Wrong Way

My keyboard comes with the typical drum patch. And layering. The two are not intended to be used together. This mercifully short (under 2 min) sketch shows what happens when you go down that one way street the Wrong Way...

Actually, I think this way of playing has potential. Like a dancer in a MIDI body suit, the piano lines create their own drum comping. The piano is a percussion instrument - literally! I just dashed this together in one take, and decided all the mistakes just add to the "do not play as intended" challenge. As happens in this sort of experiment, I didn't capture the best moments. But I think the recording demonstrates that if someone had the patience, this style of playing could actually work (maybe reassigning a few choice sounds).

The song is based on a theme song I wrote for an improv comedy sketch called "Greenbucks Cafe"; I was going to submit it for something else, but include it here to make up for such a raw recording.

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posted by AppleSeed (2 comments total)

This is really cool, I didn't read the description before I played it and I just kept thinking how cool the rhythm was. A guy I used to play guitar with told me once that when I was soloing I should forget about trying to keep in time with the bass player and drummer, the drum and bass hold down the rhythm and that frees up the guitar to do whatever the hell I wanted to, play with the beat or without it. Not that I always do that but this reminded me a lot of that.
posted by BrnP84 at 7:55 PM on February 24, 2009

Fun! I've done the same thing once or twice -- not to this extent, but done some MIDI thing where a drum is getting accidentally triggered, and thought "oh, actually, that's pretty cool," and not something I would have thought of.

Let's hear it for wrongness!
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 1:13 AM on March 2, 2009