Neil Peart - Pieces of Eight

Great percussive piece!!!!That was a piece that Neal composed when he was trying out new drum kits(settling on a combination of acoustic and electric drums)and various percussion instruments.

Here is a short piece from an article in Modern Drummer:

Like many percussionists, I had long harbored a secret wish to create a piece of music using only percussion instruments, and this looked like the key to that dream! I practiced with the KAT for a few days and then, when I had a free day, recorded a "demo" of a marimba piece I had been working on over the summer.

I began with the marimba part, double-tracked it, and then overdubbed my acoustic drums on top (yes, the new Ludwigs!). I began experimenting with overdubbing different vibe sounds, a bass marimba, a cabasa, castanets, concert toms, metal sheets, African toms, and some highly tuned bongos. (All of this was played with mallets on the KAT unit.) I did use one of Geddy's keyboard sounds, but since it consisted of a marimba with a human voice mixed in, I decided that was close enough!

The biggest difficulty was finding a good bass instrument in the percussion library. The bass marimba didn't provide the power in the bottom end that I was looking for, so we experimented with some other things. We ended up using an African drum called a Djembe - transposed to the keyboard - and I played the bass part with that! It made me laugh - a new definition of "bass drum"!

The piece is entitled "Pieces Of Eight" because of all the different time signatures it ended up meandering through. I hadn't thought about that too much just playing the marimba, until I had to learn it on drums! With only a day to record it all, I didn't really have time to play it more than a couple of times through, so that, too, was a good challenge.

I find it interesting as a drummer to work with a melodic instrument and think melody as well as rhythm. You can really get into some wild areas! In a way, I wish I hadn't been so obsessed with drums alone in the beginning and had acquired more knowledge of music theory. But I suppose in this day and age you do have to specialize!

Now, if I only had about two weeks in the studio to work on this thing...

So I've got my new drumkit. Am I happy now? Well, yeah! Here I've managed to hang on to the best of both worlds: an exciting-sounding acoustic set and an incredibly versatile and "user-friendly" electronic set. Who could ask for more?

Well, how about "Pieces Of Eight" becoming a hit single? Ha-ha!

The entire article is here:

http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/transcripts/peartquestfornewdrums.htm