Every 1st and 3rd Saturday at 2:30 PM at REMO Recreational Music Center, 7308 Coldwater Canyon Ave., North Hollywood CA 91605, my teacher, Homero Chavez teaches a great cajon class. His intention is to teach his students how to play the cajon with all types of music, from traditional Latin beats to Rock. This is the class for someone who wants to learn how to use this wonderful instrument to its full potential.
You can find out more about the class at: remo.com
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Listened to the great, Peter Erskine, at the grand reopening of the Hollywood Guitar Center’s drum shop. He played and did an extensive Q&A until way after GC’s normal closing time. He is now a professor at USC’s music school. Makes be think of being a college student again!
You can check out more of his activities on his website.
Welcome to rainy Hollywood. Our second gig and once again it rained. Thank you El Nino! If I had wanted to play in this kind of weather I would have stayed in Ithaca, N.Y. OK, I know this is not our normal weather, but does it have to happen when I have to lug all my stuff to a gig?
The Cabana Club on Ivar St. in Hollywood, CA is a nice place to play. Good sound equipment and great crew to run it. Here are a couple of the songs we played:
Stay Up Late
Night Fever
This evening The Blue Moons with me playing percussion played our first gig at the historic Pig n’ Whistle on Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, CA. We covered four songs, “Streets of Philadelphia,” “Night Fever,” “Here I Am,” and “Stay Up Late.”
Here are the audio tracks, recorded on my new Zoom H2 digital recorder (see the review on a previous post):
Play List:
Streets Of Philadelphia
Here I Am
Stay Up Late
Night Fever
If you are looking for something to do this Friday evening at 9PM and you are in Los Angeles, I am playing percussion in a great new band, The Blue Moons, at the historic Pig n’ Whistle ( http://www.pignwhistle.com/ ) on Hollywood Blvd. The band consists of three violins, a cello, an electric bass, three singers and me on percussion. We are covering songs by Bruce Springsteen, The Bee Gees, UP40, and Talking Heads
I just purchased a Zoom H2 recorder.
The Zoom H2 recorder is really easy to use. I recorded this demo last night after about 5 minutes of reading the instructions. The set up was that I played a song from the band, The Blue Moon off of YouTube through my studio monitors. Half way between them and my percussion kit is where I placed the H2 recorder. This recorder records four channels, two in the front and two in the back, so I got the bands recording on one side and my percussion on the other side. I then mixed them down in my computer. You will notice that the mix is a bit rough with my cajon being up front in the recording. That was intentional so I could hear my tracks over the drums on the original recording. (Oh! I can’t lie, it was 2:30 AM and I couldn’t edit for one more minute, so it is the way it is.) As a test of the recorder, it was a success. As a test of my mixing skills, well……………………
(By the way, if you are interested in buying one of these units, if you click on the Sam Ash link on my shopping links page, you can buy one for $149 with free shipping and no tax. That’s the best deal I could find anywhere.)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
My Percussion Kit as seen from the side
My Percussion Kit as seen from the back
This is my percussion kit as it is presently configured.
- On the left of the throne is my djembe and moving clock-wise;
- The high-hat with mic mixer on the rack below it
- Stand with splash, cowbells, tuned brass bells, wood (well plastic) block
- Tambourine played with foot pedal
- Percussion table with two bongo cajons (one plain, the other flamenco) and assorted shakers
- In front of the throne is the heart of my kit, a Homero Chavez cajon
- Not shown are 4 PZM mics and a Roland KC-550, a 150 amp amplifier which gives me the option of amplifying my entire kit.
What you are seeing in the picture is just the instruments that I would normally be gigging with. I own just about every percussion instrument available. Besides a large assortment of hand drums, I have lots of different shakers, rattles, gourds, tambourines, chimes, whistles, etc, etc. so I am pretty much able to come up with the right instrument for that particularly special sound.
The Homero cajon is a very unique instrument. Unlike all other cajons that you must sit on to play. Homero Chavez, master percussionist, the current president of the So. Cal. Percussion Society, my teacher and mentor, invented this state of the art cajon. He ingeniously added legs and rotated the box 45 degrees so that it can be played while sitting on a drum throne. This leaves the feet available to play other things like high-hats, bells and tambourines.
If you would like to find out more about me, click on the “About Me” page, below.
