Words of parents and Jerohn Garnett - Building Blocks To Gospel Chops #4 have 1000 things worth listening to

Building Blocks To Gospel Chops

How are you getting along at home? We've talked about Gospel Chops in the last post and it's a great place to start talking again!

See also the last post: 

I'm going to take a look at Gospel Chops based on an educational video I've found on YouTube, rather than a specific song. Here's a clip of Jerohn Garnett teaching Gospel Chops in his series Building Blocks To Gospel Chops. You are going to see some concepts you've never heard of before. 

He teaches carefully and very empathically. As a Japanese person looking at it, I think it's a little easier to understand his English because he speaks with great emphasis on the points. We can be drawn to his passionate narrative. He is open-handedly telling us sort of like "I want to give you everything I have!".

Phrases for playing clean and musical

Building Blocks To Gospel Chops #4, introduces 3 phrases to make drum solos sound clean and musically cool. The 1st is to play RLL RLL RLL RLL RLL or LRR LRR LRR LRR on the drum kit. The 2nd is 6 stroke roll, for example, repeating RLLRRL RLLRRL. Up to this point, I'm familiar with the phrases and I often play them. In the video clip, you can see good-taste transitions of the phrase and very clean-cut strokes. As he said it is clean and musical. Just because you're familiar with the RLLRLL or RLLRRL sequence may not produce a mind-blowing performance like that. And the 3rd phrase from 5:36 is worthy of remark.

3-1-3-2 !

3 on the tom > 1 on the kick -> 3 on the tom -> 2 on the kick...!?

According to the teacher, this phrase is called "3-1-3-2". I have never heard of "3-1-3-2". "3-1-3-2" gives 9 notes in total. It might be a little hard to incorporate 9 notes in drum phrases so it would be better to make it 6, right? Surprisingly, however, the teacher says the phrase is "VERY VERY popular in Gospel music". No way! I can't even believe it.

Here he plays an example, embedding it in a drum fill:

(6:29)

Immediately after that, he says "Calvin Rodgers blazes that lick." and plays again. It is slightly different from the previous one, and it is slightly amazing that the left hand and right hand at the ends are reversed.

(6:42)

Do ya catch that?

There seems to be a lot of other drumming concepts beyond our cognizance

Some people who play Gospel Chops may be counting like 3-1-3-2 in some cases. It's really hard to imagine 3-1-3-2 being a popular phrase. Gospel Chops made me feel that it definitely has drumming concepts beyond our understanding. I'm also carefully reviewing the series of Building Blocks To Gospel Chops to find other surprising drumming concepts. Let us continue to approach the mystery of Gospel Chops.

The Mars Volta - Wax Simulacra is too true to be funny

The Mars Volta - Wax Simulacra

Here's what I have not been familiar with: The Mars Volta's Wax Simulacra. I thought it was a new song, but it was actually 12 years ago!! 

The Bedlam In Goliath

The drummer is Thomas Pridgen, whom I recently learned. In my spare time, I have been watching drum-related videos on YouTube for about a month. I came to this song through the following 4 steps.

Step1: Gospel Chops. Awesome.

Step2: Discovering a video that a drum lecturer explains how to play Gospel Chops.

Step3: The lecturer mentioned his favorite drummer is Thomas Pridgen.

Step4: The name The Mars Volta sounds nostalgic. What are they doing now? I have to take a look at them again.

Intro - Ultra High Speed Drum Solo

Now, from the beginning of this song Wax Simulacra, he is doing something seriously hard. I checked it and it turned out going like this!

(0:00-)

Simply the big problem is whether we can keep up with this speed. The kicks are woven smoothly between these 32nd notes, at this speed that hands can barely keep up. Yes, it's a linear phrase with lots of kicks that Gospel Chops drummers normally do. One of the characteristics of Gospel Chops drummers is that they control RK RK RK RK, RKRLKK RKRLKK, etc. smoothly and rapidly without hesitation, as a matter of course. In addition, since this intro has odd meters 6/8 + 5/8 (or 11/8) in that high-speed tempo, it is necessary to be much careful of the position of the accents with the band.

Polyrhythm, immediately

After that the intro ends and the basic pattern starts from the 11th bar like this:

We get confused by the 6 + 5 odd meters in the intro, and as soon as the song started, it immediately turns into a sort of polyrhythm part. 12 pieces of 16th notes included in the 2 bars of 6/8 are divided into 3, and they are accented to make it shuffled beat. Since the vocal and the guitar go like the shuffled rhythm, it seems that the composer intended it rather than a suggestion from the drum. And don't forget to double kick 32nd notes just before every single snare accent. I really know it's hard, but he plays like that...

Exploring Gospel Chops in active

I wonder why I didn't know such a super drummer until now. I have completely untouched Gospel Chops in my last 30 years. I seem to have already been unable to follow trends. Something has to be done about that for my life. Gospel Chops are currently under my intense study. A research report is going to be released separately.

Let's talk about Jamiroquai - Scam for our successful future

Everyone talks about the virus that are making us despairing and force us to discuss seriously every day. On one of these days, I want to chill out a little with going back to the music where I started! 

The Return of the Space Cowboy

Jamiroquai - Scam

That is the song Scam from Jamiroquai's album The Return of the Space Cowboy. I remember that the liner notes (lyric sheets) of the CD said, "The lyrics of the song are not printed because of the artist's intent.". When I was listening to the album about 25 years ago, there was no way to know the lyrics other than listening to it. But now we can get a lot of information on the internet. The generation of Digital Native is enviable. Today I read the lyrics that I wanted to know to understand what the song was about, and I just do not think it was worth hiding. Why wasn't it printed? Later I find it was only for the Japan release. I still don't know why it was done.

I especially like the intro

OK, let's get back to the subject. There's a nice little drum performance in the short introductory part like this:

(00:00-)

The 1st point is that from the 1st to 8th bars. Basically, we hear closed rim shots in quarter notes and hi-hat in 8th notes. And another hi-hat in 16th notes ticks during intervals. That is very stylish. In the meantime, the kicks in the offbeat16th note make the control of hands and feet pretty hard.

The next point is the section with ride cymbal from the 9th bar. Along with the cool melody of strings, crash cymbals are accentuated. Especially, the position of the kick is the point. There is a moderate amount of space while kicks are going in offbeat 16th notes, and you can feel the groove much funky in the cool strings. Ride cymbals are almost inaudible, but rather end up providing more space.

The basic pattern of the song begins from 18th bar. As you see the rhythm of high-hat is different from the previous 2 sections. 3 distinctive sections appear from the beginning in a short period of time to entertain listeners. It's an intro very nicely composed. Much impressive with sufficient length. It's definitely one of the most musically perfect intros.