About the Up

A simple musician, finding out how he ticks

[drummydummer]

Pew pew pew booom splat

I have recently been paying a lot more attention to what my favorite drummers have to say as much as listening to what they play. I just got Groove essentials 1.0 from Tommy Igoe, and I’m planning on playing the crap out of it. Learning to be a musician vs being a drummer should be my goal!

The idea is learning and playing to the whim and will of the music so that my brain can begin comprehending what I’m doing in a musical context instead of a beep beep beep beep beep all the time. 

I’ve been splitting what I want to do so many ways that I’ve honestly just stopped playing for long periods of time because I have no focus.. What do I want? Where do I want to go with it? All questions that I need to find answers to. 

I can’t stop now, I have too much time into this and I want to proceed and grow desperately!

[drummydummer]

Symmetry

As a musician, I am a slave to symmetry. 

[drummydummer]

Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

Oh hey, it’s me again!

Just kidding, this is a new blog.. Trick is on you, so I hope you feel silly.

I decided that I needed to start writing again, and seeing as how that was 4 months ago, I would say it’s about time. I tend to start something, then trash it in a classic Frankenstein’s monster rage montage. I’m actually going to start up something and keep it.. Maybe not on a regular basis, but whenever I find the creative bones jangling around in me somewhere.

[drummydummer]

Up and up?

to I had the chance to study under the great Daniel Glass last year, and it really changed my view on playing the drums....

We learned some technique that I could never figured out, and that was cool! The big thing, however, was his take on how stick control works. Daniel teaches that it’s all about the up of the sticking... Now originally I thought he was a nutter cause that’s not how you hit the drum, but I listened and kept my mouth shut (surprise) and it blew my mind. 

So the way that he talks about it is this; the time between the stick rebounding from the drum to to point to where it comes down to hit the head again is where all of your time is made... Regardless of what you’re playing, the rebound time is where you create your pocket, your feel on how the groove is going. If you pay attention to the space where there is nothing happening, you can create a greater sense of timing and groove for yourself since it will actually make you relax and think.

Side bar to that...... I also got to study under Benny Greb, and one of his tips was the you should play in the moment, thinking about everything else means that you are not the one that is driving at that moment. You have to ikeep your head in the game as of what’s happening right now. 

Slide that into Daniel’s teaching, and you have a beefy chunk of time making skills. It takes some time to think independently about what the sticking is doing while on the rise, but it’s let me sit in the groove more firmly. Using that time in my head is almost like little breaks where I can think about groove or phrasing or even concentrating on what fill I’m going to do. The idea with that is that you should never prepare or be tense going into a fill, it should be something that just happens. It’s like firing any kind of handgun/rifle... Yeah I went there. You should just ease into it to the point that it almost surprises you.

[drummydummer]

New year? Nahhhhh

The new year is coming soon!

Nobody cares....

I feel like I’m at a place in my life where my goals shouldn’t be based on what I decided before January comes. I have things that I want to accomplish and I need to take that as my motivation to move forward... Not assuming that I can change my life in 365 days and then dump it for some other resolution. I want to be in better shape physically and musically PERIOD... I don’t want to be better next year, I want to be better NOW.

I have a responsibility to myself to become more on a daily basis, and I’m starting this before I decide another calendar # will change any of my motivation.