Isthmus of Drum is the first track off the Metalwood 3 album. Metalwood is a contemporary jazz band consisting of myself on bass, Mike Murley on sax, Brad Turner on trumpet and keys, and Ian Froman on drums.

When we make a Metalwood album, some of the tunes are pre-composed by members of the band, but others (like this tune) come as a result of group improvisation.

For "Isthmus of Drum", a melody was suggested between Mike and Brad, and after listening to it for a bit, the harmony I heard was two bars of A, followed by two bars of Eb.

Then, Ian said, "I'm just going to play as crazy as I can," and we all just tried to hang on...

Isthmus of Drum also received a bit of post production work, which is rare for a Metalwood tune. We took the initial take into the computer, and the first 8 bars of drums that you hear are a drum loop that we added using Pro Tools. Ian's live drum part then takes over for the rest of the tune, except for a middle 16 bars where the drum loop re-appears underneath the keyboard solo. These 16 measures were added in post-production to the original take.

You can learn more about Metalwood at http://www.metalwood.com.