Three dual-camera videos to demonstrate that, to at least a presentable level, A) I can play the drums B) produce the drum tracks and C) cut multi-cam video for whatever purpose.
The first of these three videos came out the best. It is a jazz interpretation of “Reckoner” by my favorite rock/pop act Radiohead. This is one of my favorite songs and even they struggle to capture what they did in the studio with this song.
Someday, it could almost be done with this drum take and different musicians dubbing in the music, I would like to cover the song with a complete band live. This video should help illustrate to people what I want to produce.
The next is a few songs that I’ve butted up together to show a range. It’s all rock, but it’s a range, and these are songs that I practice regularly, amidst roughly thirty songs that I’ve been learning.
The editing is not as good as I’d like, the playing is not as good as I’d like, and those go hand in hand. Part of this is to show that I can edit mistakes seamlessly into a Multicam situation. The average viewer can’t spot each jump in the song, but good players and editors will see it immediately.
One problem is that I threw out two complete sessions because the iPhone video was somehow lost. This one is honestly the third coming back from a trip and not having played drums for a week.
The songs are “Y Control” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Manic Depression” by Jimi Hendrix Experience, and “Achilles Last Stand by Led Zeppelin.
Finally, it’s just me. What is interesting is that I used to be a total improviser. I barely have discipline now. I should take all of these songs and transcribe the core drum parts as well as the musical sections and have them on my music stand.
I don’t even run the fundamentals like I did when I improvised. I’m very weird like that. All I do now is sit down and start playing my playlists, and I almost never play a song twice. It’s like I’m forcing myself to know what it means to be prepared to play at any moment.
Something else that has been good for that and has accelerated my playing has been the open jams at The Grape Room in the Manayunk neighborhood. You can find me there many Wednesday nights just jumping on stage and facing whatever the players throw at me.
No doubt, by the end of the year, I’ll run another round of these with my new camera, giving me three angles and a much higher quality camera.
The drum session can be opened up and tweaked as well, rather than rebuilt from scratch. I hear a gate that’s releasing to abruptly on the mid tom. Not awful but it’s there and I’ll have to fix it.