The Prince Of Swords

Between starting to read Godel, Escher, Bach… AGAIN (a super brain bender about Strange Loops) and listening to “How to Think Like Leaonardo da Vinci”, I decided to play with music/time this weekend.

About a year ago my favorite music store in SA, Hermes Music, sold out to Guitar World. Since I’ve bought a lot of light gear from them, they dropped me a post card letting me know they were having a sale. I went there looking for some XLR cables, speaker stands, and some new lights for Halloween but I ended up carrying out an M-Audio Trigger Finger(a USB midi drum pad controller) and a set of conga drums. Conga drums? Yep. DRUMS!

So I used to bedroom DJ techno/house parties in Indiana and got really into tribal house. DJing gave me a musical outlet although I can’t sing or play an instrument so I’m not sure how strong an urge it could really have be satisfying. Then there’s drums, the beat of the whole show, those low frequency grooves that grab you by the chest an pull you in. Plus, one of my favorite scientists, Richard Feynman, used to play bongos in the desert to go think about problems Considering he was playing with subjects like Quantum Electrodynamics, I imagine he became a good drummer for a physicist.

I’d also Amazon-ed some Conga books so I flipped through them to see which one made the most sense. So using Conga Drumming by Alan Dworsky, Garage Band, my Trigger finger, and my Congas, I set to learn a little drumming.

Here’s what I did.

The Conga book has a nice abstract notation to learn with which was perfect for me since I have no musical training, at all. It looks like this:

Rhythm 1-1: Calypso high drum part
| 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
  0   0           0   0
  R   L           R   L

This means on up-beat 1 in 4/4 time, play an open tone, with your right hand. Simple to read. Me likey. The book came with a CD where the dude plays each rhythm in the book (175 total), but they aren’t recorded so you can loop them. I have two programs that would let me make loops, Ableton Live 6 (free version with the Trigger finger) and Garage Band (free with my MacBook). Turns out to use Ableton Live, I’d need to learn a lot of stuff. Like most things Apple, when I plugged in my Trigger Finger, Garage Band just worked.

After reading a little bit of the Garage Band Help, I was able to add a new track, use the Jazz Drum Kit, and create the beat pattern for Rhythm 1-1. Then I just set the pattern to loop and drummed along with it. Kinda cool. Now I just have to practice for the next ten years.

I’m thinking about grabbing the Garage Band Jam Pack: World Music since it may have a Conga Drum Kit in it. The Jazz Kit works, but I’m faking the open tones, slaps, and bass tones by adjusting the velocities, where it might be more important to use more accurate Conga drumming sounds to learn the complex patterns later in the book.

One and Two and Three and Four and… Rock out!