This is my first (and very likely last) article commemorating Valentine’s Day, and we’ll be celebrating the occasion with a look at the outro to Tower of Power’s “Just When We Start Making It” from Back to Oakland, which is, at large, one of my favorite albums, not just as a drummer (although being a drummer certainly helps). Oh, don’t check your calendar, this is a week late.
“Just When We Start Making It” (or “Makin’ It”) is a soulful ballad, and I started transcribing the outro nearly eight years ago before shelving it. I always thought it would be fun to finish it up for Valentine’s Day, and this was the first year I finally remembered to do it, even though I didn’t wrap it up in time. Still, I’m not pushing this off again.
Most of “Just When We Start Making It” is a sweeping 12/8 groove, and David Garibaldi’s drumming is commensurately understated, but the outro has a much more spry and frolicking feel, which kicks off as an organ feature before the horns and vocals swell back in.
First things first, although I said this was in 12/8, I wrote it in 6/8, as 12/8 is tough to make look nice on letter paper; lines either have too much music crammed onto them, or have one measure stretched across the page. I know a lot of musicians count 12/8 in 6/8 anyway.
The outro has a strong 16th note swing feel to give it some lilt, and early on, there’s a big octuple stroke on the snare, ending with an accent:
David basically uses a lot of comping vocabulary on the outro, such as with the end of this line:
Do you see what’s happening? The kick and snare are playing 8th note triples under the jazz ride thing. Here are a few ways of looking at it:
There are some oddball ghost notes on the snare throughout the first 16 bars that don’t suggest any structured comping pattern, and were probably ad-libbed. Once the song really starts to build, it’s tough to hear any at all, outside of fills. The ride cymbal is what really gives this movement it’s swing.
On the topic of fills, a recurring idea has David playing 16th note triplets on his feet, alternating between the kick and hi-hat pedal:
I tend to ignore the hi-hat pedal for my transcriptions, but I included it for these fills. On the outro, it usually sticks to 8th notes otherwise.
As the fade out starts, there’s a big 32nd note sextuplet passage, likely played as paradiddle-diddles:
Look closely, and you’ll see two crashes that only have four notes in between them instead of six. David must’ve miscounted somewhat, but it’s difficult to notice at full speed.
And for the most part, that’s that!
