arctic processing

Arctic blast continues its arctic blasting amidst mountains of shoveled snow and my patience for being creatively empty (brought mostly by it being too fucking cold in The Shed to think how I like to think – staring at random scraps of metal (or paper, or words) without a single notion of what I’m going to make until a semblance of potential comes to mind – for more than two minutes at a time) is at a low ebb. While it’s nice that I can occupy myself with writing things for this space and making my way through Stone and Chester drum exercises, I’d much rather be out there making shit without plans and batches and/oh hell I’m just being a bitchy old grump this morning.

While Ann Lamott would tell us that being creatively empty is a chance to fill up again, how, exactly, to refill that empty has been and continues to be the question: the ways that used to work no longer work. Perhaps these postings are part of that refilling?

a thing about re-learning to play drums

Among the few benefits of music school is that, 20 years after I ran away, I retained the ability to reeducate myself – or at least to develop a plan to do so – on drums. Ignoring all of the “percussionist” background and sticking only with drumset because it’s the fun one – or at least the one that I had the most fun with. Can’t figure why I played marimba so much then. Eh, live and learn.

(But it’s nice to know I can still read music without a problem.)

The four things I’m focusing on right now: hand strength (read: make 44-year-old hands do what 18/19 year old hands could do and endure an entire song never mind an entire gig); pedalwork (for some reason, I really glossed over that part); keeping rock solid time; and being present while I’m playing (read: not letting the fuckeries of institutional music education seep into my enjoyment and reentry into the ways of).

Working through both Stone’s STICK CONTROL for the first part and Chester’s THE NEW BREED for the second part with a metronome to satisfy the third. I do most of the practicing on my roland V drums before moving over to the Tama Cocktail Jam kit for the systems/reading playthroughs.

As for the presence, I’m getting there: I’m still counting through 16ths in my head way too much (read: at all) but it’s nonetheless helpful that drumming was, like metalwork is now, one of the few things with which I could lose myself to flow – by necessity and by love.

french grip

Re-starting my drumming re-education / music therapy from scratch with a new grip. Tried traditional: my left wrist hated it and it defeated the purpose of trying to make my arms of similar strength (though I'm left-handed, my left hand is far weaker than my right: ATV accident fucked that shoulder years back and I've never fully recovered). Matched: both wrists hated it a little less than my left wrist hated traditional, but it still felt too rigid – and was the only grip I was taught during my first, otherly-directed percussive education. Which also killed my passion for drumming, so probably wasn't the best idea to try it again. Live/learn etc.

Now, though: trying out French Grip, which is basically the same as a timpani-playing grip – matched grip but with the palms facing one another and playing shifted from the wrists to the fingers – and I think I like it. If I'm not mistaken, it's what Carter Beauford uses, isn't it? Will never reach that level, but I'm intrigued by the action of the sticks vs. matched (or as I like to call it, missionary grip). So far, a bit dodgy, but I've re-started Stone's STICK CONTROL (again) to, well, control the sticks – shouldn't you be writing, he asks himself / this is part of my writing, he says.