Kofi Baker drum clinic

The local Sam Ash Music store in Westminster, California hosted a drum clinic with Kofi Baker last week. Here are some photos from the event. The clinic also served as a book release for 'The Forgotten Foot'. Kofi played several solos, fielded questions, and handed out raffle prizes at the end. Thanks to Sam Ash for hosting the event, and for supporting the book. Throughout the rest of the year Kofi will be playing more clinics. Click on the link below to see if he will be in your area.

Kofi's Tour Schedule

The Forgotten Foot update

The Forgotten Foot is done and now available!! It is awesome to see the finished product and to be hearing from drummers that have purchased the book.

This is the cover of the book. The photo is Kofi Baker at a concert.

I co-wrote this drum method with Kofi Baker. Kofi is the son of legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker. Kofi learned from his father and a lot of those lessons are reflected in the book. The purpose of the book is to highlight the importance of left foot independence and build a left foot that is an asset not a liability. The book goes through beginner to advanced lessons. There are six chapters which include Fundamentals, Rudiments, Rock Beats & Fills, Jazz & Shuffle, Double Bass and Foot Patterns. A CD is also included with the book.

The book is available mostly online right now, but Sam Ash music stores will have the book soon if they don't already. Here is a list of some of the vendors that are selling the book.

Amazon.com

Sam Ash - online and in stores

Thomann UK Cyberstore - for Europe

Tom Lee Music - for Canada

Thanks to anyone who already purchased the book, and it would be great if you could write a short review on any of the above listed websites. Thanks again and take care,

Jordan

Gas Tank Bass Drums

One of the main parts of a normal drum set is the bass drum. I knew my car part drum set would need some sort of bass drum. I decided the only option would be a gas tank. A gas tank that was made out of plastic, not metal. Most newer model vehicles have plastic gas tanks. They will never rust and they weigh less than metal tanks. I have been working for six years in the shop I am at now, and in those six years I had never replaced a gas tank. I did not have much hope that I would get one anytime soon so I decided to go to the junkyard and buy a used gas tank. On my lunch break one day, I drove over to our local junkyard and found a wall of gas tanks.

After pulling down different gas tanks and beating on them with drum sticks, I settled on a small tank from an early 2000's Ford Focus. It has a 10 or 12 gallon capacity. Once I got the tank back to the shop I removed the fuel pump and cleaned all the old gas out of it.

This is what the gas tank looks like still in the vehicle.

(part of the tank is covered by a heat shield to protect it from the exhaust)

As luck would have it, two months after I bought the used tank we got one in at the shop. A 2006 Chevy Express Van was towed in because someone had drilled a hole in the gas tank to steal all the gas. The customer needed a 700 dollar new gas tank, and I got the old one. This tank was a lot larger than the one from the junkyard. It is over 5 feet long, and has a 30 gallon capacity.

These are the holes that were drilled in the tank.

The trick for both gas tank drums turned out to be the beater. When I played them with a regular felt bass drum beater they did not sound very good. They had no resonance. After trying several options I discovered that a tennis ball made an excellent beater. So I made several beaters out of old tennis balls.

Here is what the two bass drums sound like. The small drum is the washer bottle foot drum from an earlier post.

Ear to the Ground

I wanted this to be one of the first posts on this blog, but it has taken until now to find the 'Ear to the Ground' video. First of all I need to give credit to my wife and our friend Liz for finding this video on YouTube. I had been looking for it for several months now.

I first saw part of this video, by David Van Tieghem, on Sesame Street when I was a little kid. It has stuck with me till now. If I were to point at one reason as to why in the fifth grade I wanted to play the drums, this would be it. It is also a big part of the reason I started this blog and the Motor Rhythms project.

David Van Tieghem is a percussionist, composer, and performer. Visit his website with the link below, and check out his other videos on YouTube.

David Van Tieghem

Watch the 'Ear to the Ground' video below. This video was filmed in 1981, on the streets of New York City.

Wood Blocks Update and Video

This is an update to an older post for the wood blocks. I added one more size to make a set of four. The blocks are made from different plastic reservoirs and oil traps.

Pulley Bells

This is the idea that started the entire Motor Rhythms project. A couple of years ago at work, I knocked a wrench into a water pump pulley only to discover that it had a great tone. Ever since then I have been saving water pump, idler, and belt tensioner pulleys. Once I had collected a couple dozen pulleys it seemed possible to create a full set of 'bells'. Soon after I started to make the pulley bells, I also began saving other car parts that I thought could potentially make good instruments, and Motor Rhythms was born.

Here are a few pulleys still on the car.

The pulleys range in size from a 2" diameter up to a 6" diameter. I only use smooth pulleys, not pulleys with ribs, or v-belt pulleys. Each pulley has a different tone. I have several duplicate pulleys from the same type of car, and even those have slightly different pitches.








Once the pulleys were removed from the different vehicles I knocked the bearings out of them. Then I welded a large washer in the middle of each pulley to help mount them. Using old rubber bushings from shock absorbers I mounted all the pulleys on two threaded rods.










Eventually I would like to set the pulleys up more like a piano or mallet instrument would be, with the sharps/flats separated from the other notes. The pulleys can be tuned as well. One of my co-workers has a metal lathe and he has trimmed a couple of the pulleys for me. Cutting off 1/8" from the edge of a pulley changes the pitch by about half a step.

Flywheel Hi-Hats

These 'cymbals' follow the same principle as a pair of normal hi-hats, except they are made from two matching flywheels. A flywheel is a metal plate that connects the crankshaft of an engine to the torque converter of an automatic transmission. It also has a ring gear that the starter motor engages with. These two flywheels were leftover after I replaced the engine in a Nissan Altima.

Here is a flywheel on the back of an engine. The transmission has been removed.

The flywheels needed to be adapted so they could be mounted on a traditional hi-hat stand.



The bottom flywheel rests on the hi-hat stand, and the upper flywheel is attached using a standard hi-hat clutch.











When played with the foot pedal they are kind of loud and clangy, but they have a good sound. They can be played with drumsticks like normal hi-hat cymbals. It also works well to 'splash' them with the foot pedal.