Humans were too early to manage Frank Zappa - Zomby Woof
Now, it's Frank Zappa's hour with very few requests! Discover Zomby Woof, where we can easily view the unique feature of Zappa's songs.
Frank Zappa - Zomby Woof
Firstly, it was released on the album Over-Nite Sensation in 1973. Since then, a number of live recordings have been published. Listen to the live recording of The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life in 1991. This is the best version where the weiredness of the odd meters is evident in the song and musicians follow it perfectly. After all, it's The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life. Naturally, songs other than Zomby Woof are of the greatest quality as well. I strongly recommend listening to the cover version of Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin.
I must say, that is a violation of the rules
The song, which is so abstruse that even Zappa's musicians cannot follow, starts like this. The drummer's name is Chad Wackerman.
(00:00-)
No way. The fact that 5 different types of beats appear in the first 5 bars is a little shocking. 15/16 is also a tricky one. On the 9th bar, it barely stabilizes to 4/4. Good. I was relieved to hear that, so I decided to colour 4/4 of the score in green to express my sentiment.
The 5x quintaplets in the 4th bar seem to be very complex, but it would not very hard in RL sequence or hand movement since he just repeats RLRLL as follows. The right hand moves on the toms, while the left hand gently taps the snare to fill between the tom notes. We need to focus on capturing the flow of the quintaplets at this tempo and generating the rhythm of the quintaplets accurately.
A variety of "5" come in
And right afterwards, starting at the 11th bar:
At the 15th bar, RLRLL is used to play the 5 notes as in the 4th bar, but I found that the left hand beats a tom instead of the snare only at the following red highlighted note. Whatever the timing of the toms, it is important to generate the exact quintaplets notes in the tempo.
From the 24th to 34th bar, a "5" appears again, but the key is that the speed is different from that of the previous 5. Instead of dividing a quarter note into 5, there are 5 notes in 16th notes. In other words, the speed is slightly slower (have a longer interval between notes) than the previous 5. It's interesting to see how the toms move from top to bottom in RL RLL, and then back again in RLL RL. In fact, the melody here is inverted as if a mirror were placed in the center of the 29th bar. Check with someone who has absolute pitch.
Then, it comes back to 4/4 of safety and security again in the 35th bar. The green color is suitable for 4/4. But 4/4 passes in a moment, in the next phase, a new and unstable musical architecture comes in unfortunately. We will verify this in detail in my next article.
When you buy your new computer, you should put 'PPAP Drum Solo by 手数王kozo suganuma & hiroshi matsuo' first
- PPAP Drum Solo by kozo suganuma & hiroshi matsuo
- When I thought it started to be cute, all of a sudden...
- He's playing drums on his face as well
PPAP Drum Solo by kozo suganuma & hiroshi matsuo
I was surprised to find out that my colleague at work knew a professional drummer. And I never thought that I would have a chat with colleagues during my work break about odd meters, "TE-KAZ-OH", and his band FRAGILE. Professional musicians are all around us.
When we had the chat, she took me to this interesting video.
Kozo Suganuma, known as "TE-KAZ-OH" which means the king of many strokes, plays drums on Pikotaro's PPAP. You see a heavy technical fusion drum performance that doesn't match for that light pop music PPAP at all! That big gap is an important point here.
When I thought it started to be cute, all of a sudden...
I took a few bars from the begining:
The sextuplets in the first 4th and 5th bars also entertain us with his stick twirling as shown in the video. The left hand moves in the order of snare > high-tom > low-tom > floor tom, and right/left kicks fill up between them to create 2 sextuplets. In the meantime, he twirls the stick on his right hand in idle. Next, on "the other hand", the right hand moves in the order of floor tom > low-tam > high-tom > snare, and he twirls the stick in idle. The R/L sequence is as follows:
That is a phrase that requires practice and preparation in advance because it could not be improvised instantly. When you think of the cute beginning of "Pi ko ta ro ohhhhhhhhhh, Piko!" it heavily starts like above. That is a big gap amazes us.
He's playing drums on his face as well
More generally, the gap between ultra-fast technical performance and his smiling face is still striking. This smile sets him apart from other drummers. From around 0:58, the heavy metal pattern with sextuplet kicks is the best part of his dazzling smile. He is the king of many strokes who entertains the audience not only with his hands and feet, but also with his face. He has the fifth element for drum performance. I am so inspired by watching the video that I decided to practice to flash nice smiles during my playing drums.
The magic of Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik which makes your life exciting
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
- Chad Smith's highly skilled performance
- The ideal fill for all drummers to reach for
- He is a professional
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Check out Red Hot Chili Peppers again! This is another old 30 year old album, which is similarly old as the RHCP's album that I picked up previously. Today let us check from the sort of controversial album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" released in 1991, the song "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" titled as the title of the album.
See also the previous article for RHCP:
Chad Smith's highly skilled performance
This is the basic drum pattern starts from the beginning of the song.
(0:00-)
The tempo is about 73 bpm. The slow and heavy groove is very comfortable. The 16th note opened high-hat in the 1st beat may not be very easy to play staying your body in balance, but it is much essential to play it like that because it is the most important opened high-hat that definitely characterizes the song. Chad Smith performs the basic pattern quite stably that shows how skilled he is.
The ideal fill for all drummers to reach for
(1:06-)
The stable groove continues and just before the chorus, we need to focus on that standard fill in the 2nd bar. An onomatopoeia representation in Japanese could be "Tan-takara-don". That is snare (with a flam occasionally) + snare + high-tom + floor-tom + kick. The fill is so perfect that I colored the notes with red. Although the fill is typical and ubiquitous, that sudden "Tan-takara-don" sounds real cool while we let our guard down to the slow groove. Its time, feel and notes distribution are perfect. This is the ideal "Tan-takara-don" which all drummers should aim. Before the second half of the chorus, there is "Tan-takara-don" at 2:23 (Tan-takara-don-don, to be exact.), which is perfect as well. In the chorus, from the 3rd bar in the score above, he then goes with the ride cymbal, and unlike the hi-hat pattern so far, kick and snare come in up/down beat on 16th note. Rather, is this his more favorite pattern? Also his stability free of hurry in this slow tempo is wonderful.
He is a professional
There's another nice little fill at the end of the song.
(4:08-)
When the song comes to the climax, the fill with polyrhythmic accents and 32nd notes on the 2nd bar is a bit nice. It still proves his skill to keep the tempo without hurry even when it's time to release the wild instincts at this climax. Perhaps he pretends to be at climax to make the song feel good in a non-emotional manner. Yes, he is a real professional who can control his emotions by his own will.
