The human body is an amazing machine. Do anything often enough and consistently enough, and it will start to feel natural. This can be both a blessing and a curse. As musicians, we want our physical motions to become habitual. As I always tell my students – we study technique so that we don’t have [...]
Entries Tagged as 'life of a percussionist'
Learning A Second Instrument
August 30th, 2011 · No Comments · life of a percussionist, practicing
As musicians, we all tend to dabble a bit. Who hasn’t had a “round robin” at rehearsal just to break things up a bit? And I’d bet there’s probably a pennywhistle in the back of a drawer somewhere in your house, too! Lately, I’ve been diving in to learning bass guitar, and I’ve noticed a [...]
Tags: instruments·multiple·practicing
Video Recording
January 7th, 2010 · No Comments · life of a percussionist, recording, video
My new book, Building Grooves, contains in the introduction an address to a website which features video of me playing through every exercise in the book. Today I had my first video recording session at the Epic Realm Ranch to start creating the content. Working with Alex was a joy and a pleasure, and we [...]
End Of One Year, Start Of Another!
January 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · life of a percussionist
Christina posted a blog showing the rampant destruction that goes on around Summerglen at Christmas time, so I thought I’d give a shot of how some of that gets used! Here’s a view of the pit at the Durham Christmas Pageant in Page Auditorium at Duke. This is actually a little bit smaller than my [...]
Tags: day in the life·gigs·goals
My Kinko’s Moment
December 12th, 2009 · 2 Comments · life of a percussionist
I’ve heard other composers talk about the joys of printing music at Kinko’s, and I finally had my moment! I feel like I’ve become a real boy! So, here’s the story. I finished up a piece I’ve been working on, finally got it tweaked just right and laid out in Finale so it’s readable, and [...]
Tags: day in the life·Finale·living·release
