THE B

LACK

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JANUARY 2009

Ed MannGodfathers of Drumming 4Legends Edition

THE BLACK PAGEJanuary 2009

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Feature Interview:Ed Mann

New Year, New Approachby Jayson Brinkworth

Ultimate Double Bass:by Ryan Carver

The Final Word

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Cover photo: www.scottmoorephoto.com

Ed Mann

W hat can I say except to revert to a shameless pun; Ed is, in fact, “the man.” Not only is he one of the world’s

most prolific percussionists, Ed is actually one of the percussionists on Zappa’s “The Black Page.”

Ed is also one of the most gentle and hum-ble human beings I have ever met. His pas-sion for music extends well beyond the need for accolades and ego trips. In addition to an impressive list of stage and studio accomplish-ments, his work now encompasses healing and holistic pursuits.

It’s not often we are able to sit face-to-face with someone who possesses the genius to have had an impact on the face of music-- as well as the resume to back up the status. Add to that the selflessness and good nature of a person you feel you have known your whole life.

I honestly wish I had the dexterity and typ-ing skills to transcribe the entire hour I spent talking with Ed, as I feel it pretty much equated to a full semester in college. Truth is, I walked away a better player and a better person, hav-ing soaked up Ed’s insight and humility. My hope for all of you is that you, too, will one day get to share the same privilege.

by Sean Mitchell

As a Zappa alum, what, in your opinion, set Frank apart from the rest of the industry?

If you just look at the lyrics, for example, you can’t take those lyrics literally. Ninety percent of it means nothing if you take it liter-ally. It’s all like a form of code. His father taught him about this, and he developed it himself into a sys-tem where you have signatures. He invented his own mythology to accompany the music. That’s different than most rock musi-cians—to have the mythology be that deep, and then the belief system that accompanies it. So you take all these signature Zap-pa things that appear throughout the music.

He talked about this once a little bit. He said, “You know, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like catalysts to give you a zing and upset your belief system, but to keep you into this mythology.”

Overall this is what I am start-ing to understand as I reflect back on all these experiences: Frank would never be happy if there was a comfort zone. His job as an artist, whether it was conscious or unconscious, was to upset that comfort zone. The comfort zones represented being satisfied with the status quo, and being satisfied with the status quo meant (good or bad) it was going to continue to exist such as it was. The artist’s job was to al-ways move things forward.

With Frank, it went so deep, as he wasn’t happy if your comfort zone was “loving his music.” That had to be upset.

There’s a piece he wrote for solo marimba called “Mo and Herb’s Vacation.” It hasn’t been realized yet; I can play it, it just hasn’t been recorded yet. It took five years [for me] to be able to play it accurately. It didn’t have any title. It was just a theme and he brought it in one day, handed it to me and said, “It’s this new thing I got that I’m working on. I just want to hear what it sounds like. I’m thinking of it as a solo marimba thing. Play it.”

So he puts it up on the music stand and I play through the first few phrases and we’re working it together, and after about fifteen minutes, when the phrases were connected, you could start to hear how it sounds. I said, “Frank, this is beautiful! It’s really nice. What’s it called?”

He pauses for a minute and goes, “It’s called ‘Blowjob’!”

And he snatches the music away and puts it in his file. He’s like, “Okay, let’s start the rehearsal.”

That little example was a thing of, oh you like my music? Well that’s a comfort zone and com-fort zones cannot exist and even if your comfort zone is “loving my music,” I’m going to upset it by giving it a name that’s contrary to the way the music sounds.

Can you give me an idea as to the type of mindset Frank had as an artist?

His family was the people he hired. He had two families: his bi-ological family and his other fam-ily who he spent the most time with (except toward the end), all the technicians and band mem-bers. He loved playing host, and what he loved more than anything was playing his music. But every-

Photo: Scott Moore/www.scottmoorephoto.com

thing always had to be about him, and it was about his music. You didn’t talk about anything else. If you did, it was only to be used so he could create new material about it. You’d bring up a subject and talk about it, next day, there’s a song. So he would gather this sociological kind of stuff.

At the risk of sounding too cliché, was Frank misunderstood?

He was such a genius at using his ego to gen-erate this absolutely brilliant music. I don’t know anybody that could do what he did as a com-poser. His incredible range of music… he was such a great entertainer, and such an amazing band leader. So efficient and he had so much fun.

I can’t listen to the music y’know, and it’s not that I don’t like it; I think it’s just that I’ve heard it so much and played it so much. I listen to mu-sic from Africa, and from India—music that is more about this communal type thing. That’s what I am into. But when I listen to Frank, I feel like I am being backed into a corner. But play-ing it, there is nothing more fun than playing it. So [when we were onstage] I always felt like the people that are having the most fun at this con-cert are the people on stage. It’s so much fun to play that music, and I never laughed harder than being onstage with Frank.

I’m still trying to figure him out. I can see now, in various threads of the fan community, that people are just starting to understand it. There’s more and more people that aren’t interested in imitating Frank. They don’t have identity prob-lems, they just dig the music and they under-stand him for the genius he was. They respect that like you would any other great composer. So here we are, years after his death, and I think people are just now starting to understand

Was the Zappa gig an easy one to get? How did you get it?

For me, it was easy to get. I didn’t even try. [Zappa] asked for an extra percussionist on the recordings of “The Black Page” and my friend John Bergamo, who had already worked with Frank, just dragged me along. So that was just Photo: Scott Moore/www.scottmoorephoto.com

one night in the studio, and we just played and did the [record-ing].

Then through a confluence of events, I met Ruth Under-wood. [Frank] was looking for a keyboard player (and my friend Tommy Mars had just moved to California).

Ruth calls me at midnight and says, “Frank needs a keyboard player.”

I said “I got just the guy, Tom-my Mars.”

So Ruth said, “Well, call Frank right now. He just got up which means he’s in a good mood. It’s midnight; he’ll be in a good mood ‘til like two in the morning. This is the time to call him. Call him right now.”

So I call him up and I said, “Frank, Ruth called me and asked me to call you regarding a key-board player. I got this guy. He’s so great.”

And [Frank] goes, “Ed Mann, Ed Mann. Oh, I remember you. What are you doing right now?”

I thought he meant these days. I said, “You know, I’m just playing gigs here and there.”

He said, “No, I mean now. What

are you doing right now?” So I said, “Nothing.” He says, “Come up to the

house right now. We’re having a jam session.”

So I went up there, and by the time I got up there it was one in the morning. [Frank had this] red velvet wallpaper and red lights, a marimba sitting in the middle of the room. Adrian Belew was there, Patrick O’Hearn was there.

It was too dark [in the room] to read the music and [Frank’s] got the music up on the stand.

He says, “Read this.” I said, “Well, I’m telling you,

especially in this lighting, I’m not a fast sight reader. I‘ll do what I can.”

So I kind of pieced it together, and then he said, “Now I’m going

to play something on the guitar, and you play it back on the ma-rimba.”

We did that not more than 90 seconds. The whole [jam] lasted not more than ten minutes. He goes, “Great. You wanna be in the band?”-- which is completely contrary, because normally there were cattle calls, and I saw them. Fifty people lined up for the key-board position.

I was making my money play-ing drum set at the time not mal-lets. It took two days for it to sink in. I’m like, Jesus, I’m the mallet player in Frank Zappa’s band! I’d better get serious about this mal-let shit, man.

What was your initial reaction when you saw the music for “The Black Page”?

I had played a lot of hard, what they called at the time, “contem-porary music,” contemporary chamber music. Stockhausen’s “Zyklus” is one of the more diffi-cult ones. But a lot of them had this difficult stuff, polyrhythms and polymeters and everything. I studied a lot of Indian music, so

Click here to visit ed online

Photo: Scott Moore/www.scottmoorephoto.com

the idea of polyrhythm is a no brainer. That’s all the training you do in Indian music is [polyrhythm’s].

I saw the music. I understood it’s like you gotta learn the opening phrase and figure out your stick-ings, and then you connect it to the next phrase and just keep going. It’s like choreography really.

All of Frank’s mallet parts, there’s parts where it’s just like, God didn’t make the hands to move in those directions. It’s not natural. I was a jazz player before then (on mallets), but it was just for my own fun. And still I get called to play Zappa festivals as a guest artist. I have to totally change my technique to play Zappa music. And then I have to bring my tech-nique back to play my own loose improvisational stuff. It took a couple decades to do [that] quickly.

What is it like to play along side a drummer like Bozzio?

I was a good drummer when I joined the band, but then I saw Bozzio play and I thought, that’s it for me and drums, man! I had no idea anybody could

do that. I’ve never seen anybody play like that. [Bozzio] wasn’t there when I auditioned; he was

still out on tour with the Brecker Brothers during that Heavy Metal Bebop tour. So when he returned (which was like a week later) we all got together at Frank’s house. I had met [Terry] when he joined Frank’s band and heard him play a little bit, but that was two years before. And I saw him play [that day at Frank’s house] and it was like, thank God I got the percussion position because, man, there’s no way. I thought I was a good drummer, and I guess I am within ranges, but I can’t do anything close to that. I just thought this surpasses even Billy Cobham in certain ways, and Billy Cobham was my hero!

I remember the first gig ever, first big rock ‘n’ roll gig in front of a lot of people, and Bozzio (a veteran in the band for four years at that point) just pound-ing it out like y’know, take no prisoners, every note like it’s the last one you’re gonna play, and coming off that stage, and just feeling like wow, man! It felt like being shot out of a cannon! As a percussionist there wasn’t room to interact [with Bozzio]. It was

more like playing orchestral type stuff and then letting him do his thing, and, then when the music would lighten up into verses or more constructed sections, then there was room to interact as a percussionist.

Your musical background is actually very broad, and Zap-pa encompasses a very small part of your musical history. One person in particular who must have been interesting to play with was John Cage. What was that experience like?

One of the great examples of [Cage’s music] is this composi-tion he has called “Four.” It’s writ-ten for four percussionists and they are multi-percussion parts. [He had] each part written, “have some metal, have some wood, have some dead sounds, have some ringing sounds, here’s high, here’s low, this kind of notation means short, this kind of notation means longer.” And it’s written out in what resembles traditional notation except that it’s not meter, and there’s no bar lines per se. There’s some but it’s not consis-tent.

He would always say, “This is as close as I can get in terms of notation because you have to create a score and pass it so somebody can get the idea.”

In celebration of his 70th birth-day [there was a concert]. So for this piece “Four,” I was one of the percussionists, and I was read-

ing [the score] literally. Y’know, big multi-percussion setup, really hard! I’m thinking, man, this is even harder than Frank’s music.

I finally got it together and we got together for the rehearsal. Cage flies in from New York. He’s very soft spoken, totally nice guy, the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. He says, “Okay, let’s hear ‘Four’.”

So we start. We’re not two bars into it and he says, “No, stop.” He goes over to me and says, “What are you doing?”

I said, “You tell me if I’m right or wrong, but I’m interpreting this like this.”

He goes, “No, no, no. It just goes like this.” And he just waves his hand in the air. He does this curve. “It goes like this.” He makes these graphic signs by waving his hands.

So I realize, oh it’s just impro-vising using these shapes as kind of a general road map. So I said, “Oh, you mean like this?” And I just played it improvisationally.

He said, “That’s perfect! Now I’ll play my part.”

This is just great insight into Cage.

He’s got this case, [I have no clue] is it a Sousaphone? Is it a weird French horn? I don’t know what this case is. He opens it up and it’s a cactus and he’s got piezo elements mounted at the bottom of each needle.

It’s a dry cactus and he says, “Where do I plug in?” So he plugs into the PA and this thing just

sounds amazing! All these nee-dles had a different pitch.

You are also a gongologist. How would you define “gon-gologist”?

Gonogologist is a substitute term for gong master. People say, Oh, you’re a gong master. I don’t go for that; the gong is the master. This is to do with holistic gonging. I do gonging for schizo-phrenic patients. I go to the psy-chiatric units, intensive care units, autistic kids, and a lot of work with the blind. So it’s holistic gonging, it’s healing work.

The whole point of the gong is a chance to let go of your own inner holding and just let those tones be the master. You’re al-lowing yourself to be supported by those tones. Gongologist kind of doesn’t mean anything except I do it a lot. I have a life-long in-tention of taking this instrument and using it as a healing tool and expanding beyond musicianship and performance in a music busi-ness to take this whole thing into the healing arts world.

How is a gong’s holistic use applied?

A good gong will sustain. The reason it can do that is because it’s an efficient physical form. There’s very little resistance in the form. We hold resistance in our body. If we’ve had a traumatic emotional experience or been in-jured physically, that is a form of trauma, and you kind of hold it in your body. But when you hear the gong it’s a reminder of efficiency, and it shuts down the part of your brain that evaluates. You’re just feeling it at a cellular level. It’s

“The thing you got t0

learn FIrst is to always

reinvent yourself”

used to work resistance out of the body, so it’s a very simple thing really.

I read recently that you are a big fan of Bob Dylan. Have you worked with him?

My friend has been his production manager for 25 years and [my friend] was with Zappa. That’s how I know him. Whenever [Dylan] is within a hundred miles, I go see him, so I‘ve seen all these Dylan

shows. But my friend always says, “You’re amazing. You’re the only guy out of everybody that’s never asked to meet Bob.”

Because Bob doesn’t want to meet anybody, he’s introverted. It’s like what happened to Jerry Garcia. It’s like you can’t stand to be Captain Trips forever and having everybody projecting at you, oh your Captain Trips, and falling all over you. Because in-side [he was] Jerry Garcia.

My friend says, “With Bob, we tried to go to a

restaurant once. In 25 years, we tried once; it lasted seven minutes.”

[They were] mobbed. So what Bob does, he has a bicycle he likes to

ride and he’s got many assistants. An assistant (at like two in the morning) will get a phone call, “Get the bike out.”

And Bob goes riding around the town wherever he is. Everybody’s asleep, he can go out. He’s not just enclosed all the time. That how he grabs his

freedom, that and swimming. [Bob] chain-smokes [and is] 67 years old. See him on stage; no problem to sing and no problem doing whatever he does. He just likes to tour forever. He’s an amazing guy. He’s inspiring to me.

You play an incredible amount of instruments. How many instruments can you play?

I don’t know. Any hand drum, including all the

stuff from Indonesia, Africa and India—the Middle Eastern hand drums. I am trained in Indian tech-nique and Afro Cuban technique. All the mallet in-struments, I play drums-- anything to do with sticks or percussion.

I’m pretty good on recorder and those block flute kind of instruments. I’m pretty good and get-ting better on lap steel. I’m an okay guitarist. Then the electronics, y’know, which is its own technique. Especially now that you can manipulate the control surfaces and inter-modulate things. Synthesis is its own art form. I’m always getting the latest gadgets and putting them in unique combinations.

They say it’s like the thing to keep the brain from going into atrophy. If you read [what the doctors say], they say do crossword puzzles, stimulate your brain, read a new map. For me what it is is always learning new music.

Speaking of electronics, it sounds like you had a very substantial career in sound design as well.

Yeah, for ten years I was E-mu’s primary pro-grammer. From 1995 until 2005, all their synthesiz-ers, I did all that, all that looping, recording all the samples, putting them together creating the sample sets. The Planet Earth modual, the MP7, Proteus... there’s others too, but it would depend who was the lead sound designer. Planet Earth was exclusively mine.

They were purchased by Creative which is a huge Chinese conglomerate. It was only 2006 they shut down their sound design department. All the work that I was doing is still going on. But now it’s hap-pening in India and China, just like all the other work where they pay $50 per day.

After all these years of playing and performing, what words of wisdom can you share with us from your experiences?

The thing you gotta learn first is to always reinvent yourself every day. Not get attached to what you’re doing. Be willing to let it go. Nothing is in our control. Be cool, get with it, learn it. You gotta be ready to reinvent yourself, otherwise you can’t survive as a musician. It can be really exhausting. On the other hand, it’s vitalizing.

Click here to visit www.drummerconnection.com

The most complete online drum community.

WORKING DRUMMER’S

BOOTCAMP

Featuring chris sutherland

Designed to get every drum-mer in shape to face any free-lancing challenge.

Click here to visit chris on the web

photo: www.myspace.com/meladeesheaphotography

H ere it is, December 25, and I am sitting in the airport getting ready to head to my in-laws for the holidays. As I sit here, I am thinking that

maybe I need to shake things up with my playing in 2009. This is not because I am unhappy with my playing, although more practice time would not hurt at all. This is because every once in a while I find that a change in setup, gear or other musical choic-es is necessary to keep me on my toes.

Let me start by saying that these changes will never hinder my ability to perform the music I play. In fact, some changes that have happened have actually made my playing more musical. I have a few ideas that will be my focus for the New Year, and these are what I want to outline in this month’s article. We all need to do this from time to time, and we needn’t be afraid of the “drumming shake up.”

For years now, I have found a four-piece setup to be the most comfortable. I will add pieces if the

music requires it, but this kit with hi-hats, a ride and two crashes suits me just fine.

In the past six months though, I have been find-ing that I use a five- or six-piece configuration more often (I know, I might be getting a little crazy here). I am digging the tonal options that I need for the mu-sic I have been playing as of late, but I am not a big fan of moving my ride cymbal for my second tom. I have also wanted to try not crossing my hands to play the hi-hat in the traditional way. I do play open-handed occasionally, but I am right-handed and al-ways will be.

While I am drumming, I like to move and almost dance to the music as I play. I have to keep this in mind, as I also like to have space in my setup for my dance moves. So now where do I start? How many toms do I want to use? How do I want to set them up? What do I do about the hi-hat situation? And do I need some new dance moves?

by Jayson Brinkworth

Here is what I have come up with. I know it might seem a little unorthodox, but in my twisted drum-ming mind, it makes sense and might even allow me to be more creative in 2009.

The basis of the kit is still kick and snare, as they are usually placed. No matter what size these drums are, my kick is always angled to my right slightly, and my snare height and angle haven’t changed in a long time—slight angle and the top of the drum is about thigh-high.

I have decided to use a five-piece kit, but with one rack tom and two floor toms. I have also de-cided to add a third crash/ride cymbal and a splash. Not an extreme change from before, but the way I am placing these in the setup will be the biggest difference.

I have decided to try using a cable hi-hat instead of a traditional stand. I am going to place my hats in the spot where I usually had tom one, directly in front of my snare. With the hats in this position, I can still play with both hands and have my right hand and arm in a very expressive and strong posi-tion. My hats will most likely be 15”, but again the music will determine this choice.

For the next change, my single rack tom will move to the left of these hats, a little closer to where the hi-hats would normally be. I will still be able to

play this tom with both hands, but my mobility to move around all toms with a single stroke roll will be changed a bit. This idea came to me as I was exam-ining my tendencies and how I play the drums. Most of the music I play does not require blazing single strokes around the kit, and most of my fills are small syncopated themes around the kit.

My floor toms will be 14” and 16”, although I may substitute a 13” for the 14” at times. They will sit in the normal position for now (on my right side), but I may move the smaller of the two to my left where my hi-hats would have been on a stand, putting it right beside my rack tom.

I know this might sound confusing, but it is ba-sically a four-piece kit with tom 1 and the hi-hats switched. Keep in mind that I am not changing this out of boredom; I am always looking for a way to be the most musically expressive.

For the cymbals, my 22” ride will still be in the same position. It will be in front and to my right, chest-high and angled slightly. Another difference is that my ride is now beside my hats, more expres-sion with these instruments. Now, for the crashes. My 20” with a 10” splash upside down will be in front of me and to the left. This is a normal position for this

cymbal, but I might try raising it up a bit higher than I nor-mally play it. My 18” crash will be on my

RackTom

Snare Floor1

Ride22”

Crash20” Splash

10”RemoteHi Hat

Floor2

Ride21”

Crash18”

right side, and may be raised to make room for the other cymbal I will be adding. My third cymbal (on the right) is going to be a 21” ride that is also a fan-tastic crash and will be next to the 22” ride.

In all of these changes, my biggest challenge will be getting used to the cable hi-hat. I am by no means the first one to play the hi-hats this way. Danny Carey from Tool is playing his hats directly in front of him, as well as Terry Bozzio and Mike Mangini.

Changing my setup is one way I am going to “shake it up.” My other change started last year and will continue in 2009. This has to do will altering my grip in pursuit of holding the sticks as loose as possible. This is also not a new idea. (See Freddie Gruber for a detailed, butt-kicking lesson on this concept).

The traditional fulcrum we are taught is between our thumb and our index finger on the middle knuck-le. I have played this way for years, and I really don’t have a problem with the grip, but I want to get more tone out of the drums. The only way I found this possible was to hold the sticks extremely loose and let everything resonate together. The sticks I use re-ally help in this, but moving my fulcrum was the key to getting the tone and feel that I was looking for.

I went from thinking about the thumb-index fin-ger fulcrum, to thinking about thumb and middle fin-ger being my pivot point. At first when people think about this idea they believe we are abandoning our index finger. This is not true at all. What we are do-ing is moving the stick contact on our index finger from the middle knuckle to our first knuckle. If you watch videos of Jeff Porcaro playing his high-hats, especially on Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forget-ting,” you will see why he is able to play the hats so fast and smooth with his right hand.

My friend T. Bruce Whittet wrote a great article recently on this very subject. And even though he received mail defying this idea, his point was to not be afraid of change and new ideas.

With all of these changes, there are a couple of things to remember. The music will always come first, no matter how much or how little gear we have. We can’t be afraid to try things a different way. It

will usually make us better musicians. We learn the most about drumming by taking the time to explore and take chances on our kits while we practice, and there is more than one way to get your ideas across in the music you are playing.

I challenge you to give your playing a “shake up.” I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised.

JAYSON BRINKWORTH IS AN ACCOMPLISHED DRUMMER, PERCUSSIONIST, VOCALIST,EDUCATOR & WRITER.

CLICK ON HIS IMAGE TO LINK TO HIS WEBSITE.

If you keep egg shakers in your garage and the occa-sional “egg off” breaks out between two friends,

you might be a drumgeek.

by Ryan Carver

Ryan Carver is a member of the Academy of Drums faculty, the Vic Firth education team and PASIC. Click either link below to visit him on the web or to email Ryan your questions and groove requests.

www.carverdrums.com www.myspace.com/ryancarver

ULTIMATE DOUBLE BASS

Here is another page from my upcoming double bass book Ultimate Double Bass. These exercises I have been shedding lately and are really improving my control, speed, and power. Here we use various foot patterns shifting from eighth notes to sixteenth notes. Start slow, making sure you have each pat-tern correct, then build up the speed. Always play each one for as long as you can.

THE FINAL WORD