Magic

Track #6 on evolution is “Magic.” It’s called “Magic” because I couldn’t name it “That little light bulb that seems to go on behind someone’s eyes when you’ve gotten through to them in teaching.” I’m certain that anyone who has ever been–and remained–a teacher has experienced this feeling: a moment of pure communication, a moment where you feel that everything you do, everything you experience, everything you endure, is justified.

Recorded October 1, 2006, “Magic” is the first song on this album from what I call the conga era. The tracks up to this point featured percussion I had programmed in–by hand–on a Boss DR-670 drum machine. Often, I would program in a basic track, then play accents (such as cowbell, cymbals, etc.) manually.

This was, to say the least, aggravating. I wanted to learn to play trap drums (Ha! I happen to know in French that’s called une batterie). But there are some major problems:

• For some reason, though I’ve been told “tap your foot” my whole life for keeping time, I can’t. I have tried. It just doesn’t work. Instead, I tend to sway back and forth as I play, and that keeps me on beat. I don’t know why my legs don’t function when I’m playing music. But that means my future as a trap drummer is sort of limited.  And . . .
• My wife puts up with a lot. But I’m pretty certain a constant rain of bang, tish, ba-bang, tish would try even her patience.

On the other hand, I know I have a lot of natural rhythm (from the waist up, anyway). What to do?

Then came Poncho Sanchez. I’ve always liked latin jazz, and even delved into latin bass playing. When I discovered Poncho, I suddenly thought to myself, “that’s it.” The conga drum is tunable to definite pitches, and using the hands properly, it is possible to get a range of sounds out of the drum–so many it sounds like more than one drum is playing at times. I got hooked on the sound and learned how to play.

“Magic” has a conga drum track on it. Of course, I laid the sound layers on pretty thick on this tune–I wanted the entire thing to swirl around like some sort of insane version of row, row, row your boat. You can hear the congas, but they don’t stand out of the mix: in those days, I was still experimenting with setting up the congas for recording.

I’ve gotten much better now. So much so, I’m already recording my next album entirely with “natural” percussion–congas, cowbells, maracas, etc. Not a drum machine to be found!