I’ve been
lucky over many years to get to play music in a duo setting
on Chapman Stick with a number
of great drummers. When asked
to write this article,
I thought it might be fun to even just try to remember
all of them and
compare the experiences I had between some of the
more regular ones I’ve had a chance to
work with.
I could say I’m being traditional and
starting “way back when” at the
beginning, but in truth “way back when”
is also “right now” for me with
drummers and that is my good friend Ryan
Moran (aka: RyMo). I met
Ryan even before I owned a Stick. We were
both music students at San
Diego State University in their jazz program.
I was working on a Masters
degree in Music on guitar and Ryan was
completing his undergrad in
drums. He was already a much more professionally
experienced player
than I was, gigging late at night with
a salsa/rock band called the B-Side
Players. We did some small school recitals
together and about a year
after all that in 1997 I got my first
Stick. Three months into owning it I got
asked to contribute a track to a CD being
put together by MiraCosta
College’s guitar program (another old
school of mine). I had four days to
write a piece on Stick and record it,
and having owned the instrument for
only three months it was pretty daunting.
I called Ryan and he was happy
to come play congas on the session and
the song 90 Days was born.
It led almost immediately to us starting
the group Agent 22.
But maybe that’s another story…
.
In 1999 Agent 22 released a self-titled
CD and almost immediately
started playing out more around southern
California. We won a local
music contest and got asked to open for
a variety of touring acts.
We played at just about every street fair/festival
around San Diego
county. Ryan also got busier and busier
with B-Side players and I found
for awhile that to keep Agent 22 going
meant I had to frequently find
substitute drummers. Between about 2000
and 2003 or so that list
included players like Isaiah Ceccarelli,
Michael Cannon, Clay Hackett
and Darren DeBree. Some of them
were more experienced with rock
and some more with jazz. I often found
myself in a situation where we
had to get the music together quickly
and with maybe only one rehearsal
before a show or event, and since I do
mostly original music it was probably
not an easy gig for any of them (never
mind that there are frequent odd
meters, stops, starts and rubato sections).
I found though that since on
Stick I was controlling the bass lines,
the lead lines and the chordal
accompaniment as long as I was solid on
my own playing, I could help
coach them along with eye contact cues
or even an occasional verbal cue
mid-performance. Of course the songs that
had already been recorded
were easier for them to learn too since
they could reference the studio recordings.
.
In 2001, the
Agent 22 duo (with myself and Darren DeBree) opened for
both the California Guitar Trio
and later the Tony Levin Band. Opening
for CGT eventually led to me doing several
US tours with them, playing
solo as an opening act and sitting in
as a guest. During one of those
trips I met King CrimsonandMr
Mister drummer
Pat Mastelotto who had
just done an album with CGT as well. Opening
for Tony’s band, I’d also
recently met drummer Jerry Marotta.
All along I had been slowly writing
new material on the Stick, originally
thinking I would use it for a second
Agent 22 album, but as Ryan was still
unpredictably busy with B-Side
Players, I eventually decided to just
make it a “solo” album and decorate
it with different musical friends. Jerry
Marotta, Pat Mastelotto and Darren
DeBree all contributed drum and
percussion parts to different songs,
sometimes even working together. Their
styles are all amazingly different!
I feel lucky to have been able to approach
the different tracks in different
ways with them. Darren was always very
into fusion drumming and has
incredible hand speed and “chops”.
Pat is the best drummer on the planet
for orchestrating
acoustic and electronic sounds and loops and has an
incredible
heavy rock feel (Probably helps in King Crimson,
right?). Jerry
has one of the best time feels ever and
is a master at coming up with
unusual patterns often based around toms
or unusual acoustic instruments
like Taos drums.
.
While I was working
on that first solo album, Jerry and I embarked on
doing an album together
as the duo Marotta/Griesgraber.
It was a crazy period
for me... I spent several months living at Jerry’s
studio in upstate
New York working on that album, while trying to finish
my own record at
home in California, going on US tours with California
Guitar Trio
in-between and still maintaining regular solo and Agent 22
gigs at home as
well.
Things were so busy at one point, I actually
had two home recording setups,
one to work on for myself and one so that
other people could fine tune their contributions. “A Whisper In The
Thunder,” my first solo record came
out in June of 2004. It’s still
something I’m quite proud of. Jerry liked some
of the tracks he played on so much that
he wanted to use them on our duo
record. But I didn’t want to just repeat
myself, so… we re-recored my songs
Waking the Day and 77 Times for the Marotta/Griesgraber
album with
different arrangements. On “Whisper”
Jerry played small Taos drums
with his hands for the song Waking the
Day, but on the Marotta/Griesgraber
version he played full drum set, with
three snare drums, two floor toms
and timpani maracas (he called them rattle
mallets). On the “Whisper”
version of 77 Times, Darren DeBree
had played some super-tight
fusion-esque drums and Don Schiff actually
contributed some NS/Stick
parts. For the Marotta/Griesgraber
version Jerry played a much more
laid back groove and Tony Levin contributed
a low bass part.
Comparing the versions of 77 Times could
almost be a lesson in how
different drummers have different approaches
and “feels.”
.
In the “middle
2000’s”I found myself frequently playing my same songs
locally in southern California with Darren
DeBree and then around Italy,
Switzerland, France, the eastern
US and other points with Jerry Marotta.
It was maybe the best lesson on time feel
I’ve ever had. Jerry is immaculate.
He can hold a tempo with great precision,
probably because that’s what
used to make or break drummers in a recording
session pre-digital editing.
He tends to play a little behind the beat,
having grown up I think listening to
music from labels like Stax and Motown.
He blew my mind once when we
were recording 77 Times (the M/G version).
Having tracked a pattern,
while listening back to it, he said
“I think I need to push the snare on 7.”
At the time I’d probably never thought
about the fact that drummers
sometimes place different parts of the
kit or a pattern on different parts
of the beat. Meaning, any beat like 2,
4 or even 7 can be played in different
ways; behind, ahead, laid-back, pushed..
they can all be valid feels.
“Groove players” in rock styles tend to
place patterns slightly behind the
beat or a click track, but they might
push things for accents on say beats
2 and 4 or elsewhere. Fusion or jazz players
tend to push the feel more,
playing on top or maybe even slightly
ahead of the beat. So by doing shows
both with a great fusion player (Darren)
and a great groove player (Jerry)
I found myself having to adapt my own
time feel to better match them..
going behind the beat and then back on
top depending on who I was playing
with.
At home in Southern
California the "later 2000s" found me booking shows
as a duo sometimes
under my own name, which I still do. I've been lucky
to again find a
host of great players like Matt Smith, Clayton Payne, Gina
Ferrera and Sean
Rainey. Every one has their own musical style, feel and
personality. Matt
is a fantastic jazz player for example while Gina is primarily
a percussionist
who specializes in things like frame drums and mallet
instruments. Sean
is an incredible session musician I met through Berklee
College of Music
alumni circles (yet another school of mine). Sometimes
players ask me for
what I want on songs and sometimes they just surprise
me with where they
place accents or even what instruments they're using.
For a number of
years I also did tours in Italy with a drummer from Rome
named Andrea Ruta.
He's a fantastic player with a great laid back groove
and powerful feel
but he also sometimes incorporates some unusual sounds.
On one tour we did,
he kept asking every venue we went to that had a
kitchen if they
had a frying pan he could use. He would then use one or two
of them as almost
a weird ride cymbal (they were great but often very loud!)
Sometimes the changing
timbres can affect how I mix the Stick.
I run separate melody
side effects, bass side effects, melody side synth
and looping. A busier
player or a player with more happening in a higher
frequency range
might mean I wind up pushing the melody side a bit more
for example to help
the lead voice of a song cut through.
Somewhere around
2005 or so, Ryan Moran joined a band called Slightly
Stoopid, that he still tours with. Over
his first few years with them, they
went quickly from selling out maybe 500
seat venues to headlining shows
at 17,000+ seat outdoor venues. Interestingly
though, the band’s scheduling
is usually planned out a little more in
advance, so we started to be able
to play together a little more as Agent
22 again and I decided to just use
the name when it’s the two us specifically.
Having not played together
much for maybe a few years, when we did
play together it was almost like
a middle ground in time feel for me. Ryan
grew up playing rock, but studied
jazz in school, spent years in a salsa
band and now a reggae/rock/punk
band. But his time feel just seems a bit
more “center” of the beat often to
me. We’ve been making music so long together
now that he’s even learned
to anticipate sections of songs where
I might make a mistake and maybe
drop a beat and he finds ways to make
them sound right (haha). We’ve
both learned a lot through working on
different recording projects too.
When I put together music for my second
solo album “Sketchbook” Ryan
was happily available (along with Pat
Mastelotto again and a great straight
ahead jazz drummer named Michael Cannon).
Since then we’ve
worked together on many tracks for different
artists and also now two solo
albums for Ryan under the artist name
RyMo. His albums are incredible
tapestries of layered instrumentation,
as he likes to dive into all kinds of
world percussion. There’s acoustic drum
set, Australian didgeridoo,
latin percussion, middle eastern percussion,
electronic drums, African
percussion… he really loves to explore.
For me it’s a chance to not only
play Stick, but also guitar, bass and
some synths. His first album Structure
and Flow came out in 2009 and his
new album “Kinetic” will be out soon
(2020).
.
What’s the summary? Stick and drums can
be a very full sound, not unlike
a guitar, bass drums power trio. But in
truth drums can be a huge sound,
meant to back a much larger band. I think
it’s best to play with drummers
who are used to approaching their instrument
in different ways, not just
stock patterns. The Stick is so different
really, why have the percussive
accompaniment be something “standard”
so to speak? It’s great
too when
a player can hold
something in reserve at the start of a piece, like a
particular part
of the kit, maybe then bringing it in later. And obviously it’s
best to try to find a common time feel,
especially in the left hand (bass).
Playing with drums regularly though is
also a great way to just improve your
timing when playing solo and even to learn
when and where to maybe put
accents into the patterns you’re playing.
Hope that helps in your own music making!
|
Tom Griesgraber
Encinitas, CA - USA
August 2020..
|
.
.
.
Thanks Tom for sharing
your extensive experience with drummers.
I remember, years
ago, an interview with Guillermo Cides.
He said that the
ideal partner of a stick player is a drummer.
Epakta
.
. |
|
