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I got the Roland SPD-SX out for the first time in awhile today and had some serious fun rocking out with it and my Busta Rhymes playlist. Am I prepared to go on record saying he's my favorite MC? And what is happening with the Pussycat Dolls??? This song slaps! Anyway, I have a few different percussion samples going on the SPD and a trigger running into it from the acoustic bass drum. Hybrid drumming is always a blast!
Congratulations to Brass Queens on the release of their new EP, Royal St! I’ve been playing with the Queens since the summer and it’s always fun. The ladies and the music they make are simply infectious! They play with a few different drummers and I am honored to play on “Mad” and “Liza” for this release. Above is a picture from the recording session we did a few weeks ago. They took my lunch “dietary restriction” seriously, which I always appreciate!
Have a listen and enjoy!
Today is release day for Ethan Carlson’s Her Sound, Vol. 1, and it. sounds. amazing! I’m extremely proud of this one, as I tracked all of the percussion on my own. It was HARD TO DO and it nearly drove me to the edge, but the payoff has been extremely rewarding.
The album is produced by Thousand Faced Theatre in association with the incomparable Ryan Scott Oliver and features many fantastic musicians (with orchestrations by Solomon Hoffman) and an array of talented singers. I first played this wonderful music at Don’t Tell Mama in June 2017.
Here’s some info on the recording. Give a listen below. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Her Sound is a new song cycle that reimagines the ancient stories of women in the Bible. Instead of the tired tropes of “wife”, “mistress”, and “whore”, discover the untold accounts of a rebel contemplating the cost of knowledge for a bite of an apple, a disobedient wife celebrating her community of women, a groundbreaker escaping the walls that trap her, and many more.
I’m starting to feel cozy in my new studio space, but I still have a long way to go on getting everything dialed in. I’ve been jamming along to the new single from one of my favorite bands: Do It by The Phryg! This song really has me missing live music! It is played expertly by Collin Patierno (guitar), Bryan Walters (lead vocals, bass,, Nico Sleator (keys), and Phil McNeal (drums). Check ‘em out: www.thephryg.com
For my part, I decided to explore some clave based cowbell grooves interspersed with tambourine accents at the end of each bar during the verse, a purposeful reference to one of Bryan’s favorite bands, Umphrey’s McGee. For the pre-chorus, I move the cowbell hemiola feel to the cymbal stack to provide some accents in the sonority. For the chorus proper, I lay down a straight-ahead cowbell/tambourine groove. The section that follows features an interesting melodic breakdown that I compliment with tom feels a la Pink Floyd, another one of Bryan’s favorite bands. The last section took some time to work up. It’s sort of a combination of 5-over-4 and a clave. The first time through the pattern I play a a shuffle that serves as a ‘rhythmic illusion” before filling through the hits the second time through the pattern. Here’s what those accents look like:
Enjoy the song and please check out and support the Phryg. When live music is back, come find me in the front row at one of their shows.
I began moving into my new rehearsal space just down the block on Monday night. It was a reminder of how much schlepping gear and moving in general sucks! Thankfully, my wife helped me out and we were able to get all of my “essentials” over there in two trips with our car.
I spent Tuesday morning setting up drums, the afternoon decorating and practicing, and all of today setting up mics and my new audio interface. It was an intimidating task, but I’m really pleased with how the recording setup is panning out (nice pun), though there’s a lot of work to be done on getting the drum sounds dialed in, which I plan to tackle tomorrow. Once I’m feeling good in that department, I’m going to get to work on recording a cover of a new song that I’ve really been enjoying playing along with. Stay tuned!
My wife and I, March 22, 2020
In just a few hours, the most unusual year of my lifetime will come to an end and we will all collectively breathe a sigh of relief. Personally, the year started off strongly: I was playing the 11 o’Clock Numbers series at West End Lounge (both series and venue a casualty of the pandemic), made a trip to the Bahamas for the Broadway Across America conference (which was when the threat of COVID became a reality), started Gold Dust Women with a bunch of bad ass ladies, and was looking forward to a few musicals coming down the line. Those musicals weren’t to be, of course, as the entire theater industry was forced to shut down.
While there was no end in sight for the longest time, we now see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel thanks to two promising vaccines. When we will be fully vaccinated and back to some semblance of normalcy is pure speculation at this point, but I’m going to try my darnedest to be hopefully optimistic going forward.
Tomorrow I’m moving into a rehearsal space of my very own for the first time since high school. I can’t wait to be fully set up to record at all times and I’m looking forward to taking on some more private students in a virtual setting. And having all of my drums outside of my Brooklyn apartment is going to open up so many opportunities for feng shui improvements which I know my wife is looking forward to! (Have I mentioned that I got married in 2020? See, it wasn’t all so bad!)
My last project for the year is this beautiful tribute to Olivia Harris’s mother, who lost her battle with cancer in December. Today I reflect on Olivia’s words and I’m hoping we all see some growth in 2021.
Everybody’s a garden
Sowing joy and pain.
Everybody’s a garden.
Why can’t we let it rain?
This year would have been my fifth year of playing the national tour of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but 2020 had other plans! It’s been bittersweet to be in NYC right now instead of freezing my butt of in Milwaukee or watching live music til the sun comes up in New Orleans, but on the other hand, I got to spend Thanksgiving with my wife for the first time EVER and we will get to celebrate Christmas from our own apartment.
Still, I miss the escapades that come with touring. I miss the thrill that comes with the curtain rising 8+ times a week and the antics that take place with my orchestra mates after every show. I miss the feeling I get when grandparents point out all the instruments in the pit to their grandkids before the show. I miss the theatre.
Though I know this show inside and out, I’ve never actually seen it, except for the occasional times when I can see above the lip of the stage, and even then, I’m playing so much during the show itself that I can only watch 2 or 3 scenes. Therefore, I am SO EXCITED that tonight I get to watch this musical on television, starring Matthew Morrison as the Grinch himself. I have so many questions — can an unsuspecting worldwide audience handle ‘Whatchamho?’ Will ‘Shopping’ be cut? What exactly happens on stage during ‘Down the Mountain’ that everyone raves about while I’m trying to not drop a stick? Will the quartet nail the harmonies in ‘Now is the Time?’ How many times will I cry? I can’t wait to tune in to NBC tonight to find out!
Here are a few of my favorite drum moments from the 2018 tour. Enjoy!
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!
I’m nursing a bit of a foot injury at the moment so I’m just going to blast away on some snare drum for the time being.
The Badger Strut by Jay Collins is a short rudimental piece suggested to me by John Tafoya when I was studying with him at the University of Maryland. I found it while going through some snare music earlier and decided to whip it up.
It starts out as a pretty typical rudimental piece exploring some paradiddle patterns before triplets and various types of rolls emerge. The second half of the piece is a true chop buster, featuring sextuplets comprised of accented singles filled in by double strokes.
I have no idea the publication history of this piece, but what I have is two pages with a pencilled in roadmap and dynamic markings from Tafoya. I tried my best to decipher his writing and incorporate it for this purpose!
It’s a mess! This is a picture I took after doing some recording at my studio space in Brooklyn yesterday and was an accurate depiction of my brain at that moment!
I’m currently tracking percussion for a very excellent song cycle that requires a lot of different instruments and sounds. I was able to do some of it in my apartment (shakers, triangle, etc…) but for the louder instruments (cymbals, snare, cajon) I found myself dragging my instruments and recording accoutrements around the block to my space, and let me tell ya, with very little gigs over the last seven months, the schlepp is real! Additionally, I have to get to my space early with hopes that no one on my floor is blasting heavy metal that would interfere with my audio captures. Yesterday morning, there were two drummers playing on my floor, but thankfully it was faint enough that the mics didn’t pick anything.
To be honest, I enjoy the work and the final product, but it is all very stressful! Musicians of the internet, I’m wondering: How are you dealing with being a musician, audio engineer, and studio assistant all simultaneously in the current climate? What are your tips for staying sane and not wanting to scream into a pillow during your home recording sessions?
Ashley Baier is a NYC-based drummer and percussionist.
