Saturday, June 21, 2014

Transcription: John Guerin — Dirty Harry, Main Title

Here's a whole lot of kickass 70s stuff. The drumming here is by John Guerin, one of the great L.A. studio drummers of the era. He plays a large set here, with five concert toms, and, fairly or not— to everyone else— he kind of owns the giant 70s tom fill in my mind. The piece is Lalo Schifrin's Main Title from the Dirty Harry Soundtrack. Lalo himself is the king of burning 70s TV and movie soundtracks, and this is one of my favorites.




The tempo is pretty cooking, but the 16ths swing a little bit on much of this, which is rather difficult to pull off. There's a good amount of somewhat linear playing, with the right leading, and the left hand filling in, especially on the tom fills. Guerin has a little non-independent method for making those open hihats: he plays both feet in unison on the close notes— almost all of them.

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Audio after the break:




2 comments:

Unknown said...

Man, this is great. Am just a simple drummer who always loved this soundtrack; drums especially. Have searched Internet for the responsible party; for a long time. Thanks.

Unknown said...

When i started playing drums as a teenager 16 i heard this sound track and the drums in it just rocked me and propeller me forward as a drummeralways wanted to know who played the drums on itand 40yrs later have finally found out utmost respect to mr guerin thanks for thise licks