Tag: Chicago drum instructor

  • Efficient 1

    There are all sorts of drummers out there. Hold it! My first sentence isn’t exactly what I mean, I need to rephrase that: there are all sort of performing drummers out there. Not quite the same thing, because one is about the instrument, the other talks about the instrument played in front of people. Performing…

  • Strike

    The Chicago teachers are on strike right now. They have been for awhile. We are on the 9th day without school. Parents are not happy. They cope with it the best they can, but the ones I have the pleasure to see because I teach their children, are voicing a certain “Fed-upism” about the length…

  • Recession

    They say we need to run for cover. They say we are headed for economical bad times. They say the economy is about to turn. We’re going to suffer. I do not know if any of it is true. Really, I have no idea. They talk about the yield curve. Ah! Oh! Wow! And that’s…

  • The stick control of Buster Keaton

    Because the Chicago Teachers are on strike, I decided last Friday to take my children, now teenagers, to the Museum of Science and Industry. We always enjoy our visits there. This time we went through an exhibit called “The old street” or something like that. It’s a street paved with rough cobblestones that makes your…

  • Saving cymbals

    A quick trick here for the drummers who hit the cymbals hard but don’t want to spend a ton of cash replacing the ones that break. Try to swish your cymbals instead of hitting them. It means that instead of going full dead on, you hit them “sideways” if I may say. A little bit…

  • The tectonic plate

    I was talking with a student about speed. Here is someone who began playing the piano six months ago and was getting frustrated at the slow pace of his speed. I am not talking about the slow pace of his development, that’s another matter. I am talking about just the speed of his scales on…

  • Stability

    So this guy wants to become a pro musician. He grew up with a traveling family, military people or some such, and went from one big city to another: San Francisco to New York, to L.A to Chicago. At best he lived a couple years in the suburbs, but never more than a few miles…

  • Flood!

    What is the worst enemy of a drum set? Look at the title of this blog and you got yourself the answer: water. I have seen some great drum sets completely ruined because they were in a basement that flooded. The mounted toms usually are ok, and so is the snare. They are elevated. On…

  • The perfect blend

    Drums can be made of all sorts of material. The most common one is wood which, in itself comes in different varieties. But it can also be made of metal. Snare drums in particular, can be manufactured in steel or brass, for example. A drum set can also be made in unusual material, like the…

  • Complexity

    Teaching something to someone is not easy. It’s all about communication. If the rapport between the student and the teacher is good, the chances of the student learning rises significantly. But then, there are the concepts. By that, I mean the different topics that need to be addressed in order to get to the next…