Leonard Smalls

That's jazz, baby! Though not your square non-hep living-in-the-past melodic bourgeois nonsense - this will be ART; and great ART is about suffering - both for the performer and for the audience. Especially for the audience! And any keeping to a rigidly enforced-by-the-man time is either a) purely coincidental or b) to show how free the ART is when not adhering to Society's Norms. And the problem with drummers, not being musicians, is that they just see the black and white of strict (arguably!) time and not the great array of possibility that is Great ART!!! 😁😜🤪

I'm quite looking forward to gigs where drum set=up consists of plugging in the laptop, booting up EZ Drummer, connecting to Focusrite interface/PA and pressing play. More room for us all on stage, no more drummer only soundchecks, no more sulking cos he's forgotten the most important Turkish Ride though he already has 4 others and hi-hat, no more speeding up (it's never slowing down), no more overcomplicated fills that last 3 beats too long, no more splash cymbal making everyone deaf... 😁😎

I think I'm a touch better off not gigging... I no longer have to fill the car with diesel, drive 2 hours to play for 45 minutes to 20 people (it used to be 10 max!) then repack the motor and drive home all to put £50 (max!) In the band's coffers (unless it was a benefit, which they often were). Since The (1st) End of the World we've had quite a lot of radio airplay without having moved from home, and we've started rehearsal without drummer (shielding) using EZ drummer and sequencers. As a result we're in time, there's no interminable fills every 4 bars or cymbals drowning everything out, and will only need 1 car for future gigs!

I made a reasonable one out of some stiff wire and a pair of my Mrs' old tights...

Just love that GoGo beat!

I've done one! I looked at the pic, and it struck me as indistinct, lacking in clarity... Which got me to thinking about how folks search for meaning in stuff, and how that meaning, whether it's religion, politics, art etc becomes their identity - how they hide themselves within it. So as it was all a bit Philosoftickle I felt it should in German, as all great philosophy is (😁), and hence a bit industrial. I apologise for my literal and occasionally meaningless German! And for those who don't speakadalanguage, "Versteckspiel" means Hide and Seek... All recorded/mixed in Ableton using Loopcloud Play synths, Mr EZ on drums, glitch percussion programmed from Abstract kit and bass is an ACG.

Talking of jazzy funky stuff, can't go wrong with Steve Coleman and his 5 Elements (Reggie Washington on bass) Or James Carter and his sax chords with the Philly Funk section of Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Calvin Weston, getting all Harmolodic with Marc Ribot on crazy guitars

Or perhaps a touch of Rock Candy Funk Party:

If you like the jazzier side of funky you won't go far wrong with just about anything by the Nils Landgren Funk Unit. Or just trawl through this thread:

I'm heading towards a sort of technofunk in German!

Some Scousers...

Bit of early 80s New York No Wave - you can't be funky if you haven't got a soul!

Instead of a simple drum screen we'll need full band-screens! Or maybe now's the time to do a Spinal Tap tribute?

First time we played to a full Marquee Club was pretty good... But in terms of "Kwality", my old improvisational jazz band once decided to do a live thing on the roof of the studio the guitarist lived in in Shoreditch. While we didn't have any songs and everything was improvised we had the (possible!) advantage that the drummer and I had played probably 300+ gigs together with our other band, and he was proper funky. So we started playing - simple funky groove, occasionally slapped and occasionally Bootsy-wah-bass, with African percussion, Marc Ribot-a-like guitar and horn players who also played with Lol Coxhill (i.e. crazy every note possible). And before the Police turned up 4 hours later to stop us there were a hundred or so people dancing in front of the pub below (Bricklayer's Arms), windows opposite were lined with people hitting congas, tambourines and nobody threw anything at us!

One of my favourites (RIP Manu!)

After a bit of looking about I've discovered that the audio cues app for Android would do the basic job. BakTrax pedal for £135 would do it more robustly, and a Roland SD12 trigger pad would allow separate stereo output with synced cue track at >£200... Any more thoughts or experiences?

Our band have decided we might experiment with a more Ministry type feel to go with our punkfunk vibe... Which means either a keyboard player(unlikely!) or backing tracks (which I'll make - sequency rhythm guitar, hard synth stabs etc). So does anybody else use them? How best to trigger them (it will be entire song length tracks not just samples)? And from what? I've got Ableton on a laptop which can trigger clips, but not sure it can play them at different speeds (we're ranging from 90-160bpm) as well as a separate click feed that doesn't go to main output... Any thoughts appreciated!

I've finished mine... And it's about not taking any guff from bigots! It's inspired by the time Barf Roco played the Jericho Tavern in Oxford. After the sound check the band went out for some chips, and when we came back we saw a terrified local chap running for his life down the road; he was being pursued by one of the Bromley Boyz in full wig/headscarf/housecoat regalia waving an iron bar and shouting "we're from f@@ckin' Laaaaahnden!!!!" I've used that very phrase on a number of occasions as an excuse for bad behaviour 😅 Anyway, song features 2 x AAS synths, drums programmed through EZ drummer, bass is my trusty Wal pretending to be a sequencer with distortion from a Darkglass tube distortion pedal, guitar solo is also the Wal through Bias FX free and vox are by me (sorry) with added valve distortion to make sure you hear less of it... And sorry again ☠️

Almost finished - there's even "singing"! I'd better start apologising now...

Just so you know, this is the band they were all jumping about to... 😏

Aye! Don't know if it's going to be put off till Rebellion next year!