On Being A Progger and General Discussions

This discussion was brought from Korg Trinity thread.
Carry on…and discuss what you wish. :grin:

If you watch Nick Mason, he is not fancy or over playing. His timing is impeccable and his reserved fills fit Floyd perfectly. He does play his ass off though. Yes, I would occasionally twirl sticks or play toms with my hands, but only when asked to be a showman. In one band, I sang, played keys with my right hand, and drums with what was left. Got quite a few compliments at break. :crazy_face:

I always think that Mason’s laid back vibe (usually 1/2 time) fitted the music perfectly. And I always liked the fact that he was more on the ride cymbal and quite gentle with it rather than bashing the crap out out of the hi-hat, crashes or splashes - a pet hate of mine.

I always thought that Peter Gabriel’s genius move on his third and fourth albums was to banish the cymbals, which meant that two stellar drummers, Phil Colins and Gerry Marotta did.a lot of tom work.

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@Derek

I absolutely hate pumping 1/8th notes on hi-hat all the time.
Whether it is me or someone I’m working with. I understand the need many times but not all the time. I am more creative than that. Many drummers drive with the HH instead of kick. AND, always a crash at the end of a fill.

A little story you may enjoy:
My neighbor has a folk/country/Americana group that I’ve never heard. He came over last week and asked me if I could sit in on a charity gig playing bass. I told him I could and rehearsed with them last Sunday. OMG !!! What a freaking train wreck. They all were TERRIBILE ! Drummer was like all cymbals and had no timing. The rest were like 6yr olds starting a garage band.

They tumbled through a few songs, then decided to play Allman Bros “Whipping Post”…mind you, 11/8 switching to 12/8 and back. I started the opening bass lick, and the drummer kicked in playing 4/4 time. My neighbor commented, we don’t play it like the Allman Bros…Really? In the meantime I am digging out a revolver (in my mind) for a Russian Roulette game…me 1st.

So he notified me we would just wing it. I asked how many people would be there, he said “over 700 tickets were sold”.
I have no idea how to get out of this one. He lives across the street, and has been over here twice today. I may have to move.:smirk:

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Nick was a great drummer for Floyd because Floyd was verrrrrryyy slooooooooow :smiley: Most drummers would not have been able to control themselves and leave the spaces but he, like Ringo, could. Nick would have stank in Rush, but Neil would have stank in Floyd (or the Beatles)… there are a precious few drummers like Phil Collins that probably would have been able to be appropriate in either setting.

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I’ve been asked to play piano at a funeral at a black gospel church the Sunday. Because I’m a renowned gospel piano player.

:frowning:

And of course, if I wreck their service I’m sure no one will mind. How I got guilt-ed into this I will never know. Well, guilt, that’s how.

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Lucky us.

I’ve been having serious thoughts about quitting the local scene, and just doing the recording gigs, and filling in occasionally as organist for two black churches near me. I haven’t had a decent break from it in several years. I’ve played several funerals the past few years. Strange requests, but I made it work.

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I’m a good gospel organist, if I have a rhythm section. I’m a crap gospel piano player though. I’ve heard the tunes now though, I can do them. In the right key I can do them.

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It took me a little while to learn how back the preacher. But got the hang of it eventually.

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Yeah, that’s fun. That’s not the gig though. We just have to play a couple tunes.

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That is my gig tho. Call and response. It’s really fun when I get a chance to fill in. I always service their Hammonds twice a year, as no one else knows how.

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Man, I feel for you. time for a one way ticket to a country without an extradition treaty with yours …

My Echoes band was one of those short lived ones (started early 2006 and was over before the end of it) that did little else but rehearse and bicker over musical direction (it was meant to prog/classic rock, but some of choices being thrown about were 70s disco!), but we did manage two awesome gigs before it fell to pieces. 14 years on, I still keep being asked at my local music venue when I am going to put it back together again… We were learning Nantucket Sleigh Ride by Mountain, which was the guitar player’s curveball choice that went down a storm as most people of a certain age in the UK remember “Weekend World” that used the main organ part as its intro music. We had it pretty well nailed apart from the drummer, who just could not get used to that single bar of 5/4 in places. We just never knew if he would get it right or not in practice or on a gig…

And you made me smile about the time signatures. In Echoes it was a mix of classic/prog covers and originals, and I had a song which I was quite proud of, which was heavy on the triplet feel. The first bass player we had just flat refused to play the bass with a triplet feel - we could never work out if it was simple his inability to feel the feel or that he was just an arrogant w****r who did what he wanted. But whenever we practiced the song, he just plodded away in 4/4. So we never did that song until we changed bass players and it went down a storm on the last gig.

This band had a real prog falling out of the Gilmour/Waters vein. I was good friends with the guitar player (we started the band together, coming out of the remnants of a pub/function band that had run its course). Coming out the 2006 era, we decided to restart it as an all originals band, so we started working on material before looking for others. But he became to busy in life (for all sorts of reasons) to continue it for a while, so I said I would wait, no rush. I joined Pure Floyd to keep me going and develop my playing chops (man, learning two hours of Floyd was a challenge to me at the time!), and I was also working on my Carreg Ddu material, Suddenly two years later he sprang back to life demanding my attention right then, there, now to carry it all on. I said “great that you are back, but you will now have to wait for me for a little while until I get some time”, and that conversation went downhill pretty fast!

It culminated in his demanding that he has his songs back and where he had played guitar on my songs that I took the parts off, to which I said that was like Roger Waters insisting that his bass parts and lyrics were deleted from Dark Side of the Moon! It went downhill even more (in fact a classic example where I learnt to never have arguments by email!), and it was easier to give up, and we parted each with our own songs. But I was learning guitar at the same time, so I turned all of my echoes songs into instrumentals and put my own guitar on. Whilst I am no Steve Hackett, I was quite pleased with the results.

I’ll take this OT topic a little OT, but if you are interested you can hear what I salvaged of my Echoes material here I keep meaning to do something with some of these. Would be interested to hear if folks here think I ought to, as it might spur me on!

Cheers
Derek

Bands, eh. All part of the fun! :slight_smile:

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In Nick Mason’s excellent and humorous book “inside out”, he said one of the problems of rebooting Floyd in he 80s was touring with modern musicians used to playing against clocks/sequencers. They had trouble adapting to “loose, hippy” musicians in Mason’s own words.

But I agree. He was never on the same level of ability as drummers like Colins, Peart, et. al, but he was THE right drummer for Pink Floyd, and well understood that less is more. Rick Wright is the same, I can be in a Pink Floyd Band, because whilst Rick was a good player, he was not thank heaven (for me) a Rick Wakeman level virtuoso. But what he played, how he played, the colours, the textures, the chord choices provide the canvas the Gilmour could paint over. Waters is not the best bass player either, but his parts and concepts all fitted in. And that is why I love the Floyd - four musicians doing what is right for the song to create those iconic moods. :slight_smile:

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Remember the 1st time someone convinced a band member to try Cocaine at a gig?

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All I hear on my laptop speakers is someone wailing on a torqued snare drum :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

That dude looked like he was tripin’.

Trippin on Jesus, yo

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Probably one of the strongest show openings ever. But how can you go wrong with Lukather, Sklar, Phillinganes, Bobby Kimball, and Simon Phillips. There are no better. The blonde guitarist on stage right is Tony Spinner from Southeast Missouri. I played with Tony some in the 80’s. He was always a great performer, and I heard a rumor he was with Toto a few years back, but never confirmed it till today.

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That’s not one I have heard before, but our Toto Greatest hits stops in the 80s… Very tight band. Think I may need to check out some of their later stuff…

And is Sklar not the bearded bassist from Phil Collins’ touring hey day? That geezer has not aged a day! He must have a ring of power…

My current prog fix that I can highly recommend, although it is way too short at three original songs, is Yes “From a Page” curated by Oliver Wakeman from session recordings before he was unfairly ousted to make way for Geoff Downes. Geof is a fine keyboard player in his own right and style, but no match for Wakeman Senior or his son IMO!

The three main songs (plus one that has already featured on Ravens and Lullabies) are astounding, and capture Yes as they should have been, not the pale shadow that they are now (I rate “Heaven and Earth” as the worst Yes album ever).

Oliver’s words:

Following Chris Squire’s passing, I felt that the new music we’d created, but not released, should be heard and not sit unfinished on a shelf. And with Steve, Alan and Benoit’s enthusiasm for the project, I am proud to know that this music will get to see the light of day and, hopefully, be enjoyed by Yes fans as a piece of previously hidden Yes history.”

I am also hugely enjoying In Continuum’s “Acceleration Theory” albums as well. And Pendragon, who I have not been following since they went in a rockier direction (that other bands do far better IMO), have had an astounding return to form with their “Love Over Fear” album.

And in terms of Prog largesse I am currently listening to Yes’s “Gates of Delirium” live from “Yesshows” which trounces the studio version (which I was so disappointed to hear after the live version).

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