How do you spell fun?

"Because after a while, even lobster starts to taste like soap." - Dave Ramsey

When I taught high school band, I would start off every year by telling my new students that my whole goal for them was to have fun. That's it, just have fun. I loved the stunned reactions on their faces. They'd giggle and do little celebration dances. (Easy A!) 

Then I'd twist the plot.

"Let me spell 'fun' for you, because some of you may have forgotten how to spell it over the summer break," I'd say, matter-of-factly. Accompanied by giggling and whispering, I would walk to the white board, and with a new, fresh dry-erase marker I would spell in tall capital letters:

W - O - R - K

The laughter would stop. Instead, silence. After a minute or so, inevitably, there'd be some kid in the back who would shout out, "Hey! You spelled it wrong! That says WORK!" 

I'd smile, nod my head and say, "Yes. It does say, 'fun.' Excellent reading." 

As you may surmise, what followed was a very pointed discussion. Let me give you a version of it here.

Several years ago I was teaching a gifted drum student who also happened to be a talented basketball player. Only seven years old at the time, he was remarkable in both arenas. Ultimately the basketball schedule got busy enough that he and his parents had to make a choice between the two, and (of course) basketball won out.*

Not long after, I ran into his mom at the local recreation center. We chatted for a minute, then she asked if I'd play basketball with her son and his friends. She explained that they wanted to play, "a real game," but there were only three of them, and did I possibly have time to fill in for a couple minutes? 

Now, I love basketball. I play as much as I can. I post about it on this blog frequently. I was at the rec center that day to play basketball. But I've never had a less satisfying hoops experience than I did that day. Allow me to set the scene for you. 

Even though I'm slow and out of shape, I'm 6'1" (about 185 cm) and have a decent knowledge of the game. These were nine-year-olds. I was a giant compared to them. It took fully the first ten minutes to stop instinctively blocking every shot. None of them could steal the ball from me or really defend me in any way, and none of them could score on me until I chose to let them. I felt like Dwight Howard. 

For about sixty seconds.

It was NOT fun. At all. That was the day I learned that winning isn't everything in basketball, or in life. Especially when there's no multi-million dollar contract or shoe endorsement deal on the line, winning takes a major back seat to fun. And by fun, of course I mean work.

Many times I go to the rec center and get into pick-up games with people who are younger, faster, stronger and more talented than me. And - I've got to tell you - it's usually a lot of work. I have to run hard, jump high, out-think and keep up with a variety of humans in a variety of basketball settings. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose. I'm always sore the next day. But it's almost always fun. 

My absolute favorite is when I hustle really hard against a player or team that's better than me and am able to gain some success. I block a shot or keep them from scoring, or maybe I finally make that nifty move, hit a great shot, or my underdog team wins. Those small moments of hard-fought victory are exponentially sweeter than easy wins.

They're fun, but only if you work for them.

My new band students every fall wanted to have fun, and they wanted to work. They just didn't know that the two of those things go together. 

The first group of students that I took all the way through that school were phenomenal. They somehow intuitively knew that it was going to take their best work to achieve something great, and they wanted it. Badly. 

One thing the band at my school had never done (and, at this writing, haven't done since) was to qualify for the State Concert Band Festival. As that first group of students entered their senior year, several of them came to me and said, "We want this. We're going to qualify for state this year. We don't want to play any of the easy stuff anymore. We want music that will get the judges' attention, and we'll work as hard as we have to, to succeed."

I didn't want to get their hopes up, but I didn't want to let them down. In rehearsal, we talked frequently and candidly about what would be expected in terms of quality and execution, and they consistently worked to improve themselves. 

We qualified for state that year. It was sort of a miracle. (Part of the story is in another blog post here.) The band played with a level of maturity and passion that we'd never had before, and they accomplished something great. They put themselves on the map. 

Afterward, I heard many of the students say, "That was fun!" 

I'll never forget what that school year felt like in terms of effort. All of the rehearsals, the sectionals, the coaching sessions, the clinics, the tour - all of it. But for all of the pain and effort, what still gives me chills is the memory of walking on stage with those amazing young people and making great musical history at the State Concert Band Festival. What was the last thing I said to them before we took the stage? 

"Let's go have some fun." There was nothing else to say.

As a musician - and especially as a drummer - it can be easy to get into a comfortable place and never want to come out. Once you can play certain styles or pieces, or you've got solo ideas that work, or whatever it is, you might lose your motivation to keep developing your skills. 

Take any example you want - only ever eating ice cream, never having to do homework, playing video games all day or blasting nine-year-olds at basketball - eventually you need a challenge, variety and something to work towards. If not, even lobster starts to taste like soap. More than that, you'll never do anything great, and never have any real-for-true fun.

What every great musician and athlete knows - what every great person knows - is that hard work for the right cause is fun. 

Push yourself. Work hard. Accomplish something great. Make the most of your own unique talent and creativity. Achieve your potential.

Have fun!

*Sports or music? The answer, of course, is, "AND." But that's a topic for another blog post. 

With the end in mind, you don't need resolutions

I'm on record as saying that I don't do New Year's resolutions. They're largely a waste of time and they set you up for failure. And that failure results in less motivation and less productivity.

One alternative is to focus on results. Ask yourself what you want the end result to look like, then work backwards. What will have to happen to get that result?

The other day I was shooting baskets, and I wasn't having much success. Mostly, I was just chucking the sphere at the hoop. The more I missed, the more I just thought, "Well, try it again!" You know what they say about insanity, right?*

Finally, after missing many shots in a row, I thought, "What am I not doing right?" I had been focusing on my feet, my arm/hand position, release, follow through, etc., but I had forgotten what needed to happen at the hoop - for the ball to go through! That simple thought reminded me of a key concept, that of "dropping" the ball on top of the hoop.

Instantly, my release angle changed, my elevation (such as it is) improved, and my posture straightened up. Miraculously, the ball started to go through the hoop. It sounds simple, but just by knowing what needed to happen at the end of the process, my brain automatically changed the beginning.

Like my shooting baskets without thinking about the end result, many resolutions are basically nice gestures, but ultimately useless. When I hear people say they need to, "exercise more," or, "eat less junk," or, "start saving money," I usually cringe. Unless you connect those good intentions to an end result, they're almost worse than not making resolutions at all.

Join me in a little mental exercise, will you? Just take a minute to think about the next few scenarios.

Let's say you played fifty paying gigs last year - and that's cool - but you want to double that number this year. What would you have to do to play one hundred paying gigs this year? What would you do first, then next? Whose help would you need? What would need to change about how you run your business?

What if you really did need to lose twenty-five pounds this year? What would you need to do to get it done? Is there anything you need to stop doing or eating? Need to get a gym membership, or a new alarm clock? Maybe you need to finally read that health book or take your friend up on his offer to be your jogging partner.

Or maybe there's an audition you want to prepare for and take. Where do you need to start? What instruments do you need to get? Do you need to study with someone?


Whether it be a technique goal or an earning goal, number of gigs played or something else, this same process can apply. What will the end result be? What do you need to do first (right now!), and what is next? If you keep your eye on the final goal, the process will usually make itself clear.

Happy drumming!

*It's a colloquialism by now, but, "Insanity is doing the same thing you did before and expecting a different result."

Gear Up: What's in your tool bag?

"If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." - Traditional Proverb*

Any musician knows that you can never have enough stuff. Whether it's reeds, mouthpieces, picks or strings, you need tools at your disposal. For percussionists, this means sticks and mallets - and a lot of them - and a variety of other small instruments and tools.

One of my students recently asked me which was my most expensive single bag or case. I pointed to three: a cymbal bag (lots of metal means lots of dough!), DW kick drum, and my mallet bag. The last one surprised him.

"Isn't that just all your sticks and stuff?" Yes. It is. And it's maybe my most valuable bag - if not monetarily, then certainly practically.

Think of yourself like a construction worker.** Even if you only have one specific job, like framing, you are going to need a wide range of tools. Hammers, a variety of saws, measuring tapes, levels, squares, nail guns and air compressor (if you're using pneumatics), and more - not to mention special tools for problem solving, like a jigsaw or power drill, and all of the accessories. And if a tool fails, you'd better have a backup. Can't be running to the hardware store while your partner holds up a wall!

For every tool you don't have, you either can't do the specific task, or you'll do it with the wrong tool. And if you do it with the wrong tool, you're not likely to do it well - if you can do it at all - and it will be a lot harder than it needs to be.

Drummers and percussionists are actually a lot like the construction worker in our example. We need to have tools in our bag that will allow us to play a wide variety of styles and instruments at a moment's notice on any gig.

You can find literally thousands of lists of tools you should have in your gig bag, and many of them are extensive. Specific brands and models are the subject of another blog post (or several), but here's a bare minimum list of a few things I think are critical on any and every gig for a percussionist.

Light, medium and heavy drum set sticks.

At a minimum, you should have three pairs of kit sticks in good repair. Not only will you face different styles - like jazz and hard rock - you'll face different volume needs, environments, and preferences of band leaders, just to name a few. If nothing else, you can answer a confident yes, when the inevitable question is asked: "Hey, do you have something lighter/heavier you can use?" Besides, it's easier to actually play louder or softer if you have heavier or lighter sticks.

Brushes and rods.
Aside from their obvious tonal and stylistic uses, brushes and rods provide great options to get to lower volumes without having to use 0.05" high strokes. In super low volume situations, you'll need rods or brushes just to get below the tolerance of, say, the mother of the bride. You might end up even using your hands!

Timpani mallets.
More than one pair is preferable, but you'll need something in the medium range. You might end up playing timpani (but if you're the timpanist on the gig, you need a very different bag of tools - again, for another blog post), but more likely you'll play cymbal rolls and your drum kit with them. Because of that, buy something cheap that you won't mind getting beat up, lost or broken by the bass player. I use these. They're passable for rolls, and they sound great on my toms.

Keyboard mallets.
Again, at bare minimum, you need a pair of something either cord or yarn wrapped that could be used on vibraphone, marimba or xylophone in a pinch. A set of four would be even better. You'll also need a pair of phenolic or acrylic mallets that can be used on bells (glockenspiel) or xylophone. They can also be used on wood blocks and other small percussion if needed.

Shakers.
Egg shaker? Yes. That, too. I'd also recommend at least one plastic barrel shaker for medium to soft volumes, and a metal barrel for louder settings. As a side note, try practicing basic rock beats with your hi-hat hand playing eighth or sixteenth notes with a shaker instead of your normal hat pattern with a stick.

Pencils, pen, sharpie marker and highlighter.
No, I'm not kidding, and keep the pencils sharpened. In fact, get one of these and throw it in your bag, too. Most musicians have at least learned to carry a pencil, but the other tools are useful if you need to mark up your music, quickly write out a chart or sign for your check. And at some point, you're going to sign an autograph. Pull out the sharpie and make the kid happy, okay? You're the drummer!



Ear plugs.
As a very young man, I got asked by the coolest band in town to sit in on a "jam." It happened to take place at a new local studio, and we played Voodoo Chile at volume eleven for forty-five minutes. It was my first real hearing damage. I would have killed for a pair of ninety-nine cent foam ear plugs.


Miscellaneous tools.
A drum key (or two), a roll of gaff tape, a note pad (legal size), your business card(!), a metronome, and anything else you've ever needed on a gig and didn't have.

All of my recommendations come from personal experience. I've played hundreds and hundreds of gigs over the last fifteen years or so, and every item on this list has been needed on at least several occasions. Over time, you'll develop your own list of must-haves, and you'll never leave home with out it.

As the ol' Boy Scouts say, be prepared!

*If you're a nerd (like me), there's some interesting and brief background on this proverb here.

**Full disclosure: I actually worked a construction job for my father, who was a general contractor, for many years. We built homes. Lots of homes. It was my dad who taught me the value of not only having great tools and the right tools, but also taking care of them. 

Surviving A Band

And I do mean, "survive." Bands are awesome, and you should play in some*. Just know what you're getting into, and have a strategy for keeping your career and long-term goals intact while serving the needs of the band at the same time.

One the most critical keys is determining what the band ultimately wants, and what path it will follow to get there. As an individual musician, you need to have your own goals and path, as well, and you need to determine as early as possible whether your plans and the band's plans can work together.

If they can't, then it will probably blow things apart sooner rather than later.

A friend of mine tells a story about how his band broke up after a big contest over what they would have done with the money if they had won. They didn't win. There was no money over which to fight. They still broke up.

Personally, I've been a member of three different bands that negotiated record deals. Not one was signed, primarily because we couldn't and didn't agree on what we wanted and where we were headed. In this type of situation, the end result is that the band either breaks up or makes drastic changes to survive, most often the former.

It goes without saying, but a critical key is how the money will be handled. In the beginning stages, it may be how much each band member will be expected to kick in for equipment, recording, touring, merch and the like. Once the money starts rolling in, though, the real fun begins. Decide up front whether you will share the money equally, or whether you will divvy it up by role and workload. Whatever you decide, everybody has to feel comfortable. The only acceptable vote is a unanimous one.

Once band members either feel like they're working harder or contributing more than others, or that they're not being compensated fairly, the end is probably near. Money changes all, and if not handled carefully, it can cause real problems both on and off stage.

In the "real" music world, one of my favorite bad - but common - examples is a story told by a friend of mine, a former programming director for a group of pop/alternative radio stations in the Salt Lake City area. She had been to an after-concert party of an extremely famous band and ended up on a flight with them the next morning. The lead singer was flying first class, but the rest of the band was in coach. Why? The singer was also the songwriter, and was thus getting paid royalties from radio play and publishing as well as money from album sales, touring, merch, etc.

A couple of good - also very uncommon - examples of how to keep a band alive and healthy are Coldplay and U2, far and away two of the most successful bands in the history of modern music. Both of those bands share all of the income and credit equally. It's no stretch to think that one of the band members contributes more to the actual songwriting than the others, but they have (wisely and accurately) predicted that if one of them starts making a lot more money than the others, the band likely will not survive for long.

Both of these bands have had long careers and show no signs of slowing up. Both bands also realize that if they aren't successful, it doesn't matter who makes the money because there will be little or no money to be made. Likewise, they have realized that if they are very successful, there will be plenty of money to go around, and there is no place for greed in a great band.

It's not all about the money, though. While the financial side of things is absolutely critical, the most important thing is to make sure that you're taking care of you. Not that you're slighting the band or distracted from what the band needs, but that you're continuing to develop yourself as a player and musician, and that your eyes are on the bigger, longer term picture. In short, you should work like the band will be successful forever, but have a backup plan in case it goes bad.

Above all, don't let anything stand in the way of you becoming the best, most successful version of yourself that you can be, and that involves keeping your options open and continuing to broaden your abilities and exposure.

It's okay to be in a country band and play jazz on the side. It's okay to play in a metal band and really love pop rock. In my world, there's nothing wrong with loving Justin Bieber (platonically, of course) and Diana Krall at the same time.

*If you're a drummer, what else ya gonna do? Unless you're Evelyn Glennie or Terry Bozzio, you're playing with other people - all the time!

The Weight Room: Summertime is practice time

If you're a junior high or high school music student, it's time for a little heart to heart. Your music teacher absolutely hates the summer break. I don't mean that they aren't looking forward to some vacation time or a chance to work on some other interests. But they absolutely hate the fact that they just spent nine months getting you to a certain point, and you're going to spend the next three months letting a good portion of that progress go to waste.

Sound harsh? It'll get worse. Trust me.

Let's talk physical fitness for a second. Take an average person and put them in a daily training regiment and diet geared toward, say, strength training. If they follow the program on most days of the week, they will make progress toward the goal of gaining strength. If they don't follow the program, they simply don't make progress, right? Wrong.

In actuality, if you're not following the program you're not just failing to make progress, you're actually losing what progress you've made. This is the way the body functions, and it's absolutely the way that music - or any other - skills function, as well.*

Another way to think about it is to imagine a hot air balloon. The balloon has a burner that heats the air inside the balloon. As the air gets hotter, the balloon rises, but as soon as the burner is turned off and the air begins to cool, the balloon starts to fall.

You're either rising or falling. There is no standing still. And once you've fallen, even a little bit, the next bit of energy expended isn't to help you make progress. It's just to get you back to where you were. In the music world, this is called, "maintenance practice." This is the minimum amount and type of practice required simply to keep you from losing the skills you have.

Jascha Heifetz, the legendary violinist, once said, "If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it."

So, with that thought in mind, let's talk about some ways to keep moving forward even when school isn't in session.

First things first. You just have to do it. What's the hardest thing about going to the gym? Going to the gym! Once you get there, it's not a big stretch to complete a workout. The same is true with practice. Once you've got your instrument, music books and pencil out and you're prepared to practice, it's almost impossible not to practice. In the words of the immortal Mary Poppins, "Well begun is half done."

Next, set some goals. Instead of saying, "I'll practice one hour per day," say, "This week I'll get all twelve major scales memorized." And that can be part of a larger goal, like, "Before school starts again, I'll have all the major and minor scales and arpeggios memorized - two octaves - and be able to play through them with a metronome in under four minutes." Now, that's a bunch of goals tied together in one sentence, but you get the idea. Talk about what you'll do, not how much time you'll spend.

Finally, spend more time. And in this case, I really mean spend. Think of it like money (even though it's far more valuable). When you spend a dollar, you expect a certain value back from it, and you only have so many dollars, so you have to spend them carefully and make sure that you're getting value back from your investment. Instead of thinking, "I have to practice for an hour today," say, "I can only give myself an hour of practice time today, so I'm going to get as much out of it as I can."

It's your music, and it's your life. Get everything out if it that you can, and don't waste your opportunities! If nothing else, give yourself the best chance you can. It's up to you.



Happy practicing!

*Because of how my body functions, I absolutely have to spend some time stretching everyday. If I do, I become more flexible. If I don't, I get less flexible, and thus, more prone to injury. There are examples of this concept all over the place, so why do we think it would be any different with music skills?

The Weight Room: "Come off trying!"

When I was in college, I was a fairly serious rock climber. I had a small group of friends that I literally trusted with my life on a daily basis. (If you've never been climbing, rappelling or spelunking, it can be hard to understand this concept. But in order to participate, you must put your life and safety in the hands of your belay or partners.)

Often when climbing, we would come across an especially difficult section or sequence, and it was common to need multiple tries to complete the problem. Sometimes it would just simply be too frightening, and you'd either burn yourself out by hesitating too long before the attempt, or you'd simply come down and give up.

It didn't take us long to institute this rule: If you're going to come off (fall), come off trying. Quite simply, it became unacceptable to come off the rock without giving your absolute full effort.

Because of this mindset, it is of great concern to me when I see students who quit music without giving themselves a legitimate chance to succeed. I talked about this a little bit in an earlier post, but nothing makes me more grumpy than seeing a student pass up an opportunity to do something great either because they lack vision or are unwilling to exert themselves.

"It's too hard," and, "I can't do this," have stopped many a promising student from progressing, both in climbing and in music.

When we started to enforce the "come off trying" rule while climbing, some interesting things happened. I'll highlight only two.

1. We would often surprise ourselves by completing the move. I can remember a sort of switch that would flip in my brain that said, "I know I'm not gonna die, so I'm just gonna do this!" And frequently I would do more than I thought I could. 
2. Along with accomplishing more, even failing and falling served to increase our confidence and reduce our fear. You took a risk, you didn't die, and if you failed you were all the more determined to keep trying until you succeeded. Truly - scrapes, cuts and bruises became badges of honor. We still call them "battle scars."

One of my most successful drum students came to me as a forty-something mother of five. I can't remember the exact words, but she said something along the lines of, "My kids have all had their chance to learn music, now it's my turn." 

She was never afraid of or intimidated by anything I asked her to do, and never got embarrassed if she didn't understand at first or couldn't do something right away. She just gave it everything she had, and kept trying until she got it. She embodied - and still does - the "come off trying" mentality. 

That was over ten years ago, and today she is still playing in a successful local band with some other amazing women. They rock!

I understand that music and drumming - like rock climbing - may not be for everyone. But I also believe that you can't know that without trying. And I mean really trying, working hard and giving your best effort before you decide to go another direction. And for the vast majority of us, work and effort will result in success!

May you work hard, achieve success and always come off trying!