...and it changed my life

Meeting Elvin and talking with him as you did is crazy and I don't see you trying to win a competition but I also feel I need to qualify my moments as much less spectacular. But here they are.

1 My kindergarden teacher identified my ability to keep time and recommended to my Mom that I take lessons.
2 My first drum instructor at age 5 was an older black jazz musician that often had me mirror what he played. One day he had me close my eyes. I asked him why he stopped playing and he said he didn't, that I matched him note for note! What a revelation. (I am sure it was not too hard but I still remember it vividly almost a half century later.)
3 Seeing Buddy Rich play on TV
4 Hearing Neil Peart play live (I was not exactly watching at the time) He played a fill on the smaller toms and I immediately went for the front of the stage. This was around Fly By Night tour timeframe.
 
Hey Muckster. I can relate to this:

This was the first time i had heard of Steve Smith and what a great influence to start with!

The first time I saw him I was trying to see what exectly he was doing. He did some great things without sounding like he was trying to play a solo. Definately one of my most respected drummers. I am still learning from him as I have two Journey songs on my audition list for this Saturday; Any Way You Want It and Seperate Ways.

Not to mentioin that I am using Don't Stop Believing to try to learn to play open handed. Man that is just not easy for me.
 
I used to go garbage picking as a kid....looking for motors and parts for my bike. I happened upon an 8 track cartridge with that same screaming face. Even though I could not listen to it I took it home and put it on my dresser. Many years later I finally decided to figure out what that was and bought it. Great record!

Dude your screen name is one of my all time favorite songs! Go Captain Beyond!
 
Eric Clapton, obv, haga!

But even before then, Mr Teacher asked me to listen to Jeff Buckley. I did. I hated EVERY SINGLE NOTE, because it was carp on legs.

And then I listened again. Nuff said.
 
I consider the first time I listened to Deep Purple's Machine Head album a musical turning point for me. It was in the mid 70's and I was in my early teens. Until that point, I would listen to whatever popular music was around, but I was just starting to get interested in rock. A friend of mine suggested that I check out Deep Purple and let me borrow his copy of Machine Head. I can't even begin to explain the magical feeling I got from listening to it. I was so taken by the display of musicianship by every player, the power, speed, dexterity, complexity, etc. etc. It was the first time I actually took notice of a drummer. I was amazed by Ian Paice's playing on the whole album. I listened to it several times just focusing on the drums. I made up my mind that day that I would always seek music that contained high levels of musicianship, dynamic playing, lots of solos, etc. It was the day I became a music snob as my wife calls me!!! Also, it was the day I lost the ability to enjoy a piece of music without analyzing it to death...

Since then, many other bands, musicians, albums, concerts left their impressions on me, but Machine Head was the original eye opener for me.

Machine Head was the first album I really wanted to play exactly as the drums were played. I too was a young teen. I still love those tunes. Highway Star! oh ya!
 
I've told this story before, but I like it so I'll tell it again.

When I was 10 or 11 my mother took me to a Beach Boys concert. I was already interested in music, mostly the soul music I heard on my radio, and my mom was always playing her Beatles records, but I'd never seen a drummer play live before, and when I saw Dennis Wilson in his striped shirt, pounding away on his Rogers kit, that was it, that was how my life was going to be.

I can still see it quite clearly in my mind.

There was something about seeing a drummer live that did it for me as well. I always watched the drummers on tv but that first time as a young kid seeing the kit, the drummer, the energy,all of it...I was hooked.
 
... But for some reason, when I as playing the drums sounded weak and thin. Lifeless. They didn't sound like the thunder I'd just heard...

And for the first time it hit me - I was not actually that good! With my tail between my legs I rose up and walked away.

That's a bugger of an experience. Necessary, but ouchy. I know it well. "Weak, thin and lifeless" describe it perfectly.

Early on I was an untrained noobie pretending to play like real drummers who'd who'd taken their youthful drumming passions through though music school for years and trained under masters. A clueless teenybopper thinking she was somehow cutting the mustard. By comparison my playing was weak, thin and lifeless.

After a few hard lessons my pink elephants popped. Actually, every time I've met DW forum members, there's been severe casualties in the pink elephant enclosure.

Afterwards my drumming confidence would drop and I'd play even worse!! Thing is, if you're not that great and don't have the inclination to go back to the beginning and get properly trained, then you need those pink elephants.

In drumming, confidence and front are huge IMO. Maybe even more important than anything, other than being willing to work with other musicians as a team.
 
I had been "drumming" for quite a while by the time this happened, but of course, I wasn't all that good, and my attitude up till that point had been kind of lax, feeling like I'd never really be something that would be called a "good" drummer, and this was just kind of a fun once in a while hobby, something to do with my buds.

Anyway, I went to see Clutch in a tiny little San Fran venue called "Slims". This was right after the release of "Blast Tyrant", so around 10 years ago. The whole band was just so totally on that it was still to this day one of the best shows I've seen in person; but especially JP was just tearing up the place with such power and control I was stunned! Later in the night, they played a version of "Wysiwyg" and at the part where JP does that funky "time folding" (displacement) type stuff around 3 min or so, he busted into about a 10 minute solo around that same theme. I was in awe, of course, it was just so masterful, but more importantly, it seemed attainable. It wasn't blazingly fast, or ridiculously hard to follow, it just felt amazing to listen to and displayed a really cool mastery of time. That was the moment I felt the "click" in my head.

I don't have to worry about being better at fills than (insert amazing drummer here), I don't have to stress out comparing myself or look at it as a clinical thing where I need to test myself or "constantly" be over-reaching just to keep up with something. All I needed to do was love and study music, and pair that to the limited amount of natural ability I seemed to have with rhythms. If people want to play music with me, I'm doing it right.

Link to the song referenced above:
http://youtu.be/Pb7_SYw9i_s

Link right to the part that turned into a drum solo which so inspired me:
http://youtu.be/Pb7_SYw9i_s?t=3m3s

Still love the song, and now that I can, I love to play stuff like that.
 
Just like Tony, I remember when my current teacher showed me Max's solo on Stomping at the Savoy, I was mindblown, still to this day my favorite solo ever, it's two choruses of drum perfection. I knew right there and then that I wanted to play jazz at any cost possible and that's what I've been doing for the past three years.
 
Thing is, if you're not that great and don't have the inclination to go back to the beginning and get properly trained, then you need those pink elephants. .

The next best thing that happened to me was that I quit playing altogether a few years after that and took a six year break.

I only picked up the instrument again a year and a half ago, and basically started from scratch - and it was then that I started to study the basics for the first time, how to grip the sticks, how to hit a drum, how to sit, how to tune the drums etc.

Re-learning this thing as an adult has been hard and I've been banging my head on the wall a lot - but it is oh so worth it!
 
Back
Top