Percussion Deconstruction™

Different situations require different approaches. If you do the same thing in each situation, you might not be doing the best thing for each situation. I find this is often a difficult concept for younger drummers to understand. I think this is mainly because younger drummers routinely only have one concept of how to play drums. Now this is not their fault, this is just a product of inexperience. As we learn and grow, we also hopefully expand our horizons.  At 28, you should know more than you knew at 18. At 38, you should know more than at 28, and so on. It's only when we get older, that we can look back upon the arc of our career, and see things with clarity. Experience is indeed the greatest teacher. This leads up to today's topic: serving the situation. I think even for many experienced drummers this can be a great reminder/refresher. If you play mainly in one band, or one musical situation, when you need to play outside of that, your instinct might be to bring...

David Bowie constantly changed throughout his career. He could've been Ziggy or the Thin White Duke for the rest of his life, but he kept changing and evolving. The same with Prince. He could've just stayed as that guy in Purple Rain, but he kept changing and evolving. Björk could've stayed the sort of elfin pixie of her early albums, but she kept growing, changing. She took a chance on revealing her personal heartbreak and tragedy on her 2015 album, Vulnicura . The result is a very intimate and stunning recording. There is only one Björk, and you never know what to expect. The same can be said for composers like John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Iannis Xenakis. Cage could've kept writing music for tin cans and everyday objects, like Third Construction , but he moved on, creating all types of different music for all types of different instruments. Stockhausen moved through electronics, choral music, massive opera stagings, and much more, all with the ...

  I'm a storyteller. I tell stories with percussion. I use different sounds that bring up memories, so the stories I tell, are your own stories. The stories you live. ~ MB  I have a new album/live performance called, Stories We Tell Ourselves , that I debuted at a performance last night. It's a combination of everything I've ever experienced in my life, but mostly it's stories I've collected from performances, from people talking to me after Gong Meditations, and my own personal interactions with visual art. Stories We Tell Ourselves : a book in 13 musical chapters with a 30 minute bonus narration track. The idea was born out of my recent experiences playing in various art museums and galleries. I'm an extremely visual person, so visual media informs much of what I do. Playing in museums and galleries gave me an opportunity to 'see' my music differently. I looked for connections between the music and the art works surrounding me. It seeme...