So I reposted the previous blog post from 7 years ago on Facebook. Partly because I felt my joke about the Gregorian Choir being named after some sect worshipping Greg Lawson (in the comments 7 years ago) never got the recognition it deserved…. But also because we have just played a Grit Orchestra concert and it somehow felt even better than ever – like it was moving forward as an ensemble and it is still something marvellous and to be valued even though it has been around for a while now. And it still has unexplored potential… Martyn wrote a piece for me to play on drum kit and pots and pans with him on small pipes and a string quartet in 1995 and to be frank when we played it initially neither I nor the string quartet were within a country mile of being able to play it in terms of skill level. Eventually we played that piece with McFall’s Chamber and after 10 years or so on occasion I managed to play it it correctly with James MacKintosh’s help ( so I was only playing kind of half the part Martyn originally wrote for me) and it took that long to get good enough to be able to play half of it correctly – even some of the time. It would be interesting to know how playing in the Grit Orchestra has made the various musicians in it – from these different backgrounds and traditions – grow and expand their skillsets and concepts of music making. Maybe for some of the other players it is more like what they normally do – but for the drummers it is this very rich combining of skills, approaches, styles and challenges. I definitely learn and grow a massive amount each time we play – partly from the music itself and partly from the other musicians. It is as if Martyn left behind a 30 or 40 year Scottish Music Continual Professional Development Programme for some of us to study …. plus Alex on sound and the rest …. And it feels we are only part way through it…. there is a lot still to go…. Whenever we meet the drum section talk about how the process – of trying to work out how to play tunes like Waltz for Hector and Aye? in a live setting – never actually ends . Each time you listen to the original track there are more layers to unpack, and more alternative ways to approach it revealed. In the rehearsal on Sunday we played the both of those the best we had so far – but still a long way to go…. Really quite amazing… All this also puts into perspective the fact that music funding is in such a state of disarray right now in our country. That just needs to be sorted because there is so much potential, so much still to be played and composed and discovered.

I wrote this 7 years ago but it still holds true:

A response to Mairi McFadyen’s blog post on GRIT: Mairi McFadyen nails much better than I ever could the second of three reasons I have always felt that the GRIT orchestra is special – ie the cultural context of it. The way Martyn had taken Scottish indigenous music like traveller’s song and ‘low’ culture and had brilliantly placed it over dance grooves and mixed it with a whole range of other musical components and so had taken that older “low”culture and reframed and refreshed it and placed it in a modern creative contemporary setting, and then when Donald Shaw and Greg Lawson had taken Martyn’s complex and nuanced project and placed it on a concert hall stage as confident scottish ‘high’ culture that cultural journey was somehow taken deservedly further. GRIT being featured in the EIF was another significant marker of that journey being completed and it feels that somehow in the process the way Scotland sees itself musically has been ever so slightly shifted yet again. The first and primary reason GRIT is special is of course the story of Martyn and his relationship with his music and his tradition, the way he became a master of traditional music,classical music, and electronic dance music, combined them to make this intensely personal, intensely Scottish and unique fusion, and the tragedy of his early loss, and the way the reception of the GRIT ORCHESTRA somehow further vindicates his vision, his genius, and his struggle over whether what he was doing was valid, of wider significances , and NOT a betrayal of the tradition. For me the third reason has yet, to my knowledge, to be clearly mapped out – so here is an attempt. The Venezuelan founder of El Sistema José Antonio Abreu claims that the symphony orchestra is a model for human society. While I can see what he is driving at I have always found this view a bit problematic because, despite the symphony orchestra and its musical output being one of humanity’s undoubted greatest achievements and it being a wonderful experience for young people , as an organisation of humans it doesn’t quite embody what many would see as the key elements needed for model for a wider society. Conventionally a symphony orchestra seems very hierarchical with one or two people (the conductor and composer) having almost total control over what everyone else does. This isn’t a problem when the objective is to produce symphonic music, but it is to me problematic as a vision for wider society. BTW my personal problem with symphonic music as a drummer was that often I needed to count 178 bars and then play 4 bars on timpani at the climax of the piece. Invariably I would lose count and get lost and miss my entry and end up not playing at all. I ditched classical music for other styles where the drummer generally played all the way through and didn’t have to count any bars rest! Anyway if we are going to pick large scale musical ensemble models for society I feel the GRIT Orchestra is arguably a better fit. This orchestra is musically multi-cultural in that it contains musicians from several very different musical traditions who make music in radically different ways and somehow Greg Lawson has brought them together in a way in which these different cultures and approaches are valued and respected and it works to make something greater than the sum of the parts. And despite Greg being the undisputed leader the decision making roles over what is and should be happening are spread out around the band, in a way that is collaborative and democratic. The different musical tribes in the GRIT ORCHESTRA bring very different skill sets, types of musical knowledge and music-making processes. This includes areas of real deep knowledge, professional experience and skill, and also areas where we are being asked to do less familiar things outside our comfort zones. As usual what follows is a shorthand generalisation which I hope you can forgive: The classical musicians are phenomenal at converting notated music precisely into sound and working cohesively and precisely under the control of a conductor from the score. The traditional musicians and singers have a lifetime of study in learning to reproduce melodies and songs from the tradition authentically with the unique groove, sound, ornamentation and inflection of Celtic traditional music. Often their normal daily practice doesn’t involve a lot of notated music , and learning is often more aural. The jazz musicians and groove players again do not always work with scores but have developed skills in improvisation and skills at performing different grooves and dance music styles. We also have a Gregorian Chant choir! I dont know much about their process only that they are named after Greg Lawson….. It is only when we work side by side like this that top level musicians from these different traditions can see how radically different our normal music making processes are from each other’s. All of us are masters of what we do and also in many ways beginners at some of what each other does. So this orchestra combines, values, and tolerates very different approaches, value systems, experiences, skill sets, strengths and weaknesses in a respectful and joyful way that enables all these very different musicians to work together towards a shared vision. To me that is a great model of what a society should be. And it is uniquely and unalterably Scottish. There are also the ‘process’ centred challenges of converting Martyn’s studio built music into something performed live. Large parts of this were done exceptionally well by Greg Lawson writing his orchestral score of Grit the album. But in some cases that wasn’t the end of the story. When Martyn made the album Grit he took acappella recordings of songs and chopped them up and placed them over electronic beats in the computer. So actually before the concert in Glasgow no one had actually performed GRIT live before – Martyn kind of built it. So Fiona Hunter singing Blackbird live over the orchestra had to do something Sheila Stewart never had to do. James MacKintosh, Iain Sandilands, and I on drums and percussion had to look at recreating the grooves and drum beats live, and the sonic, technical , and instrumental challenges of that and were very much equal partners with Greg in mapping that out and James and I as non classical players didn’t work from a score but from the album and made up our own parts. We also soon found out how unused to (and in my case bad) we are at following a classical conductor particularly at high pressure count ins. The final relevant story was the reaction the classical players had to the jazzers constantly interrupting rehearsals and making suggestions to Greg about changes to the arrangements, something totally normal for us but seemingly not normal practice in professional classical orchestras. I am not claiming this kind of multi-genre large ensemble hasn’t happened before, it has even happened on occasion in Scotland, but it is rare especially on this scale and at this level of ambition, and with this set of values. . There is something about Greg’s approach, his selection of musicians, and the way these overlapping skill sets are respected, valued and utilised, and also the overarching embrace of Martyn’s pan-musical vision and aesthetic, that makes this feel like another area in which this is a very special ensemble that lays out a very high quality inclusive example of uniquely Scottish contemporary music making. For those of us that knew Martyn it feels only right that his music should have led to this ensemble and the incredible energy and emotion being generated at the concerts.

First livestream from the Outhouse on November 2nd 23 with the great Fergus McCreadie….

This is a track ‘Secret Path’ from a great new album from Fraser Fifield which I am playing on.

You can hear whole album here:

https://fraserfifield.bandcamp.com

This was a concert during lock down in May 2021. Phil and I had been playing together alot at his farm during lockdown in a barn.

Really enjoyed this session – although the Blue Lamp with an audience is one of my favourite places to play!

Click on image to see big…

Of interest to Bodhran Geeks/Southern Indian Music Fusion Freaks/Supporters of Men in Man Caves/People in People Caves….

So I am delighted to say that I came third in a global Southern Indian online drumming competition!

 

I had to send a video of me playing a composition by TVG (see below) in round one, and then I got to the final and the 9 finalists were sent a brand new composition which we had about 3 days to learn. Then we had to send a video of us playing the read more

Yes this is total showing off…. but fuck it…

Here is the story of how I got to play with Sun Ra and what happened (at least how I remembered) – apologies to DL who is a very nice man and a fantastic musician.

I recorded these for an interview for a research thing. It was fun so I thought I’d put them up here. I was in Ghana and during the recording I get interrupted by my wife, nearly burn down the hotel room, there’s a lizard, and my wife read more

This is a beautiful music manifesto/poem from the  sorely missed wonderful person and musician – Scottish bass and tuba player Lindsay Cooper.

To see the pdf click here