{"id":7451,"date":"2022-12-11T16:01:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=7451"},"modified":"2022-12-18T11:22:33","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T11:22:33","slug":"music-transcribing-drums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=7451","title":{"rendered":"MUSiC: Transcribing Drums – Midnight Rendezvous, Casiopea, 1979"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Takashi in the studio.*<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have been digging the fantastic drumming of Takashi Sasaki for a while now. He was, strictly speaking, Casiopea\u2019s second<\/em> drummer. Their first drummer, Tohru \u2018Rika\u2019 Suzuki, didn\u2019t record with the group (at least not on an officially released album). Hence Sasaki is commonly thought of and referred to as their first, as he\u2019s the first to be heard in the chronology of their official recorded discography. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His style is light, tight, intricate and highly musical. His chops are extraordinary. With a mastery of dynamics – the range between his ghosted notes, standard hits, and accents, make his playing very hard to accurately emulate – and a penchant for a style Weather Report infamously described as \u2018soloing all the time without ever soloing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looks like an album cover or sleeve montage?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He can and does get busy at times, but he always grooves like a mother! Some of his fills are truly ballistic. And, occasionally, they\u2019re almost impossible to decipher. This is particularly true of a few fills (and possibly even grooves?) on the super tasty Midnight Rendezvous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even using Moises to isolate the drums, and ASD to slow them down, there\u2019s a fill at around the 3.00 mark that is doing my noggin in. I initially thought perhaps it was in fives, or something like that. But repeated listening leaves me stumped. I need to have it running as a slowed-down and visual (wave-form) loop, methinks. I\u2019ve not tried that as yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My score for this is a work still in progress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s taken me a good few hours to get down the first two pages of what will, I think, be a four page score. And even the fifty or so per-cent I\u2019ve done so far will, undoubtedly, be subject to some revision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve got as far as the end of the (very tasty) guitar solo. Next up is the keys solo, under which Sasaki does some very light and intricate stuff. I\u2019ve blocked in some of this latter section. But I\u2019ve yet to get in there and tweak it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sketched out, and still needing fine tuning\u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All the cats in this band are just utterly phenomenal. They play in that deliriously groovy sweet-spot, where instrumental prowess and sheer good taste, when it comes to musical choices, collide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I\u2019ve finished the transcription, I intend to learn to play the whole piece as best I can. I\u2019d like to do a YouTube video cover of it, and share it online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s funny for me, as a primarily self-taught drummer, who\u2019s only learned to read drum music \u2018on the job\u2019. Stuff that \u2018classically trained\u2019 musos might find obvious and easy can sometimes fox me. Transcribing stuff is proving a great way to teach myself written music. Albeit I\u2019m still dealing in timing only, and not pitch\/harmony, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A master at work. What became of him?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a specific example of how I\u2019m learning on the job: there are some quick \u2018crushed bounce\u2019 style left hand-doubles – sometimes such stuff is played as a buzz; but oft-times you can clearly hear these as a double – and I initially thought, ok, just turn a single 1\/16th into two 1\/32nd\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that just sounded so<\/em> wrong! So instead I turned the \u2018&-a\u2019-notes from two 1\/16ths (or more [in]accurately one 1\/16th and two 1\/32nd notes) to a group of three 1\/16 note triples. The resultant \u20184-e-&-trip-let\u2019 subdivision sounds and feels sooo<\/em> much better. And that\u2019s how he plays it. Learning on the job!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Those tom angles!? They look awful\u2026 like a school-kid\u2019s drum set up. Still, the sounds he gets, the feel he achieves, that\u2019s the proof o\u2019th\u2019 puddin\u2019. Just goes to show there\u2019s no single right way. Each to their own!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been digging the fantastic drumming of Takashi Sasaki for a while now. He was, strictly speaking, Casiopea\u2019s second drummer. Their first drummer, Tohru \u2018Rika\u2019 Suzuki, didn\u2019t record with the group (at least not on an officially released album). Hence Sasaki is commonly thought of and referred to as their first, as he\u2019s the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MUSiC: Transcribing Drums – Midnight Rendezvous, Casiopea, 1979”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[138,89,70,134,137,130,133,77,20,114,11,168,172,104],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-1Wb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7451"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7451"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7517,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7451\/revisions\/7517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}