Percussion Deconstruction™

It's so easy to get caught up in practicing, in improving your chops, in getting all those licks and riffs down. This is especially true when you are young and working your way up the musical ladder. I remember putting in hours and hours of practice when I was in high school and university. Sometimes it seemed like all I did was practice.  But as I got older, and left the academic realm, I found I practiced less and less. Sometimes I felt guilty, like I was slacking off, or being lazy. But I never did get back up to the same level of practicing as I had at one time. The usual motivation. Once I left school, there was no carrot on the stick  to reach for. So much of musical academia seems to be practice for practice sake, just working on your technique, your timing, all things physical. It often becomes a competition. A competition against other students, teachers, and even yourself, like you're trying to prove something to someone—anyone. After you get out into the ...

This is a monumental post, as I celebrate 4 years of writing Percussion Deconstruction , and almost 200 blog posts! I never started writing this with anything in mind other than to write about percussion. I had no expectations or goals—just to write and share what I know, what I think.  My previous blog, Vibrations , was attached to my old website and ran for almost 3 years and had 52 posts. Concurrent with this blog, I also write The Way Of The Gong , which has been going for almost 1 year, and has had 43 posts. Add to that all the articles I've written for Modern Drummer , AVANT , DownBeat , and other magazines, and I've written a lot about percussion/sound/music. I've covered a lot of ground in those 4 years here. If you are new here, I recommend going back and reading the older posts. I'm still planning on collecting the best posts (some of them expanded/updated), plus some new material, into a book. Watch for that sometime this year. To all my readers o...