You have one of the most enviable contemporary careers as a drummer. Tell us how your perception of the instrument has changed.
Antonio Sánchez: I have almost no memories before the drums. She has been such a constant companion that it is like an extension of me. But it has been transformed. Before my mission was to be the most complete and versatile drummer in history, and little by little I began to focus on jazz, the most creative music, and my vision was forming. Now I am the leader of my own projects, I am more conceptualist. I’m not just trying to accompany other artists but to create my music, my image, my brand. Now I’m putting out a new project with a lot of singers who provided me with original songs, and I’m reimagining them. The drums are the element that goes hand in hand with the voice. Normally when it’s an album with a lot of singers the drums are usually merely a companion, but this time I wanted the drums to be the protagonist, but not having a lot of drum solos. The instrument has been transformed over the years, as well as the mission and function it has in my projects.
You said that in this project the drums are at the height of the voice. If not with solos, how are you approaching it?
ACE: I always loved groups that had very good drummers, and especially that they were original, like Led Zeppelin with John Bonham, The Police with Stewart Copeland, Rush with Neil Pearl, Queen with Roger Taylor. They were rock groups in which the drummers had a very individual voice and I think that was lost as pop grew more and rock was relegated a bit. The music is still highly produced but the drums were relegated to something very generic. The way I wanted to do this new project was to think about how the music that I like works, which is incredibly well produced, like Peter Gabriel, U2 or Tears for Fears, which are groups that really put years into the production of Their disks. One thing they do is layer guitars, lots of guitars with different sounds coming in from all sides. Keyboards, same thing. Voices, the same. Why not do the same with battery? You generally have a drummer that does the beat. Why not have twenty with different sounds coming and going on different sides of the stereo spectrum? So I started experimenting with this, and the result is this album with which in each song you have drums of different types and sounds, doing different things, that make the drums go in and out everywhere.
It sounds like a great challenge in terms of production and arrangements …
ACE: It was a producer’s dream because I have incredible raw material from great singer-songwriters who gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted. It was not a collaboration of “well, let me do a little bit, tell me what you think and we will follow him”, but they gave me the material, I did absolutely everything and in the end, I hope you like it. It was not a push and pull.
When did you start working on this? How far along were you when the pandemic started?
ACE: I started two years ago, then I was more or less advanced. I was working as I was receiving material. Sometimes they gave it to me quickly and sometimes it took a long time and that delayed the project. But as soon as they gave it to me, I started working. It has been something so different from what I normally do and so much fun… I also love listening to it. Sometimes I make records that I love to play but I don’t listen to them all the time. This is a pop rock record, like someone else made it, and I love listening to it every day.
The watch that Antonio currently wears is the iconic model Divers Sixty-Five, using the Oris Cal. 733 automatic movement, Sellita SW 200-1 base, dated at 3 o’clock. It has a 42 mm case, multiple pieces and a screw-down steel crown. Hermetic up to 10 bar / 100m. Unidirectional rotating diving bezel with black aluminum coating, 60 minute scale timer and Super treated zero marker[1]LumiNova. Sapphire crystal domed on both sides with internal anti-reflective treatment. Steel screwed case back with Oris logo. Black dial with applied indexes, treated with Super LumiNova®. Nickel and Super-LumiNova hour, minute and second hands. Black rubber strap and optional NATO textile strap with adjustable folding clasp or steel bracelet.
What did you think the first time you heard it?
ACE: To begin with, I really want people to hear it, because I have saved it for a long time. To Thana, my wife, who is a singer, it also seemed that we listened to it as if it were someone else’s, without paying attention to solos, which is usually what happens in jazz. Sometimes I don’t like to hear that when I’m doing something else. Either I listen to it well or I listen to something else. But this kind of record is very much about the rhythm, the production, the sonic thing, how satisfying it is sonically.
What does it mean for you to listen to a ‘good’ album?
ACE: What I like is having a gin and tonic, sitting in my studio with my good headphones or good speakers, putting on the record and closing my eyes. I have even found myself many times at concerts – jazz or classical music, above all – listening with my eyes closed. I feel like it’s very easy to listen with your eyes. As what you see is what you hear. When you have your eyes closed, you start to produce your own sound universe and your ear arranges things as they should be, instead of how you are seeing them. So, I usually listen with my eyes closed and at a very high volume. The gin and tonic also helps.
Musicians have a very special relationship and perception of time, as it is a fundamental element of music. At this time, the notion of time changed dramatically for everyone. How has this time been for you?
AS: It was completely disorienting because you don’t know how to go on with your life. I am very fortunate to have music, which is something that I have been doing alone for a long time. Obviously playing live is a huge part of the equation of my life, but another big part is what I’m doing with this album: producing, feeling, sitting in front of my computer, my drums, my keyboard, myself, reimagining things. . Time has passed very quickly thanks to that. If I had nothing to do it would have felt like a prison. In my case, I feel like a mad scientist in my basement, rearranging things with my headphones, seeing what new things I can create, and that kept me creatively super active and inspired. The material they gave me for the new album was inspiring, and then listening to my drums with the voices of people like Trent Reznor, Dave Matthews, it was something apotheotic for me. I had also been doing the music for a movie that is an India-US co-production, where they called me because they loved it. BirdmanBut they also wanted strings, guitars and other elements that, as we were in the middle of a pandemic, I did just because I didn’t want to bring musicians home. If you ask me “do you play guitar?” I’m going to tell you no, but I played all the guitar in the movie and on the album. I bought a ukulele, a ud, a mandolin, and from three notes to three notes I was putting together my own universe, and that kept me quite inspired during the pandemic.
How does the way you work change when you are making a score to when you make music for yourself?
ACE: Just that is the big difference. When you are doing a core you are devising, producing, composing music for someone who has a very specific vision: the director. You have talks with him, and many times he does not know how to express well what he wants musically, and sometimes there are misunderstandings because you do not know well what he is looking for and you do four versions of the same thing and you do not even hit him, until the fourth, in the you think: “maybe what he wants are arpeggios”, and you do them and he immediately loves them. Many times there is a lack of musical terminology and it is quite a challenge: to be able to reinterpret what they are saying in a very abstract way and put it in a musical question. Many times it is a question of ego because when you are producing your own music your ego is very involved in everything: what you like, what you think people will like. But in this case you have to put the ego aside and think about what the director wants and please him before pleasing yourself. Many times the first version I do of something, I think it is the best I could have done, and I give it to the director and he doesn’t like it. So I have to start transforming it and I end up with a fifth version that is not what I wanted at all, but he does like it. It is a battle with your own ego and you have to understand that you are working for someone else and not for yourself.
And how do you deal with it? How is it for someone with your experience and merits that someone tells you that what you are doing is wrong?
ACE: It is that music is a very subjective matter, so what you think is good, the director says: “well, as is my vision and it goes with image, I am hearing something totally different”. And many times they don’t know what they are hearing until they hear it. They don’t know what they want until they hear it for the first time. I know composers who have stopped composing music for films because of that subjectivity that occurs all the time, in which the director can tell you that what you do is not what he is looking for at all, and you as an artist think that that is what better fit. It is a constant battle with them and with yourself and you have to try to find the middle ground. Do not be completely dissatisfied with what you are doing, but try to please the director.
You have been a friend of the watchmaker Oris since 2019. What did you like about the brand?
ACE: It’s a bit like music: it’s subjective why you like something. As soon as I saw the designs, as soon as I put on the watch, I felt that it was going with me. I am a very watchmaker and I have had watches of all kinds, but I am very intrigued by automatic mechanisms, especially since I am a drummer and I am in constant motion. An automatic watch for me is perfect because I’m basically in perpetual motion. I also like the simplicity of the clock. I’ve never been one of those watches that have thirty thousand complications and I don’t even know how to use them or what they are for. I like more elegant and more frugal, delicate, simple designs. Oris has everything, but the watches I like the most are the most elegant.
You came to Mexico to preside over a residence. Tell us a little about this.
ACE: It is a very important mission for anyone who has been lucky like mine, that I was able to go abroad and study and interact with top-level musicians, to whom I have had access as a companion or student. I have always been returning to Mexico trying to teach courses, master classes, clinics and other things, but I always come for a day or two and I have never been very consistent. Then I thought that I am at a time in my life in which I need to focus more on my country and try to institute something annual, so that people always know that from this to that date there will always be a residence they will come to. many musicians from abroad –mainly from New York because that is where I live and where I have made a large part of my contacts and relationships– to teach a very intense four-day course –maybe the next one will last longer; now due to covid we were very limited–, but what interests me is to perpetuate the virtuous circle a little bit, that the students remain inspired. I was very inspired. Many times we think about these projects that the mission is to inspire but the truth is that I was incredibly energized, inspired, by the desire of everyone to want to learn, advance, improve. I think this can have very good generational repercussions, that what we are doing will continue to be perpetuated, and that in ten or twenty years the general level of jazz musicians in Mexico has risen radically thanks to what we are doing here. It was an incredible experience. The organization was of the highest level, with the help of CENART, Fundación BBVA and Dequinta Producciones.