![]() About two weeks ago I got to go play drums for a full three hours. It was bliss! My amazing in-laws were more then happy to look after little one and so I got my cymbals and my snare (named Gavin) together and off we went to the rehearsal room – only 10 min drive away. Bonus! The rehearsal room was great, cheap rates and also I was greeted with the offer of a cup of coffee from the moment I got there – lovely stuff! So I had three whole hours, what was I to do? I felt a little apprehensive as I was going to film and record a little bit of me playing for a casting but I felt so out of practice and out of my depth. Forget about what I was going to play, how am I going to record myself? Lucky for me I have a little Scarlett 2i2 interface from Focusrite. It has two inputs for microphones; I just planned on using one mic. I had googled how to record drums using one microphone so I positioned the mic over the left side of bass drum between it and the ride cymbal. I had a quick listen with my headphones and you know what? It didn’t sound half bad! Add a little reverb and it was more than alright! So there I was, camera turned on, logic ready to go and I had to play something, and not just anything – something impressive. I was pretty anxious; being a mum so far has been one of the greatest gifts I have been given these past 5 months. But with that gift has come a whole lot of insecurity and worry. Worry about all the things including my daughter and a lot of insecurity about my drumming. With no playing for months, how the hell could I expect to play anything sounding half decent?! I tried to play from my heart and with the mind-set of, if I don’t start now then I will never begin… I believe it was Lao Tzu who said “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step”, so with that in mind and heart, I started to play. …And it felt gooooood!! I forgot how satisfying it is to just hit stuff!! ;-) I could totally feel that I was rusty – my hands wouldn’t play as fast as I wanted, ideas would come out messy and my bass drum technique was certainly sounding sloppy as hell. Never the less, I continued to play, film and record. I played solo ideas for the casting job and interspersed playing along to some pop songs. I came away feeling great, yes I have a long way to go to get my playing back up to where it was but I’m armed with some video to see what areas I especially need to work on. The best thing I was left with? Inspiration! I’m already looking forward to my next practice session where I’ll look at chart reading – something I was studying with Bob Armstrong and I’ll also check out my technique too. Technique is an area, which I want to get into my daily routine – just on a practice pad for 20 mins or so a day – this is not yet a reality but just writing it down makes me feel more accountable. Aside from that, I’ve just put on a bit of prog madness from Planet X to listen to, have emailed my fusion/prog band Red Monster to see whether we can collaborate via the internet and get the album we’ve wanted to record for so long in the pipeline. If he can email over tracks I can record here… simples! On top of all that, I’m going to see one of my favourite bands Dream Theater this Sunday!! Bring. It. On!
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