March Photos

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March has already been full of many wonderful gigs so I thought I’d share some pictures!

L to R: Your truly, Najee Gabay, Mason Griffin, Sean Stephens, and Beda Spindola

First up, Sean Stephens’ Redemption of a 90s Kid at 54 Below. To say I had the perfect shirt for this show is an understatement! This set was an absolute blast to play. We opened with Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” and I haven’t been able to get this video out of my mind since I started working on this song. Absolutely epic.

L to R: Or Matias, Shoba Narayan, James Mohamdein, and Tim Basom. Photo by Rebecca J. Michelson.

Next, I got to play with literal Disney Princess Shoba Narayan at 54. Shoba is the first ever South Asian to play Jasmine in Broadway’s Aladdin. She is stunningly gorgeous and has the voice to match! My personal highlight was playing Stephen Schwartz’s “When You Believe” with Shoba and Lindsay Heather Pearce who currently stars as Elphaba in Wicked.

Then, I got to celebrate the third anniversary of Brass Queens on International Women’s Day! Major shouts to Wandering Barman, a lovely cocktail bar here in my neighborhood, for being exceptional hosts.

I left Wandering Barman as soon as we finished playing because I had to get up at 6am to drive to PS 277 Gerritsen Beach to play with Dawn Drake’s ZapOte for the third grade class. Dawn talked about the music of the Americas and we demonstrated salsa, funk, and samba. They asked a lot of great questions and picked up on the rhythms impressively quickly! Thanks to the Brooklyn Arts Council for sponsoring this engagement.

Every Fuego Ever

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In 2014, Phish released its 13th studio album, Fuego, and the title track is a tour de force of drumming. In just over nine minutes, Jon Fishman takes the listener on a journey through a ’50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’ inspired groove and blistering drum n bass before setting up a singalong shout course with the type of mighty fill that drummers dream of playing in front of thousands in a rock arena. I transcribed every version of that fill and turned it into a drum exercise.

This piece has been a long time coming and was truly only possible due to the downtime I was afforded by the pandemic. Though the article was originally written to be published in a certain drum magazine that dropped off the face of the Earth, Phish.net was happy to publish it, so I updated the text to make it Phish-ier which is truly a language of its own! Check out the full blog here. While you’re there, please consider making a donation to The Mockingbird Foundation, a non-profit organization operated by Phish fans, dedicated to improving access to music education for America’s youth.

Download the sheet music here.

Here’s the video of the transcription. Stay tuned to the end for ways to apply this exercise to the drum set:

Quintuplets

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I’ve been thinking about quintuplets, or fives, a lot in my practicing lately. I’ve been trying to implement them in my fusion playing as well as the hip hop feel best described as Dilla beats.

In my experience, 5 and 7 note groupings tend to get overlooked by teachers when they are working with student musicians. This was certainly the case for me. For many, 5s and 7s are unusual, exotic, and difficult to master. I believe if we start teaching students about these groupings at a young age, they will come as naturally as 8th and 16th notes.

What I’ve also noticed is that there seems to be no universal way of counting quintuplets in western music. In fact, everyone who responded to a deeply unscientific poll I posed on Instagram yesterday had a different answer for how the count fives. Many people use different syllable words such as ‘serendipity’ and 'hippopotamus.’ For some reason I was taught ‘homosexual’ for 5s and ‘homosexuality’ for 7s, which is obviously extremely problematic! Fellow percussionist Jeremy Yaddaw provided me with a few 5-syllable phrases, including ‘back to stick control’ and get me out of here,’ which I found particularly amusing. A few people also suggested counting 12,123 or 123,12 depending on how the phrase is grouped.

I find myself using a combination of methods for counting 5s. Sometimes I’ll use a 5-syllable word, sometimes I may just count to 5, sometimes I may just concentrate on ending on the correct hand at the correct time. I’m curious how YOU count 5s. Please comment below!

ALCO Masterclass: A success!

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Despite some gnarly weather, the PitchBlak masterclass at my old high school went off without a hitch. We had some very enthusiastic young musicians come through. Everyone participated! Here I am above with brothers Jacob and Lucas Matthews of the bluegrass band Grand Ole' Ditch. We critiqued a few of their tunes and boy did they sound great. I wish them best of luck at the Telluride Bluegress Festival Band Competition this summer.