Professional Documents
Culture Documents
FAMILY
AC K
R
T
Words: Brent keefe images provided by: The Good Music Company and Gretsch Drums
FIRST
TR AC
one monTh
This track contains elements of my electronic
repertoire. I wrote the music for the guys
(pianist Shai Maestro, saxophonist Jason
rigby and bassist Chris Morrissey) specifically,
and Chris also plays with me in Beat Music,
so weve developed a great comfort in that
style of playing. knowing that this quartet
would be with him, I was encouraged to write
something in that style. It wasnt until mixing
that this song really started to pop out as the
first track and, if you are more familiar with the
Beat Music repertoire, then I would hope that
this song could be your bridge into this more
acoustic world.
The whole song is in four and the full cycle
of the form, as it appears later, was conceived
as an eight-bar section played three times with
the fourth time being a variation, almost like a
last ending but, just for the intro, I deleted the
first time simply to make it shorter. The band
actually comes in on beat three, so the two
beats of my fill are the first two beats of the
form, with the first chord being on three and the
next being on one.
I play all the syncopated bass drum figures
heel down simply for the musical function. I
have my 18" bass drum tuned fairly open with
just a tiny cloth wedged between the bass drum
head and my pedal for minimal dampening,
so its really important that I dont leave the
beater in the head to get the best sound for that
drum and, for me, thats much easier to do if Im
playing heel down.
aBeD
all of my compositions for the record were
written within a six-month period at the end
of last year, except for this song, which I wrote
about 12 years ago the only other time it was
performed was at my senior recital in college.
The title combines the initials of anthony
Braxton and Eric Dolphy. They were my two
references and I wanted to create this angular
feeling within the melody. Its essentially a
quirky blues with a 16-bar head and 14-bar
solo form somewhat similar to the way that
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Mark Guiliana
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INTERVIEW
2014
This ballad is titled 2014 because my son was born in 2014.
Its really just a little song and it goes through the full form
once and ends. When we play it live we extend it but, for
this record, it felt right to just present the song and just let
it be that.
lonG Branch
This is all in 4/4 in a four-bar cycle and Im just using different
groupings of sixteenth notes the entire time. Its mostly
floor tom and just two very thin ride cymbals with
rivets. For Beat Music I have a 22" bass drum with
a pillow inside, some stacks and the floor tom is
tuned very low, so each instrument helps me make
the right musical decisions for each situation.
alTERnaTE TaKES
Mark has also recently released alternate Takes,
a companion album to Family First with four
alternate takes and two new tracks. Mark explained
the ethos behind it:
The problem that arises when you call great
guys is that everything that they play is great. We
recorded a handful of takes of most songs, apart
from One Month, which was just one take, but
there is no editing within or between the takes;
it was just a matter of selecting the preferred
ones. On a few occasions, however, I felt almost
as connected with some of the takes that didnt
make the record as I did with the ones that did.
When I was buying the Blue Note records of the
60s, which are some of my favourite records, on
CD, many of them included alternate takes and
I found that sometimes I almost enjoyed the
alternate takes more. also, getting an alternate
perspective on how someone is attacking their
improvising is invaluable, I think. as I now have
my own label, Im trying to take advantage of the
freedom with which I am able to release things
and I just wanted to share those other versions.
also, I knew we were going to record too much
music for one release, so we have two extra songs
on alternate Takes. The main difference between
the albums is that there is quite a different mix
on alternate Takes. I made the record with a great
engineer called John Davies who owns a studio
in Brooklyn called The Bunker and also plays bass
in Jojo Mayers band, Nerve. We wanted to make
it more of a tribute to those records that we love
and have a little more room in the sound. Its not
that we wanted to make it sound old but we used
Johnny Was
Ive always wanted to cover a Bob Marley song but not in
a reggae style. However, I found that the ones that have a
reggae beat, which is the vast majority of them, feel a little
strange without it. This song, from rastaman Vibration,
is really just a pop song with a drum machine playing a
traditional back beat, so it isnt reliant on that classic reggae
feel that they pioneered. We play it a little bit slower and it felt
good to play it in a slightly more solemn manner.
from yoU
This is in seven throughout but the specific hits, where the
chords lay, arent very friendly in terms of letting you know
that its in seven.
a BalanCED FuTuRE
In closing, Mark gave a glimpse of his future:
There are no ocial plans to make the next
Beat Music record, but that will probably be the
next record and there will be plenty of touring
with both groups. Theres also sideman work
with Donny McCaslin, Dave Douglas and some
other pending projects brewing for next year. The
last few years have been about trying to tip the
scales from the sideman world to presenting my
own music. I will never stop doing sideman work
because there are many projects that I always
learn from, am really proud of and give me a lot of
joy but Im trying to do as much of my own music
as I can.
www.markguiliana.com
GEaR BOX
Drums: Gretsch
Brooklyn Series Drums
18"x14" Kick drum
14"x14" Floor tom
12"x8" Tom
14"x 5.5" Snare drum
Cymbals: Sabian
(All very thin prototypes)
14" Hi-hats
2 x 21" Ride cymbals
Sticks: Vic Firth 85As
Heads: Evans
Coated G1 heads on all batters/resonants
Mono Cymbal Bag
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Mark Guiliana
Welcome Home
Some people have noted a Coltrane influence on this track and Im
certainly not hiding from that. If you make a saxophone/piano/bass/
drums record, I dont know how you cant pay tribute to Coltrane as thats
the ultimate example of this instrumentation. The melody gets delivered a
few times throughout this song, with the last time being the most intense
and, to my ears, thats where the Coltrane influence may be most evident.
I always think that, when playing music, its important to acknowledge any
influences and beautifully accept them, as opposed to forcing yourself to
turn away from them.
Its all in 4/4 triplets or 12/8. The bass-line starts by playing the first two
notes of each triplet and then the whole line shifts an eighth note triplet
into the future. For the drum solo, everything is in time but Im playing quite
freely, thinking solely of shape, intensity and orchestration, as opposed
to the time. In this case, when Chris and Shai are playing the chords, they
almost become the drummer and Im floating on top, choosing when to
reunite with them just for compositional effect.
Family First
This is a slow 4/4 ballad where I play mallets on toms. I wanted something
repetitive a loop of sorts but to stay out of the way as well. Its essentially
a through-composed song there isnt any improvising and I thought it
would just be a nice way to close out the record.
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