Prior Art Hi everyone!

Bob Gatzen here. Thanks for visiting Special Projects.

The Music Composing music is my favorite hobby. I have written for TV, radio, CD's, Children's videos, and the "Inspiring Drummers Series" I created for Warner bros. Music. But, actually, this is my first solo CD project. My criteria were to compose original music driven by drum and percussion sounds. I decided the tunes would not fall into the typical song form category but be brief thematic episodes connected by improvised drum solos that I love to do. I imagined the music as a cross between Soundtrack and Techno, so I kindly refer to it as, "Cinema-Beat". As I began working on the project an interesting idea came to me.

Baschet Sound Sculptures We had a group called Spiral way back in the late 70's through early 80's. It was an improvisational percussion group and we played on anything that could be hit and made sounds. Man we were renegades! In our travels, we discovered the Baschet sound sculptures created by Francois and Bernard Baschet from Paris France. The sculptures were incredible, a percussionist's dream, cool looking and sounds you can't describe with words. We contacted the Baschet brothers; they liked our ideas and gave us a collection of sculptures to perform on. We expanded the group with a bass player and Tom Majesky on guitar. Tom is a unique guitarist that loves to play with crazy drummers...he was a perfect fit for our group. We adapted Spiral around the sculpture concept and performed extensively enlisting guest artists to perform with us.

Tom Majesky & Bob GatzenFriendship So, I decided I would break out the sound sculptures and contact my long time friend and fellow musician from the group...Tom Majesky, and invite him to do this CD together. Tom and I played a million gigs together so I knew this would be like rolling off a log. There's nothing like old friendships built on playing music together.

The Plan was, I would compose the music, program all the parts minus guitar, and record live tracks in my project studio on acoustic drums and the sound sculptures. Then I gave Tom my tracks on a CD and he would record the guitar parts in his project studio with 100% creative freedom, whatever he came up with...we would use. Then finally, I would replace my original scratch drum tracks with finals. We both knew the only way this kind of arrangement would work is by knowing and trusting each other implicitly...which of course we do. Piece of cake!

Surprise! - One of the best things about this project was the surprise and amazement as we presented our tracks to each other. Each of us had the opportunity to be the lonely painter with his easel creating totally on our own yet at the same time anxiously looking forward to sharing our ideas with each other. It was like the best Christmas ever! Ha! we never let ourselves down.

Guest Artists - Oh! And by the way...in the Spiral tradition, we have a few guest performances with our drum buds, Dennis Chambers, Tony Royster, Jr., Will Kennedy, and Billy Ashbaugh.

Release - Prior Art was released in January 2003; please stay in touch.

Thanks again,
Bob


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