Hello Friends
Thought I should pass on some news regarding some instrument development and a change in my life as a teacher
I am on the road with Paul Simon till Dec.Then the Winter Solstice in late Dec. at the Church of St. John with Paul Winter!
But I guess the biggest news is that I left Berklee and NEC (18 years of commuting, but an amazing ride!!) I now work full time at Oberlin, (some at CIM) I have a great room up the hall (C34 )from Mike Rosen and I am working on a new performance track for musicians like many of you!
While I am out with Paul, the opening act is the Punch Brothers, and the guitarist Chris op is from Oberlin, in 2002. Chris was A student that felt his personal musical needs were in the cracks and The Jazz dep. was too “to Beep or not to Bop” mentality as are most jazz department’s and at the same time many classical kids are desperately looking for way to play in ensembles and have a chance to develop their groove and improvisational playing.
It will take some time to get it right, but Dean, David Stull shares in my vision and is patient too. We plan to get some real contextual teeth in this concept so students really rub shoulders with whole groups of high level players that they can play with for a period of time.
Before too long I hope to have a wonderful track for all sorts of students to dip in and rub shoulders with players from all the departments and start developing musical language so that they can go on to play options on their feelings in a healthy musical environment.
Here are a few shots of some of my new instruments and a trip I made to Ethiopia (off the hook experience)
The metal stuff in the prototype stage is designed to offer a more accessible unique sound pallet for drum set players, so this “Hadphoon ” would slide into your Cymbal bag and you could either mount it on a cymbal stand or throw it on a floor tom and the drum would act as the resonator for the “Hadphoon”.
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With Bosphorus I went to Istanbul 2 times to develop a line of cymbals that are made to be played with your hands that have richer sounds than what people usually have for hand played cymbals. (some different shapes too) They will come out this spring. Also the Hadjira is much better now too, all the pandeiro Zill’s can be muted and the drum can be held right or left handed while playing either Riq Pandeiro or Kanjira!
The plate of Zill’s is an older thing, but it is very useful when you hold a finger cymbal in each hand, sort like a more discrete and manageable chang chang from bali.
The Mini Ocean drum is called a “double-play” and it can be retrofitted onto any frame drum with the drilling of one hole and inserting a threaded sleeve in your existing frame drum.
The big tongue drum was an interesting experiment along the lines of the Typhoon shaped metal drum’s, it almost sounds as good as it looks
Later………