It seems a near-impossibility that you can buy something in a store today that has (as of this post) ZERO google footprint, but I found it. On a recent trip to Buke at the Music Center on James St., I picked up the cymbal/chime/bell/thing below. The only identifiers on this 6" core of a heavy ride cymbal are the cursive TM'ed text that looks like "Zenero" and a pure tone that can be easily discerned from background noise for a minute or more (and you can feel the air buzzing just around it as it rings).
A post to the drummerworld forum (drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84143) simply confirmed my attempts to find info about this thing, making the drummerworld post and this blog currently "it" for info, which remains either the best or worst marketing gimmick on the internets today, with my suspicion still leaning to the former.
And, furthermore, speaking of cymbals, I bought this around the same time the planet lost one of the great independent cymbal makers in Roberto Spizzichino.
[Drafted as an article for somewhere, stuck here instead…]
You could spend your life on the first six pages of "Stick Control" and still not cover all the possibilities. Dynamics, accents, foot-hand, foot-foot, fast/slow, hands on top of foot patterns, feet on top of hand patterns, regroupings and accenting in 5-7-4 (regrouping of the 16 strokes per pattern), 7-5-4 (re-regrouping of the 16 strokes), yadda yadda. If you see the first six pages of Stick Control as just exercises, you miss the fantastic complexity YOU can introduce to constantly humble yourself while hovering over a practice pad.
As I look at the sets of exercises, I see what I assume most of us do – paradiddles, singles, doubles, multiple-hits of the same stick, some oddball patterns you start playing as written and then mess up without knowing, etc. The question I found myself asking was "What drove Stone to use this particular sequence?" I eventually turned that question around and decided to answer the question "What did Stone leave out?" The PDFs linked to this article are what I've affectionately come to call the "Stone Boulder," providing EVERY sticking combination Stone included and every other combination he didn't. Some intro to how and why is below, followed by a bit of explanation. I think the patterns themselves are self-explanatory.
While not the most cite-able examples in all of genomics, there have always been passing references to drumming "being in someone's DNA." As it happens, drumming and biology did overlap in general approach during the mid-80's-to-early-90's (or so) in the great heyday of linear drumming (go dig out your Murray Houllif and Gary Chaffee books). The idea is simple: no two drums/cymbals hit at the same time, producing an often staccato and generally (well, to my ears anyway) more melodic sound from the drums (and much easier to transcribe than some of the superhuman overlapping rhythms people are having fun playing today). Ignoring the complexities of 3.5 billions years of evolution, DNA works the same way as these linear patterns to convey a message. The four bases in your DNA, A (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine), and T (thymine), act as a code that is read like those old drum beats were played – one at a time with no doubling-up please. The identical three million base-long DNA sequences in each of your cells (see CSI) could be turned from seemingly random patterns of [A,C,G,T] into seemingly random patterns of [L,R,B,H] (that's left hand, right hand, bass drum foot, hi-hat foot), then some experimental linear drumming composer could "play" your genome. Better still, if the transcriber was as good as your cellular machinery, the entire performance could be written down and reconverted into [A,C,G,T] format exactly so you could be cloned and double-drum with someone who rushes and slows down just as much as you do.
While most people think of a drum programmer as someone who generates patterns on a computer, I took the route of programming to generate patterns to drum. I most certainly did NOT put the pattern pages together by hand (I promise, no mistakes). A small script in the Perl programming language used to generate DNA sequences did all of the dirty work (including making sure all patterns only appear ONCE in each document). The math for figuring out the total number of left/right patterns is quite simple. The number of combinations of unique sticking patterns for a particular pattern length is 2^n, n being the number of beats. For a single beat, that's 2^1, or just 2, that single hit being performed with either the left or right hand. For a four-stroke pattern, that's 2^4 (2 * 2 * 2 * 2), or 16 total patterns. These are shown below out of academic interest (although I hope you could write them down from memory).
Now, consider the first six pattern pages of the Stone book. 16 beats per pattern. That's 2^16, or 65536 total patterns. At 20 patterns per page, the complete Stone book of these first six pages would take up 3,277 pages. At 2 seconds per pattern, you could rip through all 3,277 pages in about 36 hours 30 minutes (about the perceived length of a society gig).
For you fellow jazzers out there looking for a more swingin' set, I've also included the same sticking deal with a triplet-feel set (12 beats instead of 16, so you've only got 4096 patterns to contend with, meaning you could play through the whole set in about 2 hours 30 minutes).
4,096 patterns are bad enough. 65,536 is borderline something uncouth. On the one hand, that's a lot of patterns either way. On the other, for the obsessive compulsive readers, these are IT. There are no other 12- or 16-stroke sticking combinations that have a stick hitting on each beat (that is, no rests). As Terry Bozzio has said in one form or another in his many clinics introducing his ostinato independence exercises "once you've played through the 16, you've played every 16th note pattern there is."
And it could be worse! If you wanted every combination of left, right and rest, that's 3^16, or 43,046,721 patterns. At 2 seconds per pattern, that's 23,915 hours, or about 2 years and 8 months. I pondered doing the same thing for all 16-note linear drum patterns (L,R,B,F), which would produce 4^16, or 4,294,967,296 patterns. That's 2,386,093 hours, or 272 years and 3 months (that's approaching four reincarnations of "no life").
Each full page has three columns of 40 patterns (120 per page), producing a document that's only 547 pages long (but entirely green-friendly in PDF format). You will note that most of the pages look like the same stupid thing. This is because the mechanism of generation for the sequences involved making single changes at a single position and walking down the entire 16-stroke sets until all changes had been accounted for. I become bored to tears staying on a single page and generally scroll at random and point the stick at the screen to pick a pattern to play. Be as methodical or all-over-the-map as you will.
Is there a good reason for doing this? Not particularly. There are lots of patterns here that are a mechanical challenge for your arms, but many (many, many) of these patterns do not immediately lend themselves to the funk-ability of some of the Stone patterns (which tend to at least have groupings that, again, reflect rudiments or make you work one limb preferentially in a "usable" way). They are here mostly for completeness and, for when you want to confuse your limbs, picking a page or more at random and seeing how the patterns feel. As independence exercises teach us very early on, our brains are wired for preferential patterning (you hit the same foot as you would hand, you're non-dominant hand sucks, your hi-hat foot is born useless, and other revelations). This document is simply another PDF you can lose on your machine somewhere or have in that hidden work folder that comes out and gets an intense few looks as you try to split your left and right hands apart more.
And, it should be obvious, the same applies for your feet.
Having fought through enough of the combinations, I began to notice something I'm sure all of us have encountered as we approach that hypnotic state of cruising through a pattern we "get." Some patterns feel really good to play, but only after you've internalized them enough to "play something else," like feeling an odd clave or taking the patterns with many doubles of one hand and ripping them into a bounce-driven frenzy (or, invariably, playing one pattern we love to play to find out it's a pattern you heard and memorized in a more musical context on record). The one benefit I've found from having this PDF around is that I have all of the patterns in one place, which makes me think harder about the different ways to play the patterns (although that is only a fringe benefit). If you treat them like a journey and not just the first 5 minutes of your warm-up routine, I suspect you could spend your life on any one page and still not cover all of the bases.
On October 4, a concert is planned with "The Excelsior Cornet Band". "The Excelsior Cornet Band" is New York State's only authentic Civil War brass band. Founded in 2001, the band consists of a group of upstate New York musicians who are dedicated to the performance of original Civil War music on actual antique brass band instruments of the 1860's period. They will be performing their Abraham Lincoln Program on Sun., Oct 4 at 2 pm on the second floor of the Library.
With my trusty Olympus LS-10 (Linear PCM) Recorder set to PCM (44.1kHz/16bit) mode (additional settings: Low Cut OFF, Mic Sensitivity HIGH, recorder placed on the drums side of the band 20 feet away from any instruments) and my Canon Powershot SD780 IS (digital ELPH) set to HD video mode (the only canon in attendance), I managed to capture an official bootleg of a Civil War Band in performance, certainly one of the few in history. Regretfully, the video is only of the first 25 minutes of the performance.
Our fearless leader Jeff Stockham provided a considerable amount of text about the occasion and the music of the occasion (as 2009 is, now was, the bicentennial year of President Abraham Lincoln's birth) that I decided was best retained in the full recording. As this was too much to type out (and it is quite clear in the recordings anyway), I have included brief comments on the pieces in the concert below with relevant links to web content about pieces, original performers, and significant historical figures.
The set list is below. The full MP3 album (320 kpbs) of the performance is available for download at the link "1" below (all song and album data should appear with an import to iTunes or related). In .tar.gz format. Most modern operating systems will open this file automatically to provide the .mp3 files. If not, I suspect you're running an older version of Windows and should, therefore, download 7-Zip, Winzip, or related. Link "2" contains the unseperated MP3 audio of the concert (the talk between music is hard to hear. The .tar.gz file has the spoken sections amplified). Link "3" is of the .mov file of the first 25 minutes of the performance (much faster if you download to desktop). For both the MP3 and MOV files, please save to your own machine instead of streaming from my website (right-click over the link and "Save As," "Save Link As," etc.).
Henry Clay Whitney's recollection of a comment from Abraham Lincoln – all other pleasures had a utility, but that music was simply a pleasure and nothing more, and that he fancied that the creator, after providing all the mechanism for carrying on the world, made music as a simple, unalloyed pleasure…. This text is copied from www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org.
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." – Abraham Lincoln's close of his first inaugural address.
03. Introduction to "Old Joe Hooker Quickstep" – 2:37
Joseph Hooker (left) and Robert E. Lee (do you really need him pointed out?). Both photos are attributed to Mathew Brady, although the Hooker photo may be by Levin C. Handy.
The Wide Awake Quickstep, possibly performed on 11 September 1860 for a meeting of "The Wide Awakes," is from Schreiber's Albany Cornet Band, which was organized 12 June 1860. Information about the Wide Awakes is available at wikipedia.
An engraving of a Wide Awake's 1860 rally.
A Wide Awakes website also exists for an organization that claims to be of the order of the original movement (someone can confirm or deny this accordingly). This can be found at www.wideawakes.net.
07. Introduction to "Meditation: 20 Years Ago" – 2:54
08. Meditation: 20 Years Ago – 3:07
"That tune is enough to make an E-flat cornet player dizzy." – Jeff Stockham
This medley was arranged by George Holton Goodwin. "20 Years Ago" is reported by Ward Hill Lamon to be Lincoln's favorite piece of music. The piece "20 Years Ago" was written by William Willing in 1856. "Ever Of Thee" was written by Foley Hall and George Linley in 1852. A link to sheet music (and a snippet of audio) can be found at the National Library of Australia website at catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1683158. A copy of the cover is shown below.
The quickstep version performed here is attributed to the Manchester Massachusetts Cornet Band (there also exists a Manchester New Hampshire Cornet Band if you google around. Accept no Manchester imitations! That said, there is a complete history of the Manchester New Hampshire Cornet Band from 1890 available in PDF format (as well as the usual browser-friendly format) at google books: books.google.com/books?id=5PBYAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false).
Another piece by George Holton Goodwin titled "Door Latch Quickstep" can be found at www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/audio/music2.cfm. The tune is near the bottom of the top-fifth of the website. A copy of the provided MP3 from the Library of Congress is provided locally HERE.
10. The Irish Medley: The Sprig of Shillelagh, Rakes of Mallow, and Lament of the Irish Immigrant – 2:43
The alternate name for "Lament of the Irish Immigrant" is "I'm Sitting On The Stile, Mary." The Irish Medley is from The Squire's Brass Band Olio. I've found precious little online about the music and the band, but direct you to the following few links for some additional information:
Adelina Patti 1843-1919, Spanish Opera Singer. From wikipedia.org.
From the wikipedia entry for Adelina Patti: "In 1862 she sang John Howard Payne's Home, Sweet Home at the White House for Abraham and Mary Lincoln, who were mourning for their son Willie, who had died of typhoid. The Lincolns were moved to tears and requested an encore. This song would became associated with Adelina Patti. She performed it many times as an encore by popular request."
It probably was in this room that singer Madame Patti came to visit with and sing for the Lincolns. She said later that "we were received by Mrs. Lincoln in one of the big parlors. The President's wife was a handsome woman, almost regal in her deep black and expansive crinoline, only an outline of white at throat and wrists. Her manner was most gracious without a particle of reserve or stiffness. 'My dear, it is very kind of you to come to see us,' she said. Taking both my hands in hers and smiling in my face, she added,'I have wanted to see you… to see the young girl who has done so much, who has set the whole world talking of her wonderful singing.'" After several songs, Madame Patti accompanied herself on the piano while singing, 'The Last Rose of Summer.' She realized afterwards that she had "made an awkward choice.' Mary has "risen from her seat and was standing at a window in the back part of the room with her back toward me. I could not see her face but I knew she was weeping." Mr. Lincoln then requested 'Home Sweet Home."
Historian David Rankin Barbee wrote that her accompanist "did not know the air, and Patti, who knew it, did not know the words, and had never sung them. Seeing her dilemma, 'the President rose from his seat, went quickly to a small stand at the foot of the piano, took from it a small music book, with a vivid green color, and placed it on the piano rack, opened to the music of Home, Sweet Home. Then he returned to his seat without a word and resumed his former posture. 'Well, I sang the song the very best I could do it,' Patti concluded,'and when Mr. Lincoln thanked me his voice was husky and his eyes were full of tears. By that time I was so wrought up over the situation myself that I was actually blubbering when we were taking leave of the recently bereaved parents.'"
Charles Gounod in 1859, the same year as the first performance of Faust. From wikipedia.org.
For another take on the Soldier's Chorus, I refer you to youtube:
15. Introduction to "Old Hundredth" – 4:20
16. Old Hundredth – 1:34
"Old Hundredth" refers to Psalm 100, "All People That on Earth Do Dwell," put to music (possibly first) in 1551 in Pseaumes Octante Trois de David, from the second edition of the collection of metrical psalms in the Genevan Psalter (the music itself is attributed to French composer Loys Bourgeois).
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell;
Come ye before Him and rejoice.
In combination with the text from the performance, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is provided in its entirety below (using his aptitude for impact and brevity as a metric, Lincoln would have made one helluva blogger). I remember Carlos Moroz memorizing this for our 4th Grade English class (I had picked a section of George Washington's Farewell Address) and thinking it was pretty good (well, it was 4th Grade).
So brief, the photographer only caught Lincoln as he sat down. From wikipedia.org.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate…we can not consecrate…we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Quest for Sound curator Jay Allison unearthed a unique recording: the voice of William V. Rathvon, who as a nine-year-old boy, watched and listened to Abraham Lincoln deliver his address at Gettysburg in November 1863. The story was told in 1938 and recorded on a 78 r.p.m. record.
A family in Pallatine, Illinois shared this recording with us via our Quest for Sound phone line. Rathvon was a distant relative. No other Gettysburg eyewitness is known to have recorded their memories on record.
And, for even more Civil War-specific information, check out the content at Old Hundredth Press (www.oldhundredthpress.com).
17. Introduction to "Dixie's Land" – 3:18
18. Dixie's Land – 1:38
Yes, that "Dixie's Land," famous enough that it has its own wikipedia page (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_%28song%29). According to the record, this piece was written with 48-hours notice by Daniel Decatur Emmett in September, 1859, with the first reported performance by Bryant's Minstrels, a famed blackface minstrel troupe [the blog author shakes his head] from New York City.
The historical record reports the following about the most significant performance of this piece, requested by Lincoln upon the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox.
"General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865. The next day, despite rain and mud there were some 3,000 people in the streets celebrating. Crowds serenaded President Lincoln throughout the day. "At length," wrote a reporter for the Washington paper Daily National Intelligencer, "after persistent effort, the presence of Mr. Lincoln was secured. Three loud and hearty cheers were given, after which the President said:
‘FELLOW CITIZENS: I am very greatly rejoiced to find that an occasion has occurred so pleasurable that the people cannot restrain themselves. [Cheers.] I suppose that arrangements are being made for some sort of a formal demonstration, this, or perhaps, to-morrow night. [Cries of `We can't wait,' `We want it now,' &c.] If there should be such a demonstration, I, of course, will be called upon to respond, and I shall have nothing to say if you dribble it all out of me before. [Laughter and applause.] I see you have a band of music with you. [Vocies, `We have two or three.'] I propose closing up this interview by the band performing a particular tune which I will name. Before this is done, however, I wish to mention one or two little circumstances connected with it. I have always thought `Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. [Applause.] I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. [Laughter and applause.] I now request the band to favor me with its performance.'"
"In accordance with the request, the band struck up `Dixie,' and at its conclusion played `Yankee Doodle,' the President remaining at the window mean-while. The President then said: `Now give three good hearty cheers for General Grant and all under his command.' These were given with a will, after which Mr. Lincoln requested `three more cheers for our gallant Navy,' which request was also readily granted. The President then disappeared from the window, amid the cheers of those below. The crowd then moved back to the War Department, and loud calls were again made for Secretary Stanton."
Less than a week later, Lincoln was dead."
19. Introduction to "Honor To Our Soldiers" – 3:25
20. Honor To Our Soldiers – 2:35
"When I leave the stage for good, I will be the most famous man in America" – John Wilkes Booth at Taltaval's Saloon.
The play's most famous performance came seven years later, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. Halfway through Act III, Scene 2, the character Asa Trenchard (the title role), played that night by Harry Hawk, utters a line considered one of the play's funniest:
"Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old man-trap…"
During the laughter that followed this line, John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor who was not in that night's cast of Our American Cousin, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln. Familiar with the play, he chose this moment in the hope that the sound of the audience's laughter would mask the sound of his gunshot. He then leapt from Lincoln's box to the stage and made his escape through the back of the theater to a horse he had left waiting in the alley.
21. Introduction to "Abraham Lincoln's Funeral March" – 1:52
22. Abraham Lincoln's Funeral March – 4:14
Abraham Lincoln's Funeral March was composed by Christoph H. Bach of Milwaukee, WI. You can read a little more (and see him) at csumc.wisc.edu/exhibit/MusicTour/GAMBands.htm. There is some remarkable photography from this time, with a few selected pieces from google image searches and wikipedia.org below.
You can find pictures of some of the equipment (and generally snoop around about band stuff) at www.excelsiorcornetband.com/wst_page2.html. Damian Allis – Playing an 1850's bass drum made by Blodgett & Bradford of Albany, NY
John Allis – Playing an 1850's snare drum made by Edward Brown of Albany, NY
Al Thompson – Playing an 1855 o'er-the-shoulder E-flat bass saxhorn tuba made by Charles A. Zobish and Sons of NY
Loyal Mitchell – Playing an over-the-shoulder B-flat baritone horn with Berliner-style piston valves. Imported from Europe by J. Howard Foot of NY (1865-70)
Dickson Rothwell – Playing an over-the-shoulder E-flat alto horn. Imported from Europe
David Driesen – Playing an 1870 rotary valve side-action B-flat cornet made by The Boston musical instrument manufacturer Eldridge G. Wright
Lee Turner – Playing an 1868-1870 side-action E-flat rotary valve cornet made by D.C.Hall and Benjamin F. Quimbey
Jeff Stockham – Playing an 1866 (it's on the bell) cornet made by Hall and Quimbey of Boston. We know even more about this particular instrument: "Presented by the members of the Brooklyn Cornet Band to Amos H. Bangel, leader, October 11 1866." That is, for the record, the Brooklyn Cornet Band of Brooklyn, CA.
24. Introduction to "Battle Hymn Quickstep" – 2:29
25. Battle Hymn Quickstep – 2:06
Always end strong. The lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic were written (partly in a dream) by Julia Ward Howe and put to the music of "John Brown's Body," who you may remember from the beginning of Ken Burn's epic The Civil War (I had to fit Ken Burns into the post somewhere). The music for "John Brown's Body" was originally written/collected by William Steffe in 1856 for a song containing the opening verse "Say, brothers, will you meet us / on Canaan's happy shore?" A copy of the original first-printing of the poem from the Atlantic Monthly is provided below from wikipedia.org.
While there, McCabe and his fellow prisoners learned of Lee's defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. To celebrate, they sang every national song they knew, including Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic." After a few resounding choruses of "Glory, glory, hallelujah!" the guards put a stop to the singing.
Finally, it would not surprise me that several errors or misrepresentations may have made their way into my text. As I suspect at least a few heavy-duty Civil War nuts will find their way to this page, please do not hesitate to contact me with insights, comments, or lambasting. I'll be happy to make changes and acknowledge accordingly. Huzzah!
