Well now ,home spun wisdom and a drum accompaniement....more than you could have asked for. However "Chording improvisation on 7 different conga drums tuned to an octave and set to 3-2 rumba clave." may as well have been written in mandarin for all that I understood of it !! Cheers Jarvo.

Nice one Norm.

Awesome man!!!

my comment didn't make it? Please, more like this - this is excellent Norm!!

LOVE IT!!

The world must be your oyster!

Some handsome, strapping beats you got there!

Ah, time honored values of the midwest. Nice rhythm and Great Rural Wisdom Norm/ Lookie here hot shot, you cant be a eagle in the morning and an owl at night !

Oh, love the advice and the drum track. Nice to see the family piccy s well.

Just like that!!! MASTERFUL!

Inspiring beats, heartbreaking lyrics. x

So great. Fantastic, great groove. I mean great.

yummy jam

I think I'm going to steal this Great Pumpkin.

Whew! That freakin' rocked!!

excellent track, love the distant lead guitar

WOW, where did this come from?? I love it. from the beginning where you turn the mic on before you begin play all the way to the lactic acid finish.

still f___ing sick in my book.....i still can't get over this one....damn man...damn...

Cool duet!

Nice one gents ;)

Ha! Rick is right - you would be a great hypnotherapist. From a percussion point of view, I like how you rotate the accented pulse throughout the beats of this 3/4 pattern and particularly how you demonstrate the power of the off-beat at 1:36. Very southern hemisphere of you.

Very creative.

Excellent!

Great voice, as usual. Happy New Year!

Beautiful recording, Kirk.

@ Kirk& Kamachi: excellent observation, and you are correct. As most of my patterns are built around clave, and as clave is structured upon so many off-beats, to get my metronome to "click" on some key clave beats, I set my metronome at double time- so my bpm notation reflects what my metronome setting was dialed to. Here is a clave link that graphically shows how many times clave percussion scores are transcribed in 2/2 (cut time) to make it easier to read... but if one is counting 8th notes instead of quarter notes, the bpm will be doubled. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clave_(rhythm)?wasRedirected=true

@ Richard: many thanks- recording accoustical percussion is sometimes tricky and I'm still learning the skill sets required for that. I mount my own skins from bulk rawhide (so not actually tanned) but I don't actually make the rawhide from animal skins... that's a lot of work on a non-industrial level and there are some health concerns when it comes to working with (especially imported) fresh animal skins. Many of the (nonterrorist) cases of anthrax reported involve folks making their own drum heads, so I just use commercially cured cow skin from the USA for the latin drums and buy pre-made drum heads for the African drums, which are usually water buffalo, goat or some sort of deer.

Those long drives across the state on I70 always feel a bit disconnected, even slow motion like this, even at 80mph on the way home for the holidays...

@ Dave: thanks for listening! This recording is 8 tracks, consisting of 2 (stereo) bass drum, cowbell, clave, chinese blocks, and 3 tracks of various sized conga drums playing their parts. Traditionally it is performed by a group of percussionists, which I would *love* to assemble- but that rarely is possible for me to do where I live. Perhaps I should move to Africa.

How fun! Now the rest of your cyber friends can sing along- a mixing challenge to be sure.

Ha! Post the lyrics- we all want to sing along with you!

@ Jarvis: Ha! I'm vocally challenged, but to hear the lyrics, go here: http://alonetone.com/vaisvil/tracks/walk-with-sorrow-norm-rick-chris-emily

Very masterfully crafted. Well done!

Very nice. Nice lyrical observation, too.

Outstanding. You guys are really tight, and the vox is fantastic, as usual.

Excellent!

I *love* this one.

Awesome track!

Where's my Launched?? :(

Masterful. You really created some nice space here.