The project of this CD started with the construction of a studio, to entitle me to total freedom to record and produce each of the songs according to my time availability and, most of all, to achieve full control over future productions.
The musical pre-production of SambaSong & Friends began in June 2002, also in a non-conventional way. During the time I spent adapting to the then new studio, several musical ideas popped up, and were recorded step by step. Each day, a different one would coalesce, and after two months about 30 compositions were registered. Despite being comprised of only the drums parts, their several sections where already defined, ready for the next steps.
After selecting which among the 30 songs would go into the SambaSong & Friends project, I moved on to the production itself, when they were sent to the guest musicians.
I made a list of the musicians for each song and contacted them. In a few cases, according to the track, I already had an harmonic or melodic suggestion for the theme. For most of them however, the creation was left entirely at each guest musician’s discretion.
It is interesting to stress that the songs – or better put, the drums parts – reached the guest musicians via CDs with audio files, and this was perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole production, because the artists have put the song construction forward in their own home studios. In other cases, the drums files were sent in MP3 format, and received back later as finalized compositions in the same format. I have been dubbing this production concept as ‘e-rec’. This has been a sensational experience! In a first moment, it was common to hear from some of the musicians, after they received the CD, “Hey, man, this CD only contains the drums audio! Can I create the theme my way?”. Others said: “You began the work ass-backwards? It is not that simple to compose this way, but let’s go ahead. It is a challenge!”.
Of course that, for some songs, I could have re-recorded the drums part after the harmonic and melodic lines had been defined, but even so, I opted to leave the original tracks or, better saying, the original drum parts.
The technical score includes information on the studios and musicians involved in each of the songs. The filler also includes brief comments on each of the musicians.
It is important to highlight that this work was only made possible by the friendship, commitment and talent of each one of them. I hope you like the final result. After all, my greatest concern was to record, with my guest musicians, a music CD. And not just an album for drummers.
