I haven’t written anything here in a while, and my last couple of attempts to create some consistency have been haphazard at best (false starts at worst). Now, after spending some time revamping the ol’ website and adding a bunch of short fiction, I thought I’d give it another go.… Read More »Does Anyone Read Blogs Anymore? (and why such questions don’t matter)
Confidence is a strange beast. Some seem to possess it inherently, others seem to fight to find it their entire lives. Musicians are notorious for this dichotomy, many acting as their “own worst critics” or constantly chasing some sense of artistic achievement that’s always out of reach. The mighty Beethoven,… Read More »The Confidence/Knowledge Paradox
I hail from a small(ish) town called Muskegon, Michigan. We’ve got a few “claims to fame,” but for the drumming community, one of the proudest is being the hometown of Derico Watson. Derico is a powerhouse of a player with plenty of chops and super deep pocket, but even more… Read More »A Clinic With Derico Watson
I’ve been a little lost on what to write about lately. I’m not a pro drummer, I’m just working on it – so who the hell am I? Why does it matter what I have to say? …But oh so gradually, I’ve been starting to figure it out. From the… Read More »Authenticity: Social and Musical Currency
[This was originally written as an internal blog for my day job at LongerDays, but seemed fitting for here too… This goes for way more than drumming! Let me know what holds you back.] Putting yourself out there can be scary… Even more so when you’re sharing a creative work.… Read More »Creative Confidence
People seem unhappy. There are things happening in the forefront of public discourse that spark a lot of disagreement. Anger and fear, even just mild disgust, seem all the more common. As usual, it’s that much more visible too (thanks internet), but it’s hard to ignore a pervasive sentiment of… Read More »Transform Your Anger to Art
We live in some weird times. Smartphones, YouTube, the upheaval of the music industry, vitriol-spewing trolls, more information than we can possibly digest, bombarding us from every angle, every minute of the day… This is life on the internet. These relatively new (and harsh) realities are having an effect on… Read More »A Guide to Being A Drummer on The Internet
Over the last three entries on this here blog, I’ve been trying to cover my current (loose) approach to learning and developing my skillset on the drums. I’m calling it “The Twofold Path” because there are, well, two primary elements – exactly what I looked in Parts 2 and 3 – “chops” and “groove.”
Surely there are plenty of other things to consider in this vast world of percussive music making, but for me… Right now… This is where my head’s at.
In Part 2, the focus was chops and technical facility on the kit, and that should be a pretty major part of everyone’s practice. Really, this side of the coin can be expanded into anything technically oriented – speed, independence, pattern memorization, technique…
The other side (covered in Part 3) can be expanded into everything musical and practical – including things that require the ability and facility mentioned above.
Where one side is physical, the other is mostly mental.
OKAY – we’ve made it this far into a murky topic… A daunting subject to tackle, but I’ll do my best to keep things on track. This is where we really have to start slogging through the weeds though, because there’s some terminology we might not all agree on, some… Read More »The Twofold Path – Part 3: The Groove
Big, sweeping platitudes only carry so much weight… But in the moments when we can put complex ideas into a concise little nugget of wisdom, it’s at least worth hanging onto as an easy reminder. My first introduction to what I want to unpack in this series comes from an… Read More »The Twofold Path – Part 1: Introduction