The Probable Last Chapter of Reinvention

 Reinventing myself musically is new to me.  Openly I have grown bored with my traditional musical pursuits, especially the piano.  I am not tired of the piano, but having been a professional pianist on ships for a decade, having to approach music from the note specifics of the piano is not rewarding.  It is a job.  Learn and play the exact notes.  I decided to let that go when I left the ship industry in 2014.  I began a partnership with a local musician, and only did it make sense to try new things.  Easily we could have adhered to my historical repertoire of gig material.  It was much more fun and rewarding to just chuck all of that protocol and start from scratch.  No arrangements.  No set list.  No nothing.  We just let the creativity flow, and flow it did.  In the throes of trying to rediscover my musical soul again, I am remembering how successful this partnership became.  We have produced at least six, full length, all original CD's of music.  The music we have created and produced is more sonorous and satisfying than most American commercial music being made today.  The reason is because both of us are seasoned professional musicians with years of listening and playing experience.  We play a variety of instruments, and we have open minds.  Making music is facile to us, and with a bit of logistical guidance from my audio recording days at The Ohio State University, we were able to create an intimate recording environment that produced good sound.  This is key.  We had a small space, and we filled this space with live music, which we recorded.  We did not produce tracks.  We did not exchange projects.  We created live music like a band and recorded it for posterity's sake.  Quality live sound was our goal, and it was accomplished with a vintage drum kit and live amplifiers.  The keyboards were mixed through Ross Typhoon 18" three way PA cabinets, which also were recorded live through microphones.  Overdubs were recorded direct into the computer, but only after we have a live rhythm section sound that breathed like a real band.  This concept of recording was the same as most successful studios in American popular music history.  They were Motown (three live tracks in a dirt-floored garage), Muscle Shoals, and STAX Records.  The Wrecking Crew in LA cranked out most of America's commercial hits, but there was a lot or production in that studio.  When you band can play, sounds good, and has a nice little room, a competent engineer can make hits.  My own personal music projects, about a dozen CD's worth of material (mostly original), we accomplished with a MIDI studio.  Live sound was not the goal or the apparatus.  I used keyboard bass from a variety of sources and drum sounds from a variety of drum machines and tone modules.  My goal was to make them listenable and to groove.  As such I find myself at a juncture.  After five years of this live collaboration with Edmond Truman in his Man Cave recording studio, and after my mother's move to assisted living, I am trying to find my musical center again.  What I have realized is that live sound really is a product of a band, not an individual.  Bass and drums is the foundation of American popular music, and if and when you have that you have the foundation for musical creativity.  Playing with a drum machine is something unto itself, and I am wrestling with this limitation.  I know how to program drums and create a good groove and feel, but it is not fun like playing in a live rhythm section.  Also it does not sound the same.  I get close playing Fender bass with a good drum pattern, and I know how to record electric bass into Digital Performer.  My set up for this though has been in constant flux.  Recently after refurbishing our garage, I began reassembling a multi-keyboard set up to play live.  I don't know if I ever will use or play it commercially again in my lifetime, but I wanted to design it for my own satisfaction and intellectual prowess.  This set up has expanded into three planes, and for the first time I have keyboards on three sides of a square.  Finally I have developed a sound concept, and most of them are in a respectable place to offer their own unique sonic pallet.  (It took a while to decided whether the Rhodes or the acoustic piano would go on the right or left)  As it turns out my stumbling block was a transition of drum sounds.  My EMU Procussion module became noisy because of a leaky  power supply, so I decided to move own.  Into the trash bin it went.  I kept my Yamaha RX-17 drum machines, and they still suffice for Latin Percussion in the studio.  I even bought a dedicated Latin Percussion sound card for the Yamaha S90 digital piano.  It's sounds are realistic, but you have to set up a multi performance for every sound you will use it with.  I chose rather to use the great quality keyboard sounds of the piano itself, rather than sacrificing it for drums.  The choice of transitioning to a Roland Boss DR-880 drum machine was the right choice, but it meant learning a new machine.  I wanted a stand alone drum machine that you can program individual patterns and change their tempo on the fly for a live gig.  No studio set up.  No MIDI merge.  No outboard mixer for the drums.  The DR-880 hands down is the right choice, and only now am I finally inching toward a new musical goal.  I have been programming it slowly in my lap with headphones late at night.  It has been decades since I have had to program patterns into a machine.  Usually I just play the drum parts with my fingers on a MIDI keyboard into the sequencer.  Tonight I was able to figure out how to take an existing pattern in the DR-880, augment it, overdub additional parts, mix the kit, and create an interesting playing experience with which to play live on the new rig in the garage.  I know how to do this, but it has been a long time.  I created a four bar pattern, copied it five times, and overdubbed different percussion instruments for each pattern changing the flavor sightly for each sequence.  You then can switch them on the fly as you play live.  The result was a Jerry Goldsmith cue for his film, "The Russian House."  A percussion groove is the key, but it took sheer willpower to push it out.