Planning Drumming Upstream
Prevented from drumming, all I can do is plan
If there is bright side to coming down with COVID right before leaving for a 10-day tour, and let me tell you that bright side is without a doubt on the small side too, it is that I have had a lot of unexpected and unaccounted for free time. When not parked in front a basketball game (don’t talk to me about the Bulls) I’ve had more time than tasks or obligations.
Even by Playstation 4, that old standby of procrastination, could not make a significant dent in my schedule. Within an hour of learning that we had cancelled our shows through Chicago I had beaten Dark Souls. Turns out when I said I was months away from victory I instead stood at the doorstep of the final boss. Oops.
The Criterion Channel was some help. I finally watched Shadows by John Cassavetes, something I planned on doing in preparation for my letter about “Plays John Cassavetes 2” by Ekkehard Ehlers back in February. In retrospect I’m not sure how much watching the movie would have changed my approach to that tune, but I’m glad I saw it. Though I couldn’t apply any of that belated research to a letter already sent, finally checking off that box inspired me to consider what I could to speed up the process for future entries.
So far I’ve tried to obscure the details of my process for Drumming Upstream. Not out of any desire for secrecy mind you, just because I figured most readers would find it boring. Well, today I’d like to put that suspicion to the test. Maybe pulling back the curtain will reveal some helpful context for how the project comes together.
When I first decided that I wanted to learn every song that I Liked on Spotify, I began by copying my entire Liked Songs playlist into a Google spread sheet. There I added the following columns for each song: Can I Play It? Did I Film It? Is The Post Written? Is the Video Uploaded? and, Is the Post Scheduled? I figured that these would represent the major milestones. If I can’t play a song there’s no point in filming it, if there’s no footage proving that I’ve learned the song there’s no point in writing about it, etc.
Each of these columns hides a multitude of smaller check points. “Can I Play It?” for example is a far less cut and dry question than you’d expect. There are plenty of songs that I could play in a pinch, say in the eternal hypothetical of the band asking if there’s a drummer in the audience after some Spinal Tap type mishap, but not with the level of detail that would warrant setting up a camera. There are other songs that I could play if I had the right equipment, say a double bass pedal. Clearly a simple “yes/no” doesn’t give the full picture. To make that nuance readable on my spreadsheet I added some color, red for songs that I need to hold off until I have the right gear, green for songs that I’m ready to work on immediately.
Once I’ve learned how to play a song, which I do by listening to the song A LOT, transcribing as needed, and playing along on repeat on Spotify, I get to work recording it. Crucially I have to record myself playing along with the original song. It isn’t enough to learn the drum part in the abstract, I want to show that I can lock in with the whole of the music. To do this I have to find an mp3 file for the song and import it into Logic, the digital audio workstation that I use to record. If the song was recorded to a click I find the tempo and set my own metronome to it. If the song was not recorded to a click, which is the case for a surprising number of the songs I’ve covered so far, I dive into the song raw.
My recording set up is pretty bare bones. I put one mic near the snare drum and hi-hat and another near my ride cymbal and floor tom. I also record each take on my phone, which captures more of the kick and the cymbals. My GoPro camera also picks up audio of my playing, but I’ve been mixing this audio very low so as to make the backing track more audible in the final video. Typically I give myself four full takes and then pick my favorite of the four. Some songs take much more work, but I think this arbitrary cut off keeps me sharp and forces me to play with the urgency of a live concert or a studio session on a budget.
Once I have a satisfactory take selected, I mix together the audio, sync it up with the video and upload the result to YouTube. I am a total novice at video editing, but I am trying with each upload to find some new wrinkle to make these videos look better.
During this audio/visual prep I keep a loose collection of notes a document on my desktop. I tend to bounce around from song to song, usually about five songs or so ahead of whichever tune is closest to being finished. Usually by the time I’m ready to record I’ll start bending those notes into a presentable shape and start drafting on Substack. Ideally I’d be picking away at a draft for the whole week before the publish date, but conditions are rarely ideal in no small part because of how time intensive the rest of the process is.
If I have any hope of finishing Drumming Upstream while I still have hair, I have to find a way to cut down the time it takes to put each entry together. I figure that video and audio editing will speed up naturally as I get better at the respective skills required to do them well, and that taking extra time at each of these two steps now will ultimately save me time down the road. The time it takes to learn a song depends on the song itself, so if I were focused on cranking through as many entries as quickly as possible I could cherry pick the easiest songs from the spreadsheet and stall on the tougher tracks. This feels like cheating though, part of the fun of doing this project is the variety of skills and play styles it forces me to use week to week.
Still there are parts of the learning process that can be accelerated without losing the spirit of the project. This week, away from my drum kit and with no backlog of videos to work on, I identified what in retrospect is a pretty obvious point of friction in my workflow: Spotify itself. Learning songs on Spotify is convenient, but it features many of the downsides that the platform offers less scholastic listeners. The ability to jump anywhere in my Liked collection at any time encourages a lack of focus and instant gratification. The temptation to skip to a song that’s more fun to play or less demanding itches at me any time I run into a tricky part or repetitive tune. So this week I decided to load up on mp3s and set up Logic projects for each other them in advance. Instead of hunting those mp3s for each song down individually, I found 10 of them on Bandcamp and bought them in bulk.
I’ve been coy about exactly which songs I have coming down the pipe for Drumming Upstream, but since this letter is all about pulling back the curtain let’s not get too hung up on the last few inches of cloth. Here are the 10 songs that I purchased during my COVID-imposed time away from the drum kit:
These ten songs are in chronological order of when I Liked them on Spotify. There are other songs Liked before and between these which I could either not find on Bandcamp at all or which were only available as part of a whole album. I’m not opposed to buying a whole album just to acquire a single track for the purpose of a newsletter, but given that I have no shortage of options for buffet style song selection I moved past those heftier purchases for now. Maybe once I’ve up’d my subscriber count for this Substack I’ll circle back around and pick up those records.
I bring all of this up because I think some readers might find it interesting to consider which of their own favorite songs on Spotify they could easily purchase for $1 and in so doing enrich the songwriter more effectively than months worth of streaming, as well as the songs unavailable for direct purchase. Bandcamp, though often positioned as the most effective antidote to the streaming ecosystem, does not in fact feature the same catalog as Spotify. Not even close, in fact. Musicians and critics of streaming giants would do well to remember this when urging listeners to switch over to Bandcamp. People will follow the music they love. The platform itself is not, and will never be, the point. The music is.
That’s all for now. See you next week.