Tag: Chicago piano instructor

As a tuner, you are trying to do one thing: Make a five piece drum set sound like all the drums are from the same family. The five pieces must sound like one instrument. Easier said than done. I spent a lot of time aiming for that impossible goal. I raise that tom, lower the…

The first secret is to not choke the drum, because the shell is made of a material that has its own property. I have to listen to what the drum or the drums are telling me. Every set is different. Each one will have its own voice. Each brand has a way of doing things.…

This blog will be pretty long. It will describe my experience about tuning. It will talk about the different brand of drums out there. Also about the choice of skin for different situations. And then it will talk about the obvious truth that we don’t know and has been biting us in the face for…

I’ll give you the very skinny: Start with 2 levels. Just 2 levels. And stick to them for awhile. One of those levels will be with the sticks at 1/2 an inch above the drum head, the other level is the stick up 10 inches above the drum head. Get yourself a page of accent…

The dynamics by contrast is based upon the principle of emphasizing the difference between soft and loud. I’ll give you a for instance. Hit a snare three time as soft as possible, now hit it one time medium loud. Do you hear the difference? No? Then you did it wrong. Try it again. I’ll wait.…

There are a few ways to demonstrate power on the drum set. The first and most obvious one is through brutal force. The principle being that the harder you hit, the louder the sound. That works only up to a certain extent. Because if you hit the skin too hard, you end up choking them.…

Ok, so, the French are present in Hamilton. The English also, but mainly the French. There is, of course, Lafayette. But they also talk about Voltaire and the French thinkers of the “Enlighten” century. The French, when they did their revolution, did it also in hip-hop. I can imagine women going to Versailles to ask…

Hamilton was one of the guy who built this country. He created the american banking system as we know it. Good. Great! And hip-hop form is the form of choice to describe those uncertain times when the Americans claimed this land? Yes, it is! I would argue that there is no other form better suited…

The first big Opera of the 21st century has millions of dedicated fans. Ever since it started it was a sensation. Lin Manuel Miranda, its creator, has been recognized as a modern genius, the cast is celebrated everywhere, and, in the tradition of all the great Broadway musicals, it has offspring sprouting in other towns…

Here is the method: doing crap. You go on the piano, on the drums, on the computer, on the pottery making thingy, and you say out loud: time to make crap! You know it won’t be good, and you do it anyway. You know it won’t be good and you work for an hour or…