Some problems getting back in the saddle

[RecursivePercussive]

Hey everyone. I had one of those nights last night. It was my first rehearsal with a new band, a praise band for a church of ~3500 people. I haven't played with a band in about two years, and have been brushing my chops up with Stick Control and playing along to recordings for about the last six months.

Up until two years ago I played for a much smaller church, same style of music and everything, but it was the same lineup every week, and all we used for monitoring were a few wedges dispersed about the stage. The new church I'm at has a full in ear Aviom system and uses a click track, both things I had no experience with until last night, although, I've had tons of experience playing with a metronome. Well, the first experience was... rough... to say the least. My drums sounded muddy to me the entire time, for some reason I kept falling off the click, and I had a very hard time getting into a pocket the whole night. I felt like a complete idiot and that any semblance of timing or skill was completely gone.

So, the point of this post is to partially vent, but to also see if anyone else has had a similar experience, and if you had any advice or wisdom to help me get on top of the curve. The first performance is this Saturday night, and I just hope I can stay on the beat and keep everything from falling apart.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with all your weekend gigs!

[larryace]

Sorry, can't relate. All my drumming is so perfect, I can't improve on it.

:)


It's gonna be OK. You're the one beating yourself up the most. Do the best you can and enjoy yourself and don't tie your happiness with the results of your playing. That's a known damaging tactic. You need to laugh off or ignore screw ups and be OK if you flub something. Don't be so hard on yourself, just do you best, and work to improve yourself. That's all anyone can do. Look at your upsides and see the positives.