the man cable

Mitch Mitchell, the drummer on legendary Jimi Hendrix recordings such as Are You Experienced,  Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland, First Rays Of The New Rising Sun and others, passed away 11 November 2008 in Portland, Oregon.

Together with John Bonham and Ginger Baker, Mitchell was one of the greatest British rock drummers of the 60s. I always like Mitchell, because he brought some Elvin Jones into the mix and his style melded to brilliant  effect with Hendrix’ guitar. In fact, Hendrix referred to Mitchell as “my Elvin Jones“, and he was essentially to Jimi as Elvin was to Coltrane.

Some of my favourite tracks drum-wise are:

• Fire [funky as hell, landmark groove]
• Manic Depression [groovy 9/8, Elvinish]
• Up From The Skies [swingin' the brushes]
• Little Miss Lover [very cool feel with bass drum syncopations]
• Third Stone From The Sun [trippy, jazzy]
• Bold As Love [amazing phased drums, beautiful]
• If 6 Was 9 [polyrhythms, Elvinish, open feel]
• Little Wing [musical fills, light touch]
• Voodoo Child (Slight Return) [interplay with Jimi]

Admitted, this are no weak tracks on the first two Jimi Hendrix Experience albums! Bold As Love is one of my all-time favourite albums, and the first album is up there, too.

R.I.P. Mitch Mitchell.

Mitch Mitchell at drummerworld

Associated Press Obiturary

BBC Obituary

Jimi Hendrix Experience playing “Fire” in London:

Hendrix, Mitchell and Billy Cox at Maui:

Mitch Mitchell on working with Jimi:

The title at YouTube claims this to be the greatest drum video ever … and they just may be right about that!

Bernard Purdie is one of the original originators in R&B drumming, right up there with Earl Palmer, Smokey Johnson, Charles “Hungry” Williams, Clayton Fillyau, Melvin Parker, Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, Zigaboo Modeliste, Al Jackson, James Gadson … all THOSE guys.

If you call yourself a drummer, this is essential viewing.

The Purdie 12/8 Shuffle (Part 1):

The Purdie 12/8 Shuffle (Part 2):

Here they are, the original Headhunters just grooving madly. Mike Clark is just so funky and his grooves are so unique and tasty. He also has a great tone on the drums. Of course, Paul Jackson is no slouch either.

This (both parts one and two) is one of my all-time favourite drum and bass videos. Mind-blowing stuff:

Part 1:

Part 2:

For years, I could never figure out what Mike Clark was playing. But these videos piqued my interest in his playing so I went and bought his drum book. Great stuff with excellent ideas on how he achieves his grooves with grace notes, linear concepts and accents in unexpected places. Check out for yourself, there are some great (and very challenging) patterns in there.

Mike Clark - Funk Drumming: Innovative Grooves and Advanced Concepts

Mixing Audio - Roey Izhaki

It’s about time!

Over the past two months, I’ve been working through a new book on mixing audio from Roey Izhaki. Considering the fact that the field of mixing audio has been around so long, it’s somewhat odd that it’s taken this long for a book to come out that truly delves into all of the nuts and bolts of audio mixing. Sure, there are lots of other books out there, but these all tend to contain hearsay (i.e., interviews with famous mixers), vague descriptions, or highly technical discussions with little hands-on advice. So this new book from Izhaki is definitely filling a niche that has been achingly empty for very long.

Izhaki’s book is truly impressive in its scope for it really goes into depth across the entire bandwidth of mixing topics. There are many excellent graphs to illustrate key concepts and tons of audio examples are included on the DVD that comes with the book. Furthermore, there is even a website with a forum and some more information. Yes!

The only bugbear here is that the book should have been properly edited before publishing, because it is filled with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. It’s still highly readable, but these tend to reduce the impact of the book a little.

Buy it at Amazon or your favourite bookshop.