Intelligence in Music and Nature with Roy "Futureman" Wooten Part 1 (of 2)
“ I’m always following nature, because nature is always giving you the blueprint. ”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM Futureman
Roy Wilfred Wooten, also known as “RoyEl”, best known by his stage name Future Man, is an inventor, musician, and composer. He is also known as Futche to his fans. He is a percussionist and member of the jazz quartet Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, along with banjoist Béla Fleck, harmonicist Howard Levy, and Roy’s brother, electric bass virtuoso Victor Wooten. Wooten is a five-time Grammy Award-winning performer with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. For the Flecktones, he plays the Drumitar, a novel electronic instrument of his own invention, and occasionally performs vocals as well.
family
“I come from a family of brothers, and everyone plays music. The oldest brother, Regi Wooten, they call them The Teacher because he teaches so many people, he taught Victor and Joseph their instruments. Then after Regi, there's me. So Regi’s on the guitar, and there’s me on the drums. And as my brother Rudy, who passed away but he was saxophone player. He would play two saxes at once just he really loved Coltrane and Charlie Parker and he applied it all. He's the brother A lot of people don't know. But he's the middle brother passed away and there was a jazz club named after him and Nashville called Rudy's. And that's a dedicated my brother Rudy, so he was the middle child. Then after him comes to Joseph on the keyboards. A lot of people know Joseph when they see the Steve Miller band live. Joe's been playing with Steve for the last 20 years or something. It's almost like maybe Joseph breathed life into Steve Miller. Because when he got to get gigs, Steve Miller was talking about maybe I'm going to do this maybe 2-4 more years, and I'm out. Joe came in and rewrote his tune Fly Like An Eagle, he put a rap in there. And he loved it so much, man, they put it in the show.
But so yeah, so there's Regi, me, Rudy, Joseph on keyboards. And my youngest brother, Victor. He's made a lot of impact on the bass. We come from a musical family. And we've been doing it for a long time. When Victor was two years old, where it had him jamming with us. He just put big on little Mickey Mouse guitar just strumming along, not really playing, but just in there. And then when he was three, I started showing him where to put his fingers and stuff. And we always worked as a team. I think one thing that's good come from a musical family. It wasn't like competition is like sometime in sports families. It's more like a musical thing that brought this teamwork. And it was like us against the world a lot of times because when we grew up, there was a lot of racism. So we had to be our best. You know what I mean? Our best team we had to really be behind each other. And music was a vehicle. You could feel yourself getting smarter as you got better with music. You can feel your mind developing.”
music as a journey
“No, I was just gonna say until that music journey. You know, you know, it takes you around the world. It just takes you around the world man. Victor was like the, I think he was like six, seven years old when we will open up a war and people like that doing concerts. I didn't even remember that Vic was that young man. And then by the time he was eight, we were on a national tour opening for Curtis Mayfield the Was it the Superfly tool. And it was like a crazy to get a couple of days in the tour fold it and so we got to see some some some of the ugly side of stuff. But man, we learned a lot man. So just my background is just coming from a musical family. And we were just always pushing it and our our place was always the nerve center for the musicians to come especially the good musicians that calm. And those good musicians are like a who's who, man. It's like, you know, Carter beauford. You know, I remember the Carter boat we used to hang out with me and Billy drumming. You know, everybody knows who Carter beauford is now you know Dave Matthew Wilson, Steve Wilson, the saxophone player. My brother Rudy won saxophone the best jazz solos of the whole state. He wanted twice. And then after he couldn't win it anymore, Steve Wilson wanted after that, so he was like, oh, who Steve Wilson become Steve Wilson to the garage. Yeah, now people know Steve Wilson through you know, through the jazz world and stuff and it just goes on James gene is bass player. He's one of the last of the people to come to the garage. But man last time we saw him was at the ryan mill playing with Herbie Hancock. Okay. with everybody. He's a bass player was sad Night Live. Okay. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. So music is just it's just as a journey. My background is really taking that journey. That journey led us to Busch Gardens meeting people and led me back to Nashville, where I'm at Baylor, you know, beyla asked me to come to Nashville, through Victor, who came to visit Nashville. Because we met a engineer. He was a fiddle and fiddle player Kurt story kept saying, Hey, y'all gotta come to Tennessee man And so finally you know we have some time became explore he met all current introduce him to all the musicians bayla Platt, Mark O'Connor, Edgar Meyer, you know, all these super musicians were here. I was like, Wow, it wasn't just old timey kind of stuff, man. eglomise very classical. So Vic's meeting all these guys. Then Joel naomasa calls him back to come play. And that's his first like real good. He's able to make money and do stuff. And so he ended up here he met bailu. When he met Baylor Baylor was putting together this this experimental jazz group. He had an offer to do a TV show The lonesome pine special guy said, Do whatever you want to do. So beta was going to end it with a jazz quartet, at least the quartet, you know, he had already found his players, right, Howard Levy, he met this harmonica player, man, I could play chromatic harmonica on a blues harp. Now, what is that, right? And somebody just grabbed them to say you guys need to play together, play together and push them in the room. And they played all night and the sun was coming up when they looked up. Right? So he knew he was gonna have Howard. Now when he met Vic, Kurt story, the story is that Kurt said, Baylor listen to this, and he put the phone to Vince bass. And bass started doing those kind of triplet thumps that he was doing and Baylor Baylor has since said, Man, it sounded like bass banjo like bass Earl Scruggs or something, you know? Yeah, so they met spent many hours playing, he says, Man, all I need is a drummer now. So then listen, he thinks he's gonna have to go to New York to find a job because he doesn't really hear that jazz thing in Nashville. He doesn't think he's gonna get it in Nashville. And everybody listened to they listen to professional guys. You know, what do you think about this guy? What do you think about this guy? And big would always just say, now you should just check out what my brother's doing. He's a big kept saying that till he finally called me up. So I'm in Virginia, and I've experimented playing with it, because Vic said he couldn't explain it. And you know, I'm, I'm way out there, man. I'm trying to play drums with my fingers on a guitar. You know, I'm trying to learn to move my fingers to make the melody to find the melody through the rudiments, you know, I mean, if I can move my fingers, you know, I can get this thing flowing. Right. And so it's just some so personal Maddy really expected to go out there. Beta call me up while I was performing with this instrument, you know?
pushing the boundaries of the instruments
“Everybody was pushed. When I looked around, I went, Wow, everybody here is out on a limb, I'm not the only one out on a limb here. Everyone was at the edge. It was very uncomfortable, in a sense, because I was trying to play all the drums. Like when I was playing in Virginia, the drum sounds weren't good enough to do cymbals and everything. So I was using live cymbals and electronic. I was pushing myself to play all the drums here. The sounds were just barely good enough to even try. When I listened back to those records, I just laugh, looking at what I was able to pull off man with with no technology. But basically, for people out there, when they listen to those flat tones records, like from the very first record, I'm playing all the drums, it sounds like I'm hitting with sticks and stuff. But I'm playing it all with my fingers. And that was my goal. For a long time, people didn't know who we were because we went out there touring and stuff. And I just wanted to record and let the record go by. Every once in a while drummers will say, Man, I was wondering how you got that lick, because I couldn't figure out how do you do that with sticks? You hit in too many drums. I just wanted to go by without a gimmicky kind of thing. I just wanted to play drums.“
on harmony
“Growing up when you’re surrounded by really good musicians, the way that they push for their artform, inspires you to push for your art form. I can remember one thing in my mind was the way Reginald learned from Consuela Morehead, who was a jazz musician, and her brother was Billy the great jazz basis. They talked about harmony, like it was the force in Star Wars, as if harmony held the universe together. Harmony is like the voice of nature. If I can approach rhythm, the way they approached harmony, that I would make some profound discovery. I really looked at rhythm as some holy, almost. And that's what was taking me deeper into the journey. So I know through rhythm I can find the melody again. And I was on a search for that.
What if I could take this Buddy Rich kind of technique, and lay it out on notes? Like like Art Tatum, you know, when you play the piano, you know what I mean? It's like, that's kind of like a drum expression. But it's expressed melodically and harmonically all the same time. So I said, What if I could take this Buddy Rich, you know, Billy Cobham approach and apply it to the melody right? And I knew that I would have an advantage. If I could get it in my fingers, then I could see the rudiments even in a wider spectrum, instead of just based to two sticks, its base How many fingers I got, and all the different options that gives you. So that was that was the concept you just approach in it.
I remember in my wallet, I had this quote by Miles Davis, who said, “the melody will be found again, and the rhythm of the bass and the drums.” Miles he always has a way of planting something, then sure enough, it kind of comes true.”
the origin of futureman
“The name Futureman came because we were playing at the Station Inn, a classic bluegrass club in Nashville. We are playing this space banjo, different kind of music here. People were coming into the concerts like, what is this band about? And so we were having a concert, and we were taking a break at the Station Inn between the break Mark O'Connor and Jerry Douglas came back. And I think it was Mark or Jerry shook my hand, and said it felt like I didn't have any bones in my hand, but he could just feel all this energy. And he said, “Man, he's the future, man.” He's the Futureman. But then they wrote a song about it called Future Man. You know, I mean, it was the first song on the Strength in Numbers record. And so that then it stuck, future man was about me. They said, he's the future man. Then they wrote a tune called Futureman. And so it was stuck from there. “
strong matrix or nature giving you the blueprint
“So I designed this framework, and I consciously was searching for the framework, I didn't want it to be random. And so I thought, what is the most fundamental foundational thing of nature? I’m always following nature, because nature is always giving you the blueprint. So I said, the most foundational thing I can do is just go to binary. One cell divides into two cells, two cells divides into four cells, four cells divided into eight cells... And I knew that that division wasn't an infinite amount of numbers, it's only a six note cycle. So I figured that six note cycle was profound. So I just took the first four parts of the six note cycle, the root doubles to the second, the second goes to the fourth, and the fourth goes to the octave dat…this is such a strong matrix.
I've experimented with the other side, too, because of those 124875, and then back to one. So you can come back to the 1578, you can come back that way, too. And that has a yin feeling. You know, the 1248 has a Yang feeling. The there's a yin other side that I've explored, too. But I've created on the on the Yang side. But this is where music is showing us a journey here.
In this search for Miles Davis and the melody will be found again, I hit Eureka, when all of my violin parts came from that. It came from that matrix I just gave you and then I'm just up in the morning, three, four in the morning, hitting record. And boom, here comes the intelligence. Every single thing that I played was transcribed later for violins, so much so that I can play my original and they can play against my original performance with the violins. Now that that was melody. It's cool to see because people wouldn't write like this. This is this is an unusual jump. I just wanted to let that people see in that process. When I'm going to put my fingers on that, I don't know what's gonna happen.
So I, when I started laying those intervals out, I did about two keys. Because a guy named Chris Dehaas created the software where I could lay out the notes that I wanted to split, and where I needed them to split. So I can assign the feeling of those splits. And I did about two keys, and I went, Whoa, something's happening here. I can already hear that, like, Whoa, that like music is going to jump off of this thing. So I knew to just hit set up my tape recorder, do more keys, and let's see what's happening. So I just jumped in the water. I'm splashing and when I splash music is coming out. So there's a conscious part Chris Dehaas. He created software so that I could do it. Here's my conscious mind said I'm gonna create this framework, What is my framework going to be built around? Mother Nature. Mother Nature is showing you the blueprint. I'm following that blueprint, not realizing how rich harmonically it is.”
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