Recordings with a Didgeridoo?

Jamiroquai. Their first three albums (Emergency On Planet Earth, Return Of The Space Cowboy, Travelling Without Moving) all use the ol' didge.

 

Which albums do you have?

 

They've done five albums, in this order:

Emergency On Planet Earth
Return Of The Space Cowboy
Travelling Without Moving
Synkronized
A Funk Odyssey

If you've got Travelling Without Moving, check out "Didjerama" and "Digjital Vibrations".

 

It's possible... I don't know whether he's got a didge player on the current tour. I know Wallace, who used to play the didge with Jamiroquai isn't in the band anymore, but who knows...

 

From memory its either Didjerama or Digjital Vibrations that has a great instrumental with predominately didg and bass with a heavy groove


A lot of Australian bands have used the didg in rock/pop over the years. Probably one of the most 'upfront' didj sounds is in the song Treaty by Yothu Yindi.

 

Theres a guy in boston whos plays one he's great and the band rocks check them out!

http://www.drdidg.com/




AJ

 

That's Digjital Vibrations.

 

Going by Jamiroquai - they don't have any practical applications in a band situation!!

To me - it adds nothing whatsoever! Those tracks are just about the grooves and anything could be sitting over the top - plus they could easily be samples - 99.9% of people wouldn't know the difference !

 

...and 99% of people wouldn't know a synth bass from a real bass, so clearly 'real' bass is of no use in a band either???

Most musicians could tell the difference, and most bassist of some years could tell which camp the bass falls into - J/P/MM/active whatever. in some situations you can even hear which pickup the player is using. Why? because we've spent years and years listening intently to bass.

I know a few didj players, including one full time pro didj player/teacher. They could tell you the specifics of a particular didj sound - the style (western or traditional) the specific names for the toot-notes being used, and loads of other minute details that you'd write off as 'sounding like a sample'...

It's all about your knowledge base - yours doesn't include didj, so you really don't know. For those that do, it's worth a lot more than that... I've been exposed to a lot of didj playing over the last few years, and can certainly hear a heck of a lot more in it than I could three years ago.

Go on, Bruce, now it's time to dismiss Indian classsical music as 'one chord hippie jams with instruments that won't stay in tune'...

Steve
www.stevelawson.net

 

I'm not dimissing all Didgeridoo music - just saying that I have these albums and in this case what you focus on are the bass/drum grooves and the didgeridoo seem to add very little - it is incidental and could be anything.

These tracks in context, seem to be little more than fillers on the albums amongst songs - I was just saying that surely you could find better examples - where digeridoo is more up front and integral to the performance?

 

A pal of mine at work is quite into the world type sounds and his suggestions are:
Yothu Yindi
Warumpi
David Hudson
Adam Plaake
Charlie Hudson/Gondwana-Theres apparently a Jamaican group with this same name but that's not the one w/ didg.
There's also a group called Brother w/ didg and bagpipes but apparently not widely distributed. Worth a search on the 'net though. The brazilian instrument berimbau is another cool rhythmic drone sound- Check out Airto and the like. Hope this helps.

 

I can see what you are saying - i don't think anyone is saying that the didj is going to lay down a groove or play a lead upfront role in the traditional sense of the word. I listened back to those 2 Jamiroquai tracks and I totally disagree that it 'adds nothing whatsoever'. For me quite the opposite. I think the track Didjerama IS all about the didgeridoo. The didg is far more about playing notes, its about communicating nature, animals and thousands of years of Australian aboriginal culture. If you don't think that the digeridoo is not giving that feeling and emotion in Dijerama then nothing I can say is going to change that

It is very rare for bands to have a 'fulltime' didg player (even in Australia) but when they want to add that certain emotion it can be very effective in a band situation. And music is emotion, not just groove and technique.

When 'Live' came to Australia to play last year (I'm not a big fan by the way), they opened their first song with the sound of the drone of a local didgeredoo player - I can tell you that the hairs on the back of 30,000 peoples necks where standing on end from that intro!! Most of them wouldn't know a didgeridoo from a PVC waste water pipe but the electricity that filled that venue was amazing. Man if I could do that with my bass - I'd die a happy man

 

i second the dr. didg post. live, he adds loops one by one and actualy get some melodys eek: ) out the good ol' didg. he actually used to be in australian band called Outback if anyone heard of them

 

I had a friend who was a pretty good Didge player, He could circular breath and do all these tonal tricks, but still, I couldn't really use it for anything

However, a chorus of didges can be an interesting atmospheric effect in bands, particularly jam bands

Aphex Twin has a song called "didgeridoo" I don't know much about it, but it sounds like it's all synth didges(or sampled) with drums and lots of effects. I like it.

 

We used to do a song with didg... WARNING, this is not a good song...


http://artists.iuma.com/site-bin/streammp3.m3u?165588