Saturday, May 21, 2016

KLEM FM

Here's a drum cover of a favorite old Bob Welch song with Fleetwood Mac:


I found that searching for the time signature of the song "Hypnotized"  by Fleetwood Mac.

It takes him a second to get his groove, but it clicks when the music starts.

Things I like about the video: He used a great camera angle, letting us see what each limb is doing: left hand (traditional grip!) on the snare drum; right hand on the high-hat cymbal; right foot playing sixteenth note triplets; left foot unclamps the high-hat cymbal, leading to that "sucking sound."

I stared at his right hand stick, watching it alternately blur and pause, blur and pause. I felt a bit hypnotized.

19 comments:

chickelit said...

I used to play drums like that and the song was favorite. It's hard to describe the feeling you get when you hit the groove -- the rhythm kind of sucks you in. It was even more fun to jam with friends and make stuff up -- but that takes more time and talent.

Chip Ahoy said...

I just now sprayed Liquid Gold on clothes cabinet and the dry long suffering wood went:
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

So I sprayed on more.

thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

So I sprayed on more and rubbed really fast.

thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

And I'm like wow man I've been really bad to you. It's like a desert here. I went around spraying and rubbing everything wood I sprayed the boats and it went
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
thhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
contents used up.

I did not realize the situation is this dire.

And my own hands look like they did fifteen years ago. I'm not kidding. All the wood around here now looks completely different, darker, glossy, renewed.

Liquid Gold, for Denver: recommended.

Also recommended for skin and I don't care what 9 outta 10 doctors say, this stuff is great.

The Dude said...

I watched a drumming movie on Netflix the other night and saw a drummer named Giovanni Hidalgo - talk about fast - his hands were a blur playing congas - very impressive.

So I wandered off to find a video and couldn't select one, but on a whim I searched for my teacher, Mamady Keita, from Guinea, West Africa. He gets a great variety of notes from a djembe - there are three basic tones but he has subdivisions of each - very impressive.

Here is a video of him playing Kuku, a piece that has a mnemonic "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" for one of the parts. We always kidded that was just another West African tradition.

If you watch you will see some fast rolls. It is awesome to be around a player that good. I always called him "Mon petit frère" as he is a month younger than I am. He got a kick out of that.

chickelit said...

I love the smell of Scott's Liquid Gold -- original formula, before they started adding "scents."

checks ingredients

I guess it is the naphtha in the stuff -- aromatic x 2. Double whammy. Two, two mints in one!

The Dude said...

Naphtha Sonoma - great area.

chickelit said...

"Naphtha" is an interesting word. The first "h" is silent. The word comes to us from the Greek word for bitumen -- e.g., coal. The consonant combination for phth would have been φθ.

Naphthalene is a main ingredient in naphtha. It smell like mothballs. It is mothballs.

chickelit said...

@Sixty: Thanks your comment and links.

A while back--during your extended sabbatical I believe--I posted something with a great comment about African rhythm. I don't know if you saw it: link.

The Dude said...

Thanks - I always liked that tune and used to play it. Last solo performance I played was a wedding and I used that as the recessional. Fun couple.

Growing up I used to listen to Felix Grant on WMAL and he played a lot of Vince Guaraldi's music, even before the Peanuts thing. He also played a lot of Brazilian music - you know, girl on the beach and all that.

Anyway, where was I? I think we were talking about drumming - I occasionally watch Pulse, a Stomp Odyssey, and while I am not a big fan of Stomp, that movie has actual, real (tm) drummers in it, from all over the world.

After seeing the touring troupe of Japanese drummers playing the massive drums they use over there I decided to build some. First one was too large to go through the door. The last two were too large to move into my current house, so I sold them. More's the pity - they were of stave construction, very loud, and had internal tuning mechanisms to keep the in pitch, while maintaining the traditional look of a head nailed to a wooden drum body. Much thought went into that, I must say.

The Dude said...

So what was the time signature of that piece?

The great Aretha, singing her first hit, recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and if you are like me, you might be surprised at who The Swampers were - just watched a movie about that studio and that group. Rick Hall is one tough human being. Well worth taking the time to watch - the number hits that came out of that place is astounding. I walked through the airport there and the corridors are lined with gold records - goes back to the Euchee story of the river that sings. Maybe one has to experience the confluence of water and earth and forest to appreciate the magic that can occur there, but the longer I live the more convinced I become, and I don't even believe in magic.

Saw John Sebastian twice. I think that makes me a bad person. But the second time was at Woodstock, and one had to sit through that mush to get to the good stuff.

The Dude said...

^number of hits^

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I didn't know what i had. By that i mean, i have it on my iTunes but the song was unchecked. That's probably an itunes misdemeanor. What a nice song.

It's included in 25 Years - The Chain.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It gets even better on a second listen.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

At Fenway today J.K. Simmons from Whiplash (2014)

http://m.mlb.com/video/v721706183/?team_id=111

I get the feeling he could play anything, as an actor.

chickelit said...

Lem, the vocal pairing of Bob Welch and Christine McVie makes that song.

Here's a video of Welch and McVie singing/playing together after he left Fleetwood Mac. Mick Fleetwood plays drums: link

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Now you are here today
But easily you might just go away
Cause we live in a time
When paintings have no color, words don't rhyme
And that's why I've travelled far
Cause I come so together where you are


Haunting lyrics.

The Dude said...

I vote for 2/4.

chickelit said...

I think it's 4/4, but it's not at all clear until the other instruments kick in. The 16th note triplets confuse things.

The Dude said...

Just another reason I gave up reading music, especially drum notation. It's much easier to learn from a teacher.

Speaking a tonal language helps, too. Watching this clip reminds me of the first djembe I made - I carved it out of a black walnut log - yep, that's work. I have turned others on a lathe, that's better, and the best one I ever made was turned out of a massive spalted maple log.

Which brings me to the subject of this lecture - does the material used to make a drum shell have more of an influence on the final sound than the shape of the shell and the tension of the head? After a visit to the Air in Space museum I modeled the shape of the shell after the nozzles on the Saturn V boaster rocket - I'm gonna tell you what - that intersection of cultures produced one loud ass drum!

Steg said...

I think it is 4/4. I count the hi-hat 'pshoop' on the 'a' of 4 as a pickup.

a 1 ta ta 2 a 3 ta ta 4