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Being a musician is the most beautiful job in the world! Can you imagine being able to make a living at exactly what you love doing? What a thrill! A lot of people trapped in a 9 to 5 day job dream of being musicians.  And yet, so many musicians do not enjoy their craft anymore.Read More

That’s it! The day is here. The long awaited day when you can perform in front of people what you have prepared. The instruments are set up on stage, the audience is slowly pouring into the room and the time is clicking.  You, you have practiced. You know your stuff insideRead More

How do they do it? You hear them on recordings, you see them on TV, you search them on YouTube. Those guys play the drums in all sorts of bands, all sorts of styles, all sorts of situation. They manage to execute incredible feats of speed or technique. And they never make aRead More

Playing the drum set is usually done with a pair of sticks. You have the pieces of wood in your hands, you strike the surface, you get a sound. The principle seems simple enough. It is not. Nobody has the same strength, the same touch, the same personality and, of course, theRead More

Concerts are nerve racking. So much preparation goes into a rock concert, so much is expected to go well, so much shame can overwhelm the player if he messes up. More often than not, the performers get butterflies in their stomach, they feel sick, some of them even puke beforeRead More

I often wondered, when I was a young man going to concert, what it took for the huge bands I saw to get the crowd going. Everything seemed magic: the music was great, the performance was energetic, the sound was impeccable and the crowd, oh Man! the crowd was with them heart andRead More

There are some cousins sounds on the drums, some sound sources that are exactly from the same family. Of course, the 2 crashes hanging from their stand on a regular drum set, would be a good example. But the toms, whether you have 2, 3, 4 or more, are also close cousins of eachRead More

In live situation, when the drums are not miked, here’s is what usually happens. We hear the bass drum and snare clear and loud as well as the hi hat if it is played with the shoulder of the stick on the side of the cymbal, or half open in a “whooshy” soundRead More

I am now at the third part of a blog on orchestration. And I want to talk about the idea of developing a beat. I have put as an example a single song sung by Stephan Eicher called “Est it alles”. The drummer for the song is Manu Katche. The whole tune is nothing elseRead More

The drummer is in charge of time keeping. That is the accepted version of the drummer’s role in a band. But the successful drummers understand something else: colors, taste and tone attached to feelings. Orchestration is directly related to that. And tuning the drums is oneRead More