I am interested in helping you keep your practice from becoming impure.– Shunruyu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind At the same time, they praised him when he didn’t deserve it. “I’d have games when I’d […]
Category: professionalism
Drummers as an inferior class
Savoring the persecution “Drummers are known to be a race on their own.” – Joe Morello “General Browning, I am a Pole, considered by some to be smart.” – First line spoken by Gene […]
Something strange
This person is making a lot of videos composing accompaniment for drum solo videos by some well known players, “adding music”, as he says. The first few minutes explain this was done, then there’s an […]
Very occasional quote of the day: getting fired
“There’s been times when I was fired from gigs because, lets say I had the ability to get my foot in the door, but wasn’t living up to the expectations that people had. In that […]
Pro vs. semi-pro
Another item from the archives— this is from Jack Wheaton (1932-2015), my jazz styles and analysis professor when I was at USC in 1988-89. In some context or other he gave us this list of […]
Time is money
Another funny item I dug out of my archives. I believe it’s from the jazz festival at UC Berkeley in 1989— I was there playing with USC’s guitar ensemble. A bassist and drummer gave a […]
What’s with resting the sticks on the drum?
Item just in from the pet peeve department: there’s an extremely slovenly practice, apparently done by half the drummers in the world: resting the sticks on the drum head before playing. I have students who […]
Q & A: guitarist hunting
all guitarists until proven otherwise I received this question in the mail today: What are you looking for in a guitar player? What strengths/capabilities do you feel are the most important? Any thoughts on common […]
When they say they have drums
All right dude I told ya we had a sweet drum set for you, here you go They don’t have drums. You’re going to get burned. Always. Pardon me— I just had a couple of […]
What it is: being a professional
Obligatory Venn diagram One area where I see a lot of misconceptions is around the idea of being a professional musician. Usually, people seem to think it means that you make all your money from […]
A waste of time
Here’s a good video in case you ever wonder “Am I wasting my time geeking out on this drumming nonsense? Does anyone really care if I get such-and-such particular little drum thing together?” The answer […]
Bears
Not quite the sense of menace I was hoping for, but that’ll have to do… One of the effects of this new Internet wonderland of information is that now everyone feels they are in competition […]