Yves’s drum blog

If anyone out there is familiar with Miles Davis or Weather Report…. then you’ve heard of Joe Zawinul.

Joe Zawinul passed away at 75 years of age earlier today in a hospital in Vienna, Austria.

RIP.

(AP article @ Yahoo)

After a lengthy period of being offline, I’m back.

And I’m gonna make a bit of an effort to start posting some more with Summer starting fade…. hard to believe, but man… goes by so fast.

In the last few months, I’ve had some fun playing on a few tracks in the studio with my current project “Seventh Stone”. Going quite well and the sounds have taken shape. (Thanks for the great work Chris!)

;-)

Recently, the band I’ve been putting together with a few guys is going well.

We played our first gig at Brennan’s in Charlottetown a couple of saturday’s ago.

We were pleased with the turnout and the reaction we’ve gotten so far is pretty positive.

The band’s name is Seventh Stone.

Our “MySpace” page can be found here.

We also have a group on Facebook.

Peace!

Man… this blog has been hammered by spam…. it kinda comes and goes too.

All of a sudden, I’ll get like 20 emails in a row saying comments were submitted to this blog. This might even happen for a few days in a row.

Then.. nothing for a couple of weeks.

But… in the last couple of weeks, there has been spam galore. There were 300 + comments waiting for my moderation. All Spam. Judging by the emails, I knew these were all spam. But, when I do moderate them, I go through ‘em fast just to make sure there wasn’t a real comment in there somewhere.

Spam is such a waste of time and bandwidth.

It’s been so long since I’ve posted on this blog!!!

Way to long!!

Here are a few new video clips posted on drummerworld.com! (A site which I love to visit)

Check these out from Vinnie Colaiuta with Herbie Hancock, Nathan East and Lionel Loueke.

And here is the great Robby Ameen!!

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing both Vinnie Colaiuta and Robby Ameen live and let me say that they were both great! These are 2 guys I love watching on drums.

Peace!

I recently put one of these on my main snare drum.

It’s been a long time since I’ve used anything other than the standard Remo coated head…. I’ve used those forever.

I bought a coated G2 head and put it on my snare…. I love the sounds I’ve gotten out of it. It’s been ages since I’ve had a double ply head on my snare.

I used to use some Evans heads on my bass drums….

Maybe it’s gonna be time for me to experiment. Even though I’ve been a Pearl/Sabian/Remo guy for many many years…. I think my new kit will stray… I would love to have a Gretsch kit… But I’m not %100. I want to check out everything I can get.

Can’t wait until I’m ready to buy.

;-)

I wonder what Mike Boyko formerly of Scatterbrain has been doing musically in the last few years.

I just listened to Scatterbrain’s “Here comes trouble”… which was one of my absolute favorite albums for a good few years.

Great musicianship.

Their version of Sonata #3 opened an interest in classical composition for me.

There’s some great grooves on this album. Brings back alot of memories for me and makes me think back to when I used to throw on the headphones and jam with this one…….

Love this album.

Mike Boyko also released a drum vid years back, directed by Carmine Appice….. I’d love to see this.

In the last years, my tastes in music have certainly widen by quite a bit.

I was once a pure metal head. Metal and only metal. The heavier the better.

While I still enjoy many metal bands, I’ve also become a big fan of many other artists.

One of my first non-metal favs, and almost a drummers standard was Rush. And, I am still a big fan of their music.

I eventually started getting into jazz and fusion. I discovered some great stuff…. a couple of Keith Jarrett trio CDs really grew on me…. the burning for Buddy CDs… then came the actual Buddy Rich albums.

I’ve become a big fan of Billy Cobham. I was fortunate to see Billy perform at the Montreal Drum fest some years ago.

These last few months, I’ve been jamming a couple of songs Billy has either written or played on. Here are a couple of Billy Cobham tunes.

Stratus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ae3l12PM2c

Red Baron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKRCt4FK9Vk

Today, I had to go about an hour away from my home by car. I brought my cds with me and started listening to various things.

All of a sudden, I found a CD that I had done some work on. I had recorded 4-5 tracks on this recording.

I hadn’t listened to it in quite some time. I remember back in the recording sessions, I was uneasy on the playing. It was one of those things where the song is being arranged as it is written.

All I had to play with was a click and the producer playing the bass line that I was to follow. I also had a demo version of the song to listen to ,so I could get the jist of what the song was supposed to be…. although it sounded quite different being very quiet and had no drums (in the demo).

After the session, I remember listening to the songs, and being quite uneasy with the performance. It’s almost as if :
a: I couldn’t get the memory of me and the bass playing along (which I had a hard time with because I was a bit uncertain of “what” this was gonna turn into)
b: I also couldn’t get the softer version of the song with no drums out of my head

Today, I put the CD in and thought, “man, that wasn’t so bad”. It sounded pretty good. The music had a very straight groove to it and it all seemed to fit well.

It’s nice to come back and listen after it’s all over.

A couple of drum clinics coming up.

Keith Carlock… awesome talent….. plays the skins with Wayne Krantz who is one of my favorite artists. If you can check these clinics out, you will not regret it. (He also plays with Sting and Steely Dan among others)

HALIFAX NS CLINIC:
When: November 14th
Where: St. Antonio’s Hall (Corner of Cunard & Hunter across from Musicstop).
Cost: $10 per ticket and go on sale Thursday November 2nd at the Cunard Street Musicstop (Limited amount of tickets at the door). Ticket is redeemable for $10 Off any purchase of Yamaha or Zildjian products totalling $50 or more.
Time: 7pm

St. JOHN’S NL CLINIC:
When: November 15th
Where: DF Cook Recital Hall (Memorial University).
Cost: $10 per ticket and go on sale Saturday November 4th and are available at St. John’s Musicstop. Ticket is redeemable for $10 Off any purchase of Yamaha or Zildjian products totalling $50 or more.
Time: 7pm