video: Groovin’ High
This was an interesting exercise–recording a downtempo tune highlighted my serious propensity for overplaying. I subsequently recalibrated my whole style in the process of recording this. The first few takes, I beat so hard that it was just comical. I figure that years of playing on stage with real drummers (who lack volume knobs) and guitarists (who superglue theirs on 11) is my excuse. Anyhow, this is just a relaxing, down swinger that sits in the pocket, and it dawned on me that I don’t have a lot of videos like that in the catalog. Because I rarely play that way.
I’m used to playing this about 50% faster, and precision isn’t really the focus at that tempo. So dialing back and making the lines really flow was a very useful exercise for me. There’s time to think, and time and space to hear any imprecision. This is take 3 of four, it has the best groove overall. I forgot to play the head on the last chorus until we got the first ending, so the out chorus is a halfer.
The Youtube crowd has been more appreciative of the material when I use a backing track, so expect more of that format in the future.
