@Richard: Many thanks! The quick rapid tone was created by rapidly striking the mallets on the highest pitched (smallest)cabinet. Thanks for listening!

excellent!! very rich sound,, every few measures or so i hear a? quick rapid tone,, how are you making that?.. this is very neat

Do it, Dave!

So nice. One of these days I am going to take one of your fantastic drum tracks and add something. I shoudl try a jam over this right now with the mandolin.

great, uplifting and fantastic.

Stunning stuff! Gotta love polyrhythms! And impressively tight as well - the man sure got rhythm! :D

Awe inspiring performance.

Time to mic up the kitchen sink.

I wish I was Donkey Cong!

nice, those are some great cabinets...

Very nice, love the "real deal."

@Sha-Pink: Thanks! I have a wide variety of different drums - you can get one view of my studio from the cover of my "collaborations" playlist. Various congas, bongos, djembes, bass drums, bells and effects instruments... but no trap-set.

Hi Norm, what kind of percussion set up do you have? You got the rhythm in you.

Wow. If I could add more I would, but this has me stuck at "wow"

i loved this tune, congrats!

Jeez, Norm, this is great stuff. This gives me the urge to start whacking stuff in the kitchen to see what sounds I can get. Now if I can just get everyone out of the house for a bit...

very very cool..

Seems a shame to finish those cabinets. Put doors on them and the wife will just fill them with dishes and useless stuff like food for the kids! They're such great instruments.

there is "rain forest" written all over this! simply excellent..

What the ? Is there anything that you won't strike rhythmically with a stick or something else.....don't let B+Q know( or whoever else sells DIY stuff over there if not B+Q )

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.