Catch a Rising Ringo

Good drummers are hard to come by these days. Turn on the tube and what do you hear? Drums and Bass? Acid Jazz? House? Techno? These forms of music are electronic in nature and use electronic drum programming in place of the performance of a live drummer. I like electronic music, and I have a large MIDI studio with a variety of vintage synthesizer modules, keyboards, mixers, and effects. Change gears. The key to MIDI is using sounds that are ultimately listenable to the human ear. Factories are not good at providing usable sounds. They often design and build prolific instruments, but it is left up to the user to program quality sounds. The manual, an index finger, and a trained ear are indispensable for this process. When you get a quality compliment of sounds in your instruments, it is easier to make music. I did not become a great trumpet player, until I began practicing jazz improvisation with my own programmed rhythm section tracks. I found Jamey Abersold play-along recordings too fast. They often felt a little off in tempo. To solve this problem I began sequencing my own rhythm tracks. Never once in this process did I ever use QUANTIZE function on the sequencer. Live feel comes from a live performance of an instrument. I would find the correct tempo instinctively, dial in that number in the metronome, and then practice until I could play a drum part with my fingers in time with good feel. I copied and pasted that pattern throughout the song. Then came bass, then piano. When I began to play along with the tracks, it was like I was listening to Miles Davis's rhythm section in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. I used stereo headphones and a miniature condenser mic clipped to the bell. Add a little reverb to your horn sound and you would be surprised how much fun it was to play. Today it sounds like that process has been overlooked. Techno-nerds must be pumping out mass-produced music for mass consumption. Ringo Starr was a great drummer. That was a major part of why the Beatles were so good as a group. They were concerned about producing the very best sound available at the time, but a good feel is what creates hit songs. If you ever watched Ringo play, the rebound from his sticks above the drums was massive. He hit the drums hard, didn't think much about playing a particular style, and let his body and instincts do the rest. That rebound is what made the Beatles "swing." The Beatles were a rock band, but their music swung. That is why they were so successful. Well, also the Beatles probably were the most influential song writers in Rock history, but the music felt good. It felt natural. Music today does not feel natural. It does not feel human. If feels computerized. Producers have increased the rhythmic resolution so high in their sequencers, there would be no way a human being could play the parts. Why would anyone want to listen to something that is generated by a non-human? There are places for electronic music, and loops and samples and beats can be used very creatively as in Hip/Hop, but the trend in commercial music today is headed in the wrong direction. As in the world no one really knows what path to take, but we as a musical community have got to find something better. If you alienate the human from the music making experience, eventually you are going to alienate the human from the music consuming experience. Music used to be one of our more visceral and sensual art forms. People took drugs, drank, and burned incense relaxing and making love to music. What is the music of today invoking? Gaming violence? Terrorist activity? Blogging? Internet Surfing? Chatting? Karioke and DJ's took away many music jobs in the 1980's. Even Disney fired their live musicians from the Magic Kingdom and Epcott. If we keep whittling away at our culture and arts, there will be no rising Starrs left to catch.