Young people's leaving Frank Zappa - Hands With A Hammer

Frank Zappa - Hands With A Hammer

This is Frank Zappa time again. Even though it has been proven that there is almost no demand from the trend of this blog so far, I'm going to pick a difficult life! From the album You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore (ycdtosa) VOL.3, it is a Terry Bozzio's drum solo credited as one song track.

Hands With A Hammer (Live)

See my previous coverage of another song on the album here:

All right, for a limited number of the fanatics, I wish this touches a string in your heart. Hands With A Hammer!!

(0:00-)

Wide range of dynamics

He basically plays only high-hat, snare, and kick having wide range of dynamics from almost zero volume to full volume at certain parts. He emphasizes certain kicks so obviously that I even put accent marks on the kick notes.

As it looks, he hits high-hat in the right hand and snare in the left hand, combining paradidles. Note that "let ring" means to keep opened high-hat ringing.

Motif development and fill-in with too much bonus

At 10th, 17th, and 19th bars, a phrase with hi-hat open & close such as "chi-chi-chichi-chichi-" appears. And this phrase, correction, the motif, continues at the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd bars. Then in the 24th bar finally it gets to a sublime! You can see a beautiful motif development by him who indeed has a classical music background.

The 28th and 32nd bars are old-school yet simple and powerful fill-ins. Right after that, the 35th bar is cool and flexible. The fill-in is supposed to end with a simple toms phrase, but after reaching the floor tom, he keeps adding a lot of extra floor toms. The 35th bar got an odd meter as a result. After that, as the solo lost its tempo, that is the end of my drum score.

Pledge to revive the Japanese economy

This song seems to be a live recording from a Frank Zappa band's tour to Japan. I'm not very sure but the live stage was at Kōsei Nenkin Kaikan (Welfare Pension Hall) in Japan. It's kind of unbecoming to have Zappa in a place like Welfare Pension Hall. In the era of Japan as Number One, Japan might be a must-have country for tours in the music business. There were a lot of special CD release versions for Japan that have bonus tracks for Japan. Sadly, Japan passing has continued for some decades. It is an urgent task to revive the Japanese economy and demonstrate its importance in Asia so that a lot of artists overseas will come to Japan. 

Japan as Number One

Queues of people form in front of Murata Yohichi Solid Brass - Some Skunk Funk

Murata Yohichi Solid Brass - Some Skunk Funk

This time, it was not the group Ponta Box with Murakami "Ponta" Shuichi, but this song Some Skunk Funk from the album Double Edge by Yohichi Murata Solid Brass.

Double Edge

Some Skunk Funk is the song from The Brecker Brothers as you may know.

HEAVY METAL BE-BOP

Terry Bozzio's explosive performance in the original release is awesome of course, but in this cover version, we can fully enjoy colorful and sometimes sharp-edged performance of the drummer Ponta.

Entertains with a variety of phrases

This is how it begins:

(00:00-)

You can enjoy various phrases along with passages of the song. He kicks without much regard, even if toms and snare are there in phrases. I was reminded a little bit of my stereotype that a kick must be always simultaneous with cymbal or high-hat.

Very unique phrases that no other drummers play

Then, just before the third theme of the song:

(00:59-)

The ensemble phrase of the 1st and 2nd bars comes up several times in the song, and it is cool that the 3rd beat of the 2nd bar has that sextuplet. It's a phrase that's not in the original song but a pretty fine idea.

The third theme comes from the 3rd bar. Slipped snare's backbeats (the 4th 16th note of the 1st beat) forms a sharp-edged funk style. Note the red colored notes in the 6th bar. This is a very unique phrase that no other drummers play. Perform with a big emphasis in order to make it stand out as a fill-in.

The 8th bar also has his own famous phrase. I remember a Japanese drummers' project featuring this phrase. Lots of drummers all together orally express this phrase instead of playing on drum kits.

Then, the last part of the song.

(04:04-)

On the 2nd bar, you can see that he is doing locally a double bass with twin pedals. This is actually unusual for him. In the 3rd bar, he also throws the above mentioned unique phrase (red notes in the score). This time the phrase ends with a flam accent.

Quite hard horn part

It is challenging to play Some Skunk Funk only with wind instruments and drums. If you listen to the original song, you don't think it is possible. However, they realized the heavy-metal-bebop feel of the original song in a new way, adding a fresh dimension, and it becomes the best cover version among many others. It is overwhelming that the band plays Michael Brecker's solo in the middle of the original song perfectly with horn ensemble. I remember that I tried to play this song with members of my jazz band and we simply gave up. The horns part is extremely difficult because the 12 tones from C to B turn up in the song and this and that. Is there anyone out there who can play it? Please let me know since I want to try it, too.

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.