In August 2005, I was asked to do a stint with "DALLAS BRASS" which would take me on a 9 City hop across ALASKA and then across the US to the east coast, and then a tour across Utah. These are some clips from that tour. It was an eye opener experience, I will write in another spot the "fun" had on that tour. I loved working with the guys and they are stellar players! I am not a member of the group although now I am a past alumni!

Videos require QUICKTIME

If you are a PC Windows user and have problems with Quicktime, click here to download the current version.

click to download windows Quicktime

Electro Rock, check it out!

Electro Madness, with video magic

Big Band Jazz , Very cool Check it out

Dallas Brass live performance from Coplands "HOEDOWN"

click to play video HOEDOWN

Sing Sing Sing drum solo at concert with Dallas Brass 2005

click to play video of Sing Sing Sing

And by the way, that is one foot on the bass drum, it is NOT a double pedal. For that skill I would have to thank my teachers like Joe Morello, and Colin Bailey, and the urge to play like Ginger Baker, Ian Pace and Billy Cobham when I was young and could not afford a double bass kit, "need/desire is the mother of invention"! By the way, the sound is a little distorted due to the engineer when they recorded or transferred the video for me to have. But its still a good listen.

click to play video Sing Sing Sing drum solo with Dallas Brass in Utah

Below is "INSTANT CONCERT", it is 34 songs in 3 minutes!

click to play "Instant Concert" w/Dallas Brass

Below on this Dixie style rag I use a walkabout setup I came up with to do walk around Dixie Gigs in the Air Force. The engineer got the sound way too hot or loud, so the sound here is clipped. Its cute though.

click to play 12th Street Rag

The Hoedown clip is short, but you get a clear idea of how good the xylophone sounds without resonators! And this is with softer mallets then I would ever have used, but in the musical setting it was perfect.

DESCRIPTION OF SETUP

On Hoedown, I use a much softer mallet here to not overshadow the brass and stick out. I even used this on the bells, it was a major contrast to what I had always used in performance but I found it balanced the setting perfectly. This was an eyeopener working with a Brass Ensemble that stands an average of 10-15 feet in front of you and the added pleasure of working aggressive brass and percussion literature but taming it down so as not to overpower the brass and of course to the ear of a "BRASS" player. It took some time to really capture this Brass players ear. Things like how cymbals sound to their ear, I like bright piercing and that is rough on a brass player, or so I found out.

I use a PAISTE "Dark Energy" 15" crash on my hi hat stand with a piece of carpet to dampen the choke effects and still grab the snare and xylophone parts. The bass drum is a 18" x 24" custom AYOTTE so it had a much fuller deeper quality to imitate a concert bass drum.

You'll notice the cymbals are all small, the bass mounted one is a PAISTE Signature 16" Power Crash, it gave me a clear ride and a strong crash without killing the brass players upper partial hearing. This is something I really came to understand or at the least appreciate.

The stack of splash cymbals was an effort to have tonal variety in a smaller space. Notice the stacking which is a very European approach. For my regular use of hi hat cymbals I used PAISTE Dark Energy 13", this gave me a more controlled volume with a upper frequency balanced with the fuller fundamental for a nice hand cymbal effect and still keeping a clean crisp foot chick for the lighter pop fare. To conserve space I would flip or swap the top 13 hi hat for the 15 on my stand to the left of the kit.