A great topic -for anyone who has done something else and ended up here!
Started out on guitar -got accepted and went to Berklee because of it. It was great! And still is and will always be my main instrument because I've been at it the longest. But to be perfectly honest, I got burned out on it -to much of a good thing, I suppose.
I wanted to try other things. I picked up bass which wasn't too bad because my hands were in shape. It was just a matter of switching mindsets from a lead to a rhythm instrument. Did that in a few bands. Had studied a great deal of piano by that point as well, and was having fun with synthesis and composition. Did that in a band.
But let me back track.....
I jumped into playing drums because my cousin had a kit in high school, and would let me play on it while offering some minimal instruction. He said I'd be good at it, which was definitely encouraging. During my junior year in high school, the band drummer quit. The chair was empty, and the director asked if I wanted to try out. I had a little coordination with the hi hat and bass drum to go along with some rolls my cousin taught me. I said sure, and apparently that was enough for him since no one else jumped at the chance. The band director was also a drummer, so he became my instructor in a limited capacity. He gave me a book on rudiments, and a practice pad and sent me home to practice, saying that my feet would catch up eventually. When summer came along, he gave me the drum set to take home and practice and the rest is history!!
I eventually bought a CB700 for $75 and moved up. However, I didn't actually get my first drumming gig till about 12 years later. When a very good punk band had their drummer quit on them. They had "heard" about me, that I was this guitar player that had mysteriously switched to drums -not knowing that I had already been behind the kit for about 12 years or so. I had been to their gigs and was somewhat familiar with their music. I showed up one day when they were playing around they said their drummer quit. They told me to give it a shot and they began with this really up tempo song. It was about 4 min long and I petered out about 2 minutes into it!!! I had the chops but no stamina!! I had never done this in a band setting. So I worked on my stamina and ended up with them for a while and eventually moved on to the band I'm in now -been here a while now.
And love it! Can't really play as much as I would like because I have to pay the bills with my job. But we get together and write, record, and gig on occasion. My job gets in the way and I'm on the road a lot. But when I'm home and we get together, it's like an old shoe!
I can't tell you how much fun drumming is -because you all know this already! There is just something about being hidden behind all this gear that you get to hit and people applaud you for it. Not to mention, that you are the locomotive of this thing. Have you heard a bunch of electric instruments with no drummer? It's just not the same. Everything is riding on you!!! A band is as good as it's drummer. You could have the best musicians in the world, but if the drummer sucks, the band sucks. Not so much with the other musicians (at least from my perspective, the inverse is not true). Even with mediocre musicians if the drummer is good, he can still glue it together -kind of. It won't be great, but people can still tap their feet to it -you get my point. There's something about watching people pulse to what the music is doing. Well, the component that makes them MOVE is the RHYTHM and this means YOU! Not bad for someone hiding behind a bunch of gear on stage. A pretty big responsibility, wouldn't you say!?
And it just goes without saying what drumming has done for my piano playing, bass playing and guitar playing. I'm a far better guitar player now than I was before playing drums. So I guess, burning out for a little while allows one to try something else. I'm glad it worked out this way!
Long-winded, I know. But thanks for reading!