwaysfinding that I ' l l just sort of play the roleof a Steve Gadd, or a Jeff Porcaro, orwhatever the music calls for. You haveto have that kind of head to do that kindof work. You have to be very open, andyou have to have a variety of soundsavailable, so that you can please whatev-er jerk is sitting behind the controlboard. If someone wants the heads on,or if they want the heads off, or if theywant a bright cymbal or if they want adead cymbal . . . I mean I'm not intogoing in there and having them play thelatest record through the control room,and trying to get my snare drum to soundlike that. I'm not into that. I don't reallyenjoy it, although the money is great. Iwould do it if it was offered to me, but Idon't really pursue it. I've made a fewphone calls to try and get into that , butwhen it didn't just come, l ike everythingelse that I've ever done just came, I'mnot going to force it , and hang out andgo, "Yo babe, let's track," with all thoseguys down there. I 'm just not that kindof person.RT: Do you ever rehearse in front of amirror to work on your stage appear-ance?TB: Before I got a drum set I saw RingoStarr on the Ed Sull ivan Show, and sortof sat in front of a mirror in our diningroom in a chair, and completely mim-icked him. By the time I got a drum set,nobody had to tell me how to play. Ialready knew how to cross my right handover my left hand, and play four beatswith my right foot. I knew all the things.I would just work it out in the mirror andgo, "Yeah, this is what he did." Butultimately I'm just sort of an emotionalperson, and that's just what I do. No oneever told me to play that way. And Iguess if anyone's responsible, it's Frank,for sort of building my confidence, andgiving me the opportunity to go crazy.I'd jump off my stool in drum solos, and Iused to wear makeup and the devil 'smask, and sing about Punky's whips,and spit and fight and kick my waythrough shows. Once I got tha t bold, andsaw that people liked i t , I just kept doingit. It is just part of my nature. I'm notthat way for the most part. I'm basicallyvery shy and conservative. But when Iget out there behind the drums, I get tolet loose, and that's what I do. It's loadsof fun. I live for it. I ' l l tell you the truth: Ijust live for performing.

Simmons SDS5Modular DrumSynthesizerby Bob Saydlowski, Jr.

A major development in drum synthe-sis is about to unfold. Practically everyinstrument in the contemporary grouphas gone electric and/or synthesized, andnow the second generation of drumsynths is upon us.

I recently met with British inventorDave Simmons for a demonstration ofhis SDS5 drum synth, which I think, isprobably the innovation of the past fiveyears.

The Simmons SDS5 sets up and playsjust like a regular drum kit. Componentchoices are left up to the purchaser, froma 4-piece kit, to a double bass drummonster-size set-up, depending on howmuch one is willing to spend. The SDS5kit I saw incorporated snare, bass drum,three toms, and an electronic hi-hat.

Each drum is actually a hexagon-shaped pad measuring 14" across by 2 1/4"deep, excepting the bass drum which is22" across. The pads are constructed ofacrylic and polycarbonate materials,which I'm told, is the same material usedin police riot shields. It's pretty wellindestructible. The bass drum is free-standing on two large spurs, and willaccept mounting of any popular drumpedal. The other pads set up on Pearl 989tom-tom stands, using their AX-3 adap-tors to mount more than two pads on asingle stand. All are fully adjustable forheight, angle and distance. The padshave aluminum rims which are also"live," and the snare is developed sothat a rim shot will yield a slightly differ-ent sound. Mounted in each shell, nextto the arm receiver, is a male cannonjack for cable plug-in.

Playing the pads takes a little gettingused to at first, as it's much like playingon a table top. They are definitely re-sponsive, and even allow for accuratebuzz rolls. The player is able to retain hisown personal style and technique.

The brain of the SDS5 is a 19" rack

(also available in a free-standing encasedchassis) which houses the power supply,input and output jacks, mixer volumeand pad sensitivity controls. Each padhas its own plug-in module set in thefront panel of the brain. The rack canaccommodate up to seven modules. Themodules measure 2" x 5" and are re-leased from the chassis by four screws,allowing easy access if service is everneeded. One good feature of this modu-lar system is, if a module ever fails, onlythat module and not the entire set-up,need be sent out for servicing. Onewould still have the rest of the kit to use.

Each module is designed for a specificsound (snare cannot produce bass drumetc.) and there are four memories in eachmodule. One memory is preset at thefactory. Memory 2 is user-programmedby knob-operated pots. Memory 3 and 4are programmed by trimmer pots dupli-cating the functions of the knobs and areeasily adjusted with a small screwdriver.Recalling a memory for performance isquick and simple. Press the correspond-ing button for that memory and thesound that has been programmed in isready to use. Each module also has anI.ED showing which memory is in use,as well as an LED that flashes every timethe connected pad is hit. With all theavailable memories and modules, onecould conceivably have a 24-piece kit.

The modules each have the same con-trols, but as I said, the parameter of eachmodule has been altered to produce cer-tain sounds relative to that module. Theprogram controls are: noise pitch, tonepitch, bend, decay time, noise-tone bal-ance, and click-tone balance. The tonepitch offers a full spectrum from Roto-toms to large tympani. An acoustic drumfalls off in pitch by only a few semi-tones; this is duplicated by the bendcontrol. Exaggerated use of the control

would make the regular drum sound un-natural, but it would enable you to getSyndrum-type sounds, though that's notits intended function. Decay controls thelength of the sound. The click controlbalances the level of drumstick attack tothe drum sound itself.

Pad sensitivity can be controlled foreach drum separately to suit your ownstyle of playing, allowing complete dy-namic control. The sensitivity on theSDS5 is the best I've seen on any drumsynth. The rack also contains separatevolume controls for each drum.

The rear of the rack offers separatepad outputs, or a single output whichsends a mix of the drums as dictated bythe front panel volume settings. TheSDS5 is also capable of sending out instereo left and right. The drums may betriggered from an external synthesizer,sequencer, click track, etc. One Britishdrummer is using a Roland Micro-Com-poser to program and play the drums.And there is also an input for the hi-hatfoot pedal.

The tom-tom modules can reproducefrom a Roto-tom to a tympani, and theyare all genuine sounds. The bass drum,depending on programming, can rangefrom ''studio-tight," to very open andringy. I was most impressed with thesound capabilities. It should be borne inmind that four sounds are available foreach pad, all switchable instantly. Onecould have four different snare sounds athand for live performance. All the drumshave incredible punch, and are capableof studio-treated drum sounds, as well asmore open, acoustic type sounds. Grant-ed, the sound is not a mirror image of anormal drum, but it comes the closest ofanything else I've ever heard.

Simmons has also developed a hi-hatmodule which was used in the SDS5 set-up I saw. Admittedly, the hi-hat sound is

an effect rather than a facsimile. It uses anoise generator to create its sound. Thehi-hat can "open" and "close" via avolume-type foot pedal which basicallyaffects the decay time. However, there isone problem. When the pedal is leftopen, some hi-hat sound leaks onto thesnare drum pad. A digitally-controlledhi-hat using real sounds is in the works,as is an electronic ride/crash cymbal.

Obviously, a decent amplification sys-tem should be used with the kit. TheSDS5 can go direct into any P.A., ampli-fier; even a studio board.

The pads are available with eitherblack or white playing surfaces and thereis a wide selection of shell colors. Sincethe colors are injected from the inside,there is no way of chipping or scratchingthem off. Another attraction, for the cre-ative mind, is that the pads may be madein any shape desired. The back page ofthe brochure depicts a Human Headskit.

An SDS Sequencer is being developedwhich will enable the user to program upto 32 songs of any duration, and thedrums can play back themselves. By theway, the SDS5 will also trigger off ofnormal drums via a microphone, pickup,etc.

Remember player reaction to the firstMoog synthesizer? The first electricbass? After players realized the advan-tages and possibilities, mass acceptancesoon followed. The Simmons SDS5 is a"break in tradition," but it is so revolu-tionary, it could totally replace a conven-tional drum kit in some situations. Also,only a floor tom case and trap case isneeded to pack and transport the com-plete kit. The possibilities are endless,especially in the studio, where you couldget your drum sound in a matter ofminutes saving valuable studio time.Then, if desired, flanging, phasing, de-lay, or other effects could be added.There is no leakage of sound, since thereare no microphones. With more andmore electronic bands coming into light,the SDS5 should have a definite position.

The Simmons SDS5 currently sells forapproximately $3,500 and comes com-plete with stands and cables. Simmonsdoes have an impressive demo cassetteavailable, but the drums really have to beheard live to be appreciated. Dave Sim-mons has also devised a "suitcase set-up" of SDS5 pads. All the pads arescaled-down and fit into a small flightcase which can be hand-carried. Ideal foroverdubs in the studio. As of this writ-ing, the SDS5 is a bit difficult to find inthe U.S., though the company is at-tempting to set up a dealer network. Formore information, contact: Musicaid,176 Hatfield Road, St. Albans, Herts.AL1 4JG, ENGLAND.

everything around. That's very muchlike a jazz musician. I talked (to himabout that a l i t t le bit. He said he saw'Trane a few times in New York, and heused to play in the same clubs on thesame bill as Cecil Taylor! Dylan is amillion times more musical than a lot ofpeople realize. But he's so subtle with it,and he does it in such a way that a lot ofpeople don't understand or they don'treally get it. Thank God for those whodo.SF: Are there any closing commentsyou'd like to make?JK: I guess if there's one thing thatshould really matter with any kind ofmusician—but particularly with drum-mers—it is to have confidence. Playingevery chance you get, under every kindof circumstance will help build your con-fidence. Being competitive is important,but so is sharing ideas, I love talking toother drummers and watching them play.I always learn something. I get calls fromdrummers asking how to get their foot inthe recording studio door. Some evencomplain about not being able to. I'd justlike to say that if you really love to play,then you'll be happy playing anywhere.The more playing experiences you'vehad will only make you more valuable asa player. Every one of the drummers Iknow personally who are top studioplayers all have al least one thing incommon: Their love for playing musicsurpasses any need to be a studio musi-cian.

Also, don't worry about copying, be-cause copying is a natural thing, as longas you don't make it your main thing. Weall copy. Don't worry about things likesticks, heads and all that other stuff thatseems so important right now. Find yourown way. That sounds so corny. Butanyway—that's the whole shot! I wish Icould say something really heavy. Iguess I don't have it in me.

INTERNATIONALPERCUSSIONCONVENTION

Some of the world's leadingexperts in percussion—fromjazz drummers to symphonicplayers—will assemble at theIndianapolis Convention Cen-ter November 12-14 for thePercussive Arts Society Inter-national Convention. The pro-gram will include concerts,clinics, demonstrations, andlectures by well-known per-cussion personalities such asCloyd Duff of the ClevelandOrchestra, famed rock drum-mer Carmine Appice, Japa-nese marimbist Keiko Abe,internationally known jazz vi-best Gary Burton, Pulitzerprize winner Michael Col-grass, and marching percus-sion specialist Fred Sanford,in addition to other clinicians,

percussion ensembles, steelbands and marimba bands.

The convention will alsofeature several demonstra-tions of ethnic instruments in-cluding Korean, Brazilian,and Latin percussion as wellas displays and exhibits bypercussion manufacturers andpublishers. Highlighting thefour-day event will be con-certs by Nexus, The Percus-sion Group, and RePercus-sion.

Although attendance is lim-ited to members of the Percus-sive Arts Society, anyone in-terested in percussion maytake out membership and, fora small registration fee, attendthe entire event. For member-ship information and furtherinformation on the conven-tion, write to: Percussive ArtsSociety, Room 205, 110 S.Race St., Urbana, IL 61801.

WANT TO DO ARECORD? NEW BOOK

TELLS ALL

Any aspiring musician whohas dreamed about producingthat special record that willstart the spin to fame and for-tune can learn exactly how togo about it in a new releasefrom Contemporary Books,Inc. of Chicago. The Musi-cian's Guide to IndependentRecord Production by WillConnolly, a jazz musician andindependent record producerhimse l f , takes the readerthrough the complete record-making process, in a clearly-detailed and helpful manner.

Author Connolly describeshow the creative, technical,and business aspects of recordproduction interact. He ex-plains the techniques and

methods for planning, budget-ing, and directing productionin addition to the essentialmusical processes.

He unveils such mysteriesof the craft as how to plan thetiming and sequence of songson a record. He discusses theinformation that belongs on arecord label and jacket; tellshow to direct recording ses-sions; and explains how tofind and use industry re-sources such as studios, mas-tering laboratories, pressingplants, and jacket fabricators.

For more information write:Contemporary Books, Inc.,180 North Michigan Avenue,Chicago, Ill inois 60601.

SELMER BUYSLUDWIG

H. W. Petersen, presidentand chief executive officer ofThe Se lmer Company , aNorth American Philips Com-pany, has announced that onWednesday, August 12, 1981an agreement in principle wasreached with Ludwig Indus-tries, 1728 North Damen Ave-nue, Chicago, ca l l i ng forSelmer to acquire the Ludwigassets and business . Thetransaction is subject to prep-aration of a definitive agree-ment and its approval by theboard of directors of bothcompanies and is expected tobe completed in October.The Selmer Company is amanufacturer and distributorof band and orchestra instru-ments and accessories. Lud-wig Industries is a producer ofpercussion musical ins t ru-ments, related equipment andaccessory products.According to Peterson, Lud-wig Industries will continue tooperate in Chicago and LaGrange under the direction ofits present management.

PAISTE SEMINAR &CLINICS

For a period extending fromSeptember through December1981, Paiste America, in coop-eration with Music Technolo-gy, Inc., will be presentingcomprehensive in-store semi-nars presented by Paiste prod-uct specialist Larry Manzi toall participating Paiste SoundCenters. These seminars willfocus on the six differentPaiste cymbal lines, their spe-cific sound characteristics,musical applications and thePaiste philosophy. In a largersense, these seminars are in-tended to educate the modernpercussionist to the widerange of cymbal sounds avail-able, no matter what style ofmusic played. For the exacttimes and locations, write orcall: Paiste America, Inc., 105Fifth Avenue, Garden CityPark, N.Y. 11040. Tel. No. I-800-645-6094.

NEW WORLD'SRECORD FORDRUMMING

If your hands are sore andyour legs trembling after a twohour set, then consider BooBoo McAfee, a 24-year-oldprofessional drummer fromNashville who set a new rec-ord for drumming continuous-ly for the longest period oftime.

On August 13 at 3 a.m.,McAfee stopped for the firsttime since starting the attempt737 hours before. The Guin-ness Book of World RecordRules allowed Boo Boo (Der-rell Wayne) five minutes restfor each hour of performance.

He drummed through hallu-cinations and temperamentalfits but a minor convulsion onthe 31st day finally ended hismarathon session just 17hours beyond the formermark.

He was running 12 miles aday and was in superb physi-cal condition before begin-ning, plus he had the benefitof the advice of military psy-chologists who briefed him onthe possible effects of exten-sive sleep deprivation.

BUZZBUSTER

Buzzbuster is a new con-cept to aid drummers in re-ducing unwanted "sympathet-ic" snare drum vibrat ion,caused by other drums in thekit. The adjustable leg-operat-ed aluminum dampener fitsonto any snare drum with fourpadded metal clamps. EachBuzzbuster comes with twosets of dampener pads; softfoam pads for most drums andthin felt pads for snare drumswith snare frames. (The padsfit between the frame and thesnare wires.) The pads are

normally positioned just outof contact of the snare wiresby two springs. By a slightsidewards motion of thedrummer's leg against the legpad (feet stay on footpedals),the dampener softly quietsbuzzing snare wires when thedrummer plays his toms. Thisproduces a cleaner overallsound from any drum kit.

Each Buzzbuster comeswith assembly instructions.For more information write:Sam Geisler, P.O. Box 63, Al-lentown, PA 18105.

AUTHENTIC CHINESEWOODBLOCKS

Now available, authenticChinese woodblocks importedfrom the People's Republic ofChina. In keeping with theirbasic philosophy of incorpo-rating traditional percussion

into non-traditional innova-tive musical forms, WorldPercussion Inc. offers thesewoodblocks in four sizes.Available in sets or individual-ly.

For more information:World Percussion, Inc., POBox 502, Capitola, CA 95010.

KLIC-TRAC

Klic-Trac is a metronomefor drummers that allows youto play using a metronome theway session players do in thestudio—through headphones.Drummers can hear this met-ronome even when playing afull set of drums. The mufflingeffect of wearing headphoneswhile playing creates a "re-corded" sound from thedrums. Features include vari-able tempo control, variablevolume, compatibility with allstereo headphones, and aunique belt-clip design.

For more information write:AXE, P.O. Box 2331, MenloPark, CA 94025

PERCUSSIONISTCHIMES

Model 3830A is made fromsolid aluminum bars and fea-tures 30 chimes. This modelcovers a three octave range.Model 3835A features 35chimes. Each model is avail-able in tubular brass, at anadditional cost.

CUSTOM TIMPANIHEADS

A new program offeringcustom timpani heads individ-ually made by hand, in anysize up to 35" O.D. has beenannounced by Remo, Inc.

The custom heads, offeredin a choice of hazy or trans-parent film, can also be fur-nished with a steel insert ringembedded into the flesh hoopfor added r igidi ty andstrength. The heads areshipped in special heavy-duty

protective packaging. Themost widely used t impan isizes can be ordered by cata-log number.

For special size heads notavailable by catalog number,timpanists should provide theold timpani head to be dupli-cated, or the actual counter-hoop to be custom fitted. Ifthese are not available, theexact head dimension must beprovided. For further infor-mation write: Remo, Inc. ,12804 Raymer Street, NorthHollywood, CA 91605.

According to Danny Rahl-mann, designer and manufac-turing director, "the alumi-num models feature a texturedfinish which was derived fromthe aerospace industry."

For fur ther informat ioncontact Suzanne Seidel at:Nail Road Products, 145 St.Daniel Ln., Florissant, MO63031.

SUPER CYMBALSPRING

Aquarian Accessories intro-duces the new Super CymbalSpring. It allows drummers tomount Chinese or Swish cym-bals upside down, safely!Three springs, two inside theouter one, provide the properdegree of firmness and flexi-bility.

It is also recommended formounting large, heavy ridecymbals at extreme angles.Super Cymbal Spring pro-vides a "firm" feel while pro-viding the extra protection ofunrestricted movement need-ed for hard playing. It may bemounted on vir tual ly anycymbal stand.

NEW "TIPLESS"DRUMSTICKS

There are 3 models in thePro-Mark Tatsu series. Thesesticks are made in Japan ofUSA Hickory wood. The con-cept is based on the Pro-MarkDC-10 model, "a new drum-stick with longer lasting lifebecause there are no tips tobreak or crack off," accordingto a Pro-Mark spokesman.

Contact Pro-Mark Corp.,10706 Craighead Dr., Hous-ton, Texas 77025

PRO-MARK HI-HATANNOUNCES NAME

CHANGE

The Pro-Mark Hi-Hat Standis now under the name ofJacques Capelle (OriginallyOrange, then changed to Pro-Mark).

Additionally, the new mod-el Bass Drum Pedal will beunder the Capelle name. Theentire Jacques Capelle line ofpercussion equipment is madein France.

Exclusive distribution willstill be through Pro-Mark andselected wholesalers.

For more information con-tact Pro-Mark Corporation,10706 Craighead Dr., Hous-ton, Texas 77025.

RINGO STARR

MITCH MITCHELL

ANDREW CYRILLE

PLUS:SAUL GOODMANDRUM THRONES:A CLOSE LOOK