This past weekend, while clearing out one of the bedrooms in my house to make way for a nursery (yes folks, there's a little Gruss set to drop in December), I stumbled upon an old shoebox containing dozens of old cassette tapes from my years at Berklee. A literal time capsule back to 1996-2000, these tapes captured everything from late night jam sessions in 150 Mass Ave, board tapes from various gigs with Jonah Smith, instrumental funk tracks featuring a classmate named John, and most important...
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This morning, while eating a delicious bowl of oatmeal and listening to Billy Cobham's classic album, "Spectrum", I realized that I haven't posted an odd meter loop in quite awhile. The whole intent of this blog is to record and write about as many musical genres as my baby soft hands can handle. I can't just cater to the pop songwriters and dance producers... I also need to show the fusion crowd a little love as well. As the final few measures of "Red Baron" faded out, I pounded my third cup...
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Every winter, when I travel home to West Des Moines, Iowa to celebrate Christmas with my family, I also take part in a "reunion concert" of sorts with some old friends from high school. Fourteen years ago, just before packing up my bags and heading to Berklee, I teamed up with some other members of my high school jazz band to find a way to get into bars without a fake ID. The solution? Start a funk band. And give it a really bad name.
At first we were called Pushin' Chunky. Then we were ...
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Last week I had the pleasure of seeing my old classmate, Adam Deitch, perform for all of the incoming babies students at Berklee. Adam had a great band playing with him, including Eric Krasno and my former NYC roommate, Adam "Shmeeans" Smirnoff on guitar. While the band was officially billed as "Chapter 2", it also consisted of half of the members of Lettuce. If you haven't checked out their 2008 release, "Rage!", then you've missed out one of the funkiest, most soulful albums of the past fiv...
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While cleaning up my studio and preparing for the big move, I stumbled across a folder of notes and lesson materials from my Berklee days. Inside this folder was everything from Max Roach solo transcriptions, to South Indian rhythmic cycles, to 4-way independence studies. Flipping through the pages of sheet music was like stepping into a time machine and being transported back to the grimey, unventilated practice studios on Mass Ave. Awh, the good old days.
[caption id="attachment_3657" al...
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Today, as I was recording and editing drums for "Gruss Loops Volume II", I thought about how much more interesting it would be (for both me and my subscribers) to collaborate with another artist during the creation process. Scrolling through the massive Rolodex of musicians in my head, one name immediately jumped out as the perfect partner in crime: Bob Reynolds.
[caption id="attachment_3085" align="alignleft" width="249" caption="Bob Reynolds"][/caption]
Bob is one of my best friends an...
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[caption id="attachment_362" align="alignleft" width="227" caption="Kenwood Dennard"][/caption]
No loops today. I've got something much better. Sit back and enjoy the hip hop stylings of my old mentor, Kenwood Dennard, circa 1985.
I just stumbled across some old cassette tapes of my lessons with Kenwood. As soon as I can find the right adapter, I'll digitize and upload a few highlights. Don't worry, the keyboards and headset mic are present in these tapes as well.
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