
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Monday, February 23, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
AUDITIONS: Dancers Wanted for TV Show 3/18

Dancers Wanted for tapping of Live From Center Stage featuring The GROOVALOTTOS. Dancers of all ages wanted for a live studio filming of a soul-funk band. Looking for dancers in the style of Soul Train and American Bandstand.
Dress in your funkiest outfit!!! Be at the Cape Cod Community Media Center by 7:30 pm (17 Shad Hole Road, Dennis Port, MA) and party with New England's Phunkiest Band!!!
A guaranteed PHUNKY Good Time!!!
Check the Series, "Producer's Notes: Building The Groovalottos Album"
Friday, February 20, 2015
Producer's Notes: Building The Groovalottos Album Pt. 5
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When bass players rock the drums... |
In these days of electronica, percussion tracks are usually samples and loops that can be cut and paste into the song. Percussion provides the framing and While not a soul records, but a definite homage to blues, "My Generation" by The Who would have been lost as a dance record completely if they had not used hand claps to frame the wild style drumming of Keith Moon, who characteristically played inside, outside, under, over and next to the pocket of the tune, as one would more so expect from a jazz drummer.
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Eddie getting funky on the bongos |
This is also where your engineer makes a big difference, as Bob Yen has old school training, sensibilities and know how from engineering, producing and mixing countless albums as well as being a sound man for numerous live shows for a myriad of rock bands like Journey, Areosmith and the like. Most of your r&b and hip-hop engineers now are lost if the instruments are not plugged directly into the boards or are not software patches. To produce a descent, human soul record outside of New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, you need to find a good rock and roll engineer.
These rich percussion tracks that the hip-hop producers loved sampling and looping in the late 1980's and 1990's also gave me an appreciation for the texture and dimension of layered percussion. The old school process of sampling and looping required a degree of skill in manipulating and placing the sample that has been largely replaced by the use of software like Pro tools and so forth. One of the most impressive examples in hip-hop history actually didn't use sampling, but pure DJing skills. On the album "Straight Out The Jungle" by The Jungle Brothers, for example, their DJ Sammy B actually mixed and cut from his turntables directly onto the recording, using a drum machine as the metronome/ percussion link. Likewise, Gangstarr alum, DJ Premiere used to use a 4-track and the pause button feature to build his loops, feeding in the breaks from his turn table every two or four bars.
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A djembe player that went to Goddard? Impossible... |
Armed with bongos, djembe, tambourines, cow bells, a drum kit, broom shank, riser, four pairs of hands, and shaker, we went about building the percussion tracks of the album, giving each song it's own recipe. When we play out live, especially restaurant and jazz bar gigs, we often love to play with time signatures -super imposing 4/4 over 6/8, 5/4 and under 7/8 or 12/8- we found ourselves recising this habit with bongo and shaker patterns over the grooves of the song.
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