Percussion Deconstruction™

I've been hanging out in California for almost 2 weeks. In that time I've been to the ocean, I've been to the mountains, and I've been to the city. In each case, I've spent a lot of time listening to the sounds around me and absorbing the rhythms. There is so much we can learn from our surroundings just by paying attention. How often do we just go through our day giving little regard to the natural things happening around us? Oceans of rhythm I spent this afternoon at the beach, walking in the surf, listening to the waves crashing, paying attention to everything going on around me. I heard new and different rhythms. I felt new and different impulses in my nervous system. I learned from the wind and waves things that I can bring back to my music. I learned things you can never find in books. Wherever you live: ocean, desert, forest, or city, take the time to listen to the world around you and absorb the sounds and rhythms. ~ MB Deconstruct Yourself™

(Listening to the Sounds In Your Head) Playing improvised music is an interesting experience. While you can practice rudiments, beats, scales, and other ideas, you can't really practice improvising. Sure, I can play away in my studio all day long—and I do, working on ideas, looking for sounds, finding different techniques—but it's not the same as playing in front of people, or with other musicians. This is because, at least for me, improvising is a reactive experience. When I'm playing in an improvised setting, I'm reacting to everything around me: the room, the audience, the other musicians, my mood, and even how my instruments sound and react at that specific moment. This is very different from playing notated music. Because of this, I find that playing live is always a new experience for me. Rather than playing in a band and following a set list, where the same songs are played in the same order every performance, I never know what to expect. To me, the most e...

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...

A tale of taking my own advice and deconstructing my own work. Over the years, instead of spending money to rent a recording studio, I've little by little put together a modest home recording studio. It's really just designed for me and my own percussion music. It's become so filled with instruments that there's little room for anyone else. So it's become my own personal workshop where I can experiment and tinker with musical ideas, recording as I go along. In June, 2015, I started formally recording what would become my next all percussion album. It would use Gongs, bells, bass drum, frame drum and lots of small percussion. I recorded about 10 tracks then went on vacation. When I got back, I was thrust into various other musical activities. Meanwhile, I would tinker on things between gigs, recording something new here and there. At times I was so busy that I didn't unpack my gear, so I didn't have a chance to record anything.  One problem with havi...

David Bowie constantly changed throughout his career. He could've been Ziggy or the Thin White Duke for the rest of his career, 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 took a chances and kept changing what she does. She plays many of the same songs on tour, but rearranges them and gives them new life with different instruments : a brass band, a choral group, a string section, electronics.  She took a chance on revealing her personal heartbreak and tragedy on Vulnicura ,  her latest album. The result is a very intimate and stunning recording. Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes… 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 ty...