A newsletter for the Didjeridu player......November 2002 Volume 8 Issue 12

Animal Dreams

Exploring Dave Crowder's new CD

Animal Dreams is the full CD debut of Boulder Colorado Didjeridu player Dave Crowder. It features Dave's unique Didjeridu sounds and rhythms mixed with excellent musicians on a huge variety of instruments both modern and ancient. The CD opens with a jazz fusion piece called "Awakening". Awakening travels through a time using Sitar, Chapman Stick and Drum Kit, then shifts gears into cut time with a wild saxophone ride by Pete Wall. "Yin Yang" is a didjeridu hand drum duet between Dave and percussionists Eric Walker and Ron Holmes.

"Cricket Dance", recorded in 1996, is a duet between Murphy Jackson and Dave. Held together by bilma, the pair blend very cricket like trills and vocals with the solid pulse of gut slaps and shouts.

"Mastika Kashlama" is an odd metered song about the Egyptian drink Mastika. Cameron Powers plays Oud and contributes vocals. The Kashlama rhythm is held by Kathleen McLellan on Dumbek. The song features a key change from B to D has Dave switches dreampipes, and Meagan Chandler enters with some thrilling vocal glides. Then the original key is reintroduced to repeat the theme and provide a very nice finale.

"Windhorse" is a track which definitely takes the listener from wind swept plains to high mountain monastic temples. Vocal harmonics done by Ron Holmes are accompanied by overtone harmonics from Dave as well as chimes, bells and horse sounds. It is a central piece in that it takes the energy in a different direction, but not opposite. It is a very grounding, yet elevating listen.

"Turtle Cricket" is a driving didjeridu solo propelled forward by hand clapping and vintage Dave, for sure. Just the thing to come out of Windhorse with.

"Seven" is the seventh track on the CD, which is appropriately titled. This features exciting use of traditional East Indian and Egyptian instruments. A true world fusion piece with brilliant sitar playing by Justin Bruen, Cameron Powers on both Oud and Nay, Kathleen McLellan's solid Darabukka rhythm and Dave's dependable D Allan Shockley dreampipe.

"Animal Dreams" follows seven with dream like synth playing from Tom Capek. Dave glides and manipulates the strong harmonic characteristics of his Jungawanga toward amazing animal impressions against layers of sounds until he bursts through with rhythmic vamps and vocal accents. The keyboardist and didj player seem to be continually reinventing their musical combinations into new relationships.

"Sheba" is a waltz in the universal time of 6/8. The wonderful voice of Meagan Chandler is again featured and Cameron Powers is "beside" himself on Nay and Oud. The flute and string combination which results is entrancing. Meagan's ability to glide in the upper register is almost Theramin like and just when I thought perhaps I was hearing an electronic device, she drops brilliantly into powerful expressions of emotive chants. What a wonderful instrument she has been given!

"Zazen Pentad" expresses another side of Dave. His abilities to do vocal harmonics. An amazing finish to this journey through animal dreams to come to this point of rhythmic didjeridu playing against vocal harmonic melodies.

I had a chance to revisit Dave with some questions which he graciously answered for me.

[Ed] Animal Dreams seems very complete to me, but I wonder if there are any things which you would have added if you had a bit more time and money?

[Dave] Oh yes! If you've been to animaldreams.net, then you've seen the "bonus track" to the CD. I would have added this website mp3 song "Weregirl", which was written by another amazing local diva like Meagan, named Melinda Dickson. If we had the time and money, it would have been re-mixed making it the 11th song.

I would also have re-mixed the title track "Animal Dreams". The didj clips could transition smoother with longer fades.

"Yin Yang" was recorded with the drums separately on a click track. If I were to do it again, four people would play live the whole Haitian "Petro" including bell and lead drum. We only used two parts of the rhythm because I thought that some space would allow the didj more prominence. I don't really think that was a bad decision, but the way we play the drums on that song sounds so much tighter now.

If you listen closely to "Sheba", you'll hear the drums lose the rhythm in the beginning and actually loop around an entire measure. I would cut the drum track from the beginning of the song and let it come in thirty seconds later. Probably would also soften the sax on track one, and the sitar on track seven.

Don't get me wrong, I love the CD, and I still listen to it, but can't help noticing several spots that need something.

[Ed] The tracks are tied together nicely with animal and nature sounds. I really like the effect, and I'm wondering how it was done?

[Dave] I've been an imitator all my life. As an adolescent, I was always fooling teachers in classrooms, keeping my friends amused, and getting in trouble with my mom for interrupting the quiet in the car. However, when I brought up the idea, of using vocal animal imitations as transitions between tracks, Darren (the engineer) looked shocked. Yeah, it was a bold move, and could potentially have screwed up some very deep music. But, I think it worked. We recorded all the animal sounds before any of the music, and kept them on floppies. After the music was recorded, we spent a couple of days composing the forest sounds with an old Ensoniq EPS sampler. We changed the pitch of the samples creating a field of depth like a real forest by using the keyboard of the sampler.

It was funny to see that tiny pitch changes could make a world of difference between the clips sounding mechanical or lifelike.

[Ed] The cover art is very clever. Each animal dreaming an animal cracker version of itself. Can you talk a bit about how the art was conceived and executed?

[Dave] It started with a conversation with Brandi Chase during her visit last year. I told her the name of the CD. Then, when I asked her what she thought would be a good cover, she said, "What first comes to mind are animal cookies". It was exactly that moment when I decided upon the Taoistic idea of having the animals dream of their cookie counterparts, and the back cover with cookies dreaming the animals. John Judish became the artist by default, since his cartoon style fit the theme so well. I thought his fun childlike slant was a good compliment to the goal of creating light uplifting music.

[Ed] I think that in this CD you've made a statement about growing out of being a "didj player" into a musician who uses the didj as his instrument. I don't know if you would agree with me on that, but I wonder if you could talk about your growth in understanding a musician's role and responsibilities?

[Dave] Yes, I've gone through an amazing musical evolution these past seven years! The didjeridu and all of its devotees who's paths I've crossed have taught me so much about what the instrument can do, that I humbly applaud their genius and generous sharing. Much of this you see in the credits of the CD. As for being a musician, I don't think I became one until I made this CD. Composing the pieces and playing music with the Animal Dreams cast opened doors and created possibilities for me to converse musically with everyone! To me, that is the mark of a musician and defines the difference between a player and a musician.

The role and responsibility of the musician is to work effectively with others who play music. This means you listen to everything, thus your sound fits perfectly with what they are doing. You bend and change to make it fit, rather than fight to support your ideals. You respect the others and their sound as well as your own instrument and its sound. And you compromise gladly on everything except the overall sound.

[Ed] How do you follow this? What are you working on currently?

[Dave] The band I'm playing with now is called "Second Nature". We have five musicians and each plays more than one instrument. Everyone's second instrument is something percussive so we make quite a world beat sound! We're all well versed in rhythmic styles and notation so it's a perfect fit! For the full compliment, we have flute, voice, guitar, didj, synth, and lots of drum & percussion. We're playing several of the tunes from my CD, some Celtic tunes that two band mates have done for several years, as well as some collective compositions. We play for a monthly Labyrinth walk/dance at a local Church every 2nd Friday night of the month and we're planning a summer music trip to Oregon for the Country Fair in mid-July.

By mid-March we should have our new demo CD made, so check in at animaldreams.net for its release and future events. I'll probably never fund my own CD project again because it's such a financial loss. But undeniably, the dream has become reality, and Animal Dreams no longer needs the dreamer. Now it speaks for itself.

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