Spencer Tweedy releases drumprints vol. 1: 2301, an album of drum recordings and drum loops, available now via Bandcamp. drumprints vol. 1 can be listened to as an album in itself, but it can also be adapted for songs of your own. The collection is released under a Creative Commons license which allows other musicians, producers, and composers to use the material as they wish. Tweedy wanted to utilize the Creative Commons law “to see how far the record can reach. I want it to be used by people who have no money. Young people who don’t even have a bank account yet.”
Tweedy recorded all the drums for this volume in January 2023, but he started working on the idea in 2016. That year, while in school at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, he had a one-room studio along the Fox River. He recorded some drums with the intention of sending them to friends and came up with the name drumprints, titled after the engineering term “printing” and a play on the individuality of a thumbprint. In recent years, Tweedy would record a new improvisation session every once in a while, without leading to the necessary excitement to release them. However, this January 2023 session, proved to be fruitful. “As I was cutting them up, finding the pieces I liked, I realized it would be more compelling to string a bunch of them together,” says Tweedy. “The first draft was essentially all 98 clips played in quick succession. That wasn’t right . So I went back to it, extended the loops, and sculpted some proto-arrangements. They’re still meant to be perused and culled from, but now, hopefully, they’re more fun to listen to than a hundred blips.”
Read more about drumprints vol. 1: 2301 on Spencer Tweedy’s Substack.