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"The Bellmaker". I have always wanted a bell brass snare drum; the clarity of their tone, the poignant attack they offer, something about them is truly unique. The problem was, I didn't want to spend upwards of $2000 on a snare drum to achieve this!

I've always been a fan of the underdog. The small business owner whom, armed with a dream and experience, does something so good, unique and cool that envelops passion and love into the final product... a lot of the large companies seem to have lost that part of the equation and I'm always happy to find someone who delivers. Vukan Karadzic is such a guy, and he lives in Serbia.

I first became aware of Vukan's work through the internet, photos of his drums began to show up on social media groups and I was intrigued with what he does, as the first video I watched was this 1:00 long reel about creating "spun" snare drums. One minute was all it took to convince me "this guy can build a badass drum!" and so I began to manifest one of his drums in my mind.

One day I was walking along in Central Park in NYC and it hit me, "Hey, I can actually make that drum happen!" and I put in for a 5.5x14 Bell Brass. I figured it would take 6 months to get and was in no hurry so I dropped the $200 deposit with Vukan. A little while later I thought about the size and decided I'd like a 5" deep shell instead of a 5.5" deep, and Vukan said he had that same drum in stock so I paid the difference and the drum was suddenly on it's way to me!

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"Behold Electric Guitar"

When I was living my final days in San Diego in 2015, I met PG at a guitar workshop (Guitar Workshop Plus, out of Toronto) where I was an instructor. PG asked us "staff musicians" to play behind him and who could say "NO" to an offer such as that? We played well together and even better, vibed incredibly and both discovered we were about to move northwards...

So 8/15/15 I arrived in the Pacific Northwest for a fresh start to my musical career; 26 years in Southern California was enough for me, having been raised in Mississippi for the first two decades of my life and I needed some rain! So Seattle it was... Got a fresh start in the local music scene, began meeting folks and hanging out and then one day PG calls me up and says "Hey I just moved to the PNW too, down in Portland... let's record!" and a few days later, I was at Opal Studio in Portland, sitting down with PG and Damian Erskine, recording tunes!

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"Codex Tempore" is a musical collaboration that began between drummer Bill Ray in San Diego / Seattle and Tobias Weber in Germany. The tunes are composed from Bill Ray's extemporaneous drum performances ergo "Rhythmic Sketches". Says BR- "I play to a song in my head which is more of a "tuneless whistle", and Tobias comes up with things that make sense musically".

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The Odd Get Even

In 2006 I was recording an album for an artist at Spotless Digital in Ocean Beach, CA and asked Sean Power, engineer extraordinaire "could I have ten minutes of time to warm up, and will you record me?" And so I banged out two "Rhythmic Sketches"; basically, songs without melodic content. Wireframes if you will, as dictated by percussive dynamics.

I will delve into the whole story later, but for now I wanted to hip you to my newest album release from my project "The Odd Get Even" that is partly mostly the braindroppings of one Bill Cornish, keyboardist and composer.