Waiting for the repercussions…

“We all grew up with music.”

Early humans, according to Noam Chomsky, developed language by necessity.
He argues that our ancestors were forced to group together because of climate change.
Unaccustomed to bonding in large numbers we had to drop ape-like preening and grooming in favour of other forms of social interaction.

Laughter was a good leveller, but at the time it would only be shared from within small, intimate cliques.

The big breakthrough in social bonding apparently came with the rise in shared moments of rhythmic and probably quite pitchy vocal unisons.
Chomsky suggests that music was the greatest leap in the evolution of early language.
Rhythmical Music may well have bridged the gap between the millennia of long awkward silences and finally grew into the first cogent verbal communications ever held within human society.
I think the ability to enjoy Drumming lies somewhere deep in our DNA.
After all, it’s not as if everybody at a gig can clap in time with everyone else without someone at the front getting it right.

However Singing these days is getting ever more robotic sounding. This is mostly due to some modern singers and their producers’ excessive reliance on auto tune.
I fear that now we are programmed to believe that if the voice sounds robotic it must be in tune.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Kraftwerk, but let’s go back to our roots!
Stamp your feet!
Clap Your Hands!
Yell at the top of your voice!
When someone near you does the same- Join in!
Collaborate.
Do it before all our music becomes just arbitrary noodling, randomly generated with the use of clever algorithms by your smartphone’s voice activated moods app.

Keep Music Alive.

Unfamiliar Faces

When preparing for a musical performance the best live players in the business say it’s not enough just to learn to play a song to the point that when kicking it on stage you can remember all the parts.
Instead it is essential to absorb yourself into each part of the production so intimately that you reach the point where it is impossible for you to forget any of it.
The Frisbee Test
Even if someone in the audience throws you a frisbee, you should be able to catch it and throw it back without missing a beat/chord/string/note. It requires an obsessive level of dedication.

As this week’s practicing ploughed on it eventually dawned on me that, if called upon, I was somewhere to the left of the particularly steep experience curve required to play a live OMD gig right now.

These last few days steadily became a study in how to learn precisely what I needed to memorise in order to ensure that under stress I could still remember what I mightn’t have actually forgotten in the first place.

At least to the best of my recollection, that’s how I think it went…

Added to this week’s pressure of repertoire adjustment was the curveball of re-learning songs in slightly different arrangements to the way I remember playing them back in the 90s.
I can best compare how I felt when playing the new (to me) arrangements of some of the classics as being similar to bumping into an old yet familiar acquaintance. A bit of banter followed by talking in depth about personal stuff, before suddenly discovering you were in fact speaking to your old friend’s slightly quirkier younger brother.

Drummers will drop their sticks sometimes. Guitarists rarely drop their plectrums but occasionally a bass player might actually hit the right note on the correct beat of the bar. These are constants, inevitable aspects of band life. Luckily OMD doesn’t have a lead guitarist.
“Lead singers may, only once in their career, deliberately unplug the lead guitarist’s “axe” by slyly stomping on his precious jack lead, mid-solo” (Deep Purple, Gillan&Blackmore, 1973).
There is no evidence that either Andy McCluskey or Paul Humphries ever replicated this behaviour, but certainly Andy in his role as lead singer and bass player may indeed have accidentally stood on his own lead early on.
Now, of course he uses a wireless link instead of a cable.
None of this is probably true except for me, sat in my windowless rehearsal room, on my own. Just me, a kit and some songs on my iPod. I seem entirely capable at present of inadvertently unplugging the leads to my pads and triggers with relatively ease, all by myself. Usually while simultaneously playing the intricate middle 8 Tom and snare pattern to “souvenir”. All I need is coordination.
For me, songs are like people. Some are friends and some are strangers. I may not always remember the name/title/lyrics, but I will rarely forget a face/melody/riff.

Once upon a time in the 90s I met- then eventually got to know- the various live set lists required for performing drums with OMD inside-out. Now I’m back, I’m crossing the threshold between being on the outside of the inner circle of knowledge once again.
I am improving steadily. The first gig is in May. I’m sure I’ll smash it!

Great Songs are like old friends. Time is no barrier, if they were good enough to get to know well in the first place, they will always there for you, no matter what.

Images copyright Paige Edge 2015.

A History of Modern Drumming part 2

One of the main differences between a doctor and a musician is that one of them practices after they have finished rehearsals and the other can’t rehearse unless they’ve practised, enough already.

As you are probably unaware, despite my efforts posting some photos from this momentous week that I’ve shared on Twitter and Facebook:
I am finally equipped to do ‘proper practice now’ using a bespoke hybrid drumkit comprised of acoustic and electronic drums, pads, triggers and cymbals.

I bet you’re thinking this is just another selfish piece of self promotion by some musician looking to raise their profile. Well, yes: BUT not at the expense of those who came before me.
This week I met the man behind the myth that being a drum roadie leads to a serious addiction to coffee, roll ups and anecdotes. For the purposes of this blog and to protect his identity we will call him Merv.
I watched as many musty flight cases, the very jigsaw pieces of OMD’s touring equipment, were unceremoniously tipped, wheeled and dragged onto the bleak weathered Tarmac of an overcast industrial estate car park.
Standing to one side, with a tiny unlit stub of a cigarette loosely dangling from one side of his mouth, Merv, viewed each case in turn, with the crinkly-eyed careworn countenance of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry.
Well I have to say he made my day. No sooner were the cases out in the open before he seamlessly broke down and stuffed my practice kit into the back of my car and concomitantly re-assembled the other bespoke live kit complete with drink holders, seemingly endless looms of wiring, various amps, modules and monitors to boot, into the now cluttered rehearsal room. .
One reason for his ability to instigate such a speedy set up became evident as his carefully spun anecdotes and filtered cigarettes all rolled into one until… It suddenly occurred to me….
This kit is essentially the same one that the band used on the last tour.
It was at that moment when the need for me to put my own stamp on the kit began to slowly rise like a jug half full of Yorkshire pudding batter left over from Sunday on my kitchen worktop breakfast bar for the last week.

I was suddenly afraid my ego would go the same way as the batter.
I needn’t have worried. Merv helped to put my mind at ease.
Faced with the unfamiliar and almost alien environment of someone else’s drum kit, It felt almost like I was cheating on Mal with his Mrs. This made me feel a little insecure and it forced me to reflect on the mammoth task ahead.
I’ve been assured these feelings will pass.
With mixed emotions I sat down to play behind a bespoke drum kit last used by the great Mal Holmes .
It could be argued that pro drummers invest a huge amount of time and energy in developing and constructing their kits. Each drummer’s drum set-up represents a focused extension of their own body. A deeply personal yet primeval relationship exists between skin and bones, wood and steel even kick and snare. This when conflated through the form and function of its own existence evolves until it’s treated with great regard yet is somehow shunned by those other than its previous owner. You wouldn’t use someone else’s toothbrush, it’s a bit eeew! There is something of that feeling stirred within, when you are asked to play a set using another drummer’s kit.

Wirral crazy now.

My drum kit has been in a rehearsal room for a few weeks now, over the water, on the Wirral.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to drum in a soundproof environment. For me, many years since my last tour I feel it is great to be back in the saddle. In fact it felt like drumming again was actually fun and relatively easy. Except for learning the set list. That I have found challenging.
Like riding a bike, except the bike is on fire and everything else is on fire.
Most of all this is because the kit is not complete.
I’m still waiting to tweak it with all the necessary trigger pads, interfaces and all the leads necessary to complete the set up of a modern drummer in an 80s synth pop band.
The worst thing about rehearsing on your own is not being left alone.
Instead it’s a true test of concentration.
Having moved practice space from my daughter’s old room into the purpose built facility, I find myself filling the invitingly empty old room’s spacious, bespoke, honey-oak-floor with an increasingly cumulative heap of black bin bags, stuffed with randomly household clutter, built up around the house since the previous big clear up last Christmas.
However. No such distractions in the windowless, hard walled cell my drums call home.
The heater doesn’t work too well and I’m warming my hands on the tea I just made, but what the heck, I’m drumming!

A History of Modern Drumming

OMD the iconic English Electro pioneers from Wirral responsible for the international hits Enola Gay, Souvenir, Sailing on the Seven Seas and even two about a medieval heroine- Joan of Arc and Maid of Orleans have retained my services once again.
When I got the call that I was to ‘come off the bench’ while Legendary Drum-Meister Mal Holmes recovered from an injury sustained away at Toronto, it was with mixed emotion that I accepted.
On the one hand I was delighted to be given the opportunity to leave my family for weeks at a time in order to play drums all over the world with one of my favourite live acts.
On the other, I wish it had been under different circumstances.
Despite this, It was with palpable positive excitement that I decided to head down to the basement and unpack the old drum kit.
Although now a little worn, frayed and stained by years of damp neglect in deep storage and with a few non-vital bits missing and/or sporting hastily improvised augmentations constructed from ill-fitting spares held on with numerous sticky strips of silver gaffer tape, I summoned up the necessary bravado and proceeded to the basement. I grumpily hauled the old kit upstairs to re-assemble from the scratched and sticker covered flight cases and cardboard boxes in the basement.
It all went onto a drum mat thrown down on the recently cleared floor of my daughter’s bedroom.
I thought this would be OK, as my daughter had been living away at Uni for the last three years? but let’s not pull at that thread. Suffice to say she was not amused when I sent her the above photo.
As for part two? I will keep you posted.

Why the UK struggles with International Relations

Our European partners often misinterpret the actual meaning behind the answers and reactions given by our elected representatives to their questions and requests. The table below offers a few examples of this phenomena.

Welcome to my WordPress account.

I have just finished my first year studying history and politics at university.
However, there is a slight problem.
Despite achieving a 2.1 or b grade for the year and I should be honest with you:
(1) this was a matter of some considerable celebration on my part.
(2) the whole experience was somewhat marred by an unavoidable fact.
(3) I had previously left school in 1983, 31 years ago.

I appreciate this timeline disparity may not appear as a problem to you. In that case skip to the next section.
If you feel the need to read over that previous section again I can assure you words like ‘intervening’ and ‘void’ will eventually spring to mind.

Hello world!

2011: Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

2014: eh?