Yeah, I'm a drummer. Have been since 5th grade. But since the blues band broke up a few years back I haven't been much of one. Once that happened, my drumming was reduced to just playing in the local community Concert Band. That would be 6 weeks each Summer, and then the drums would go away for 10 1/2 months. In that time I started getting involved in music at my old church. Started playing guitar because there was really no room for drums. Had been playing around with guitar for years but this had me playing every month so I started getting better at it.
Fast forward to our current church, and I find myself doing some occasional drumming on the worship team as a sub. It was good, it was kicking off the rust, but I could still feel a lot of rust. In the meantime I started playing guitar for the Sunday School program when I wasn't on the worship team. Guitar was still something of a focus point. It's what I practiced with any sort of regularity, and it was feeling more like I was a (slowly) developing guitarist who still plays around with drums.
Fast forward to this Fall. I mentioned this in my first post:
And so it continued for a while after that. Of course with the practices came more continuity to my play, less messiness, even picking up a few licks I used to be able to do. Rust started shedding quickly, and with that my satisfaction with playing grew. Those couple of months were the beginning of a shift to me. From being someone who considers drums one of the things I play back to being the main thing I play again. It took a low then a high to get there, but I'm glad I went through both. Yeah, I still mess around with the guitar, but I am a drummer first and foremost, and I'm comfortable with that.
Played w/ worship team on 9/6. Hadn't been scheduled for worship team much at all lately so it was already affecting my confidence, but then we had the kind of practice where it seemed every time we stopped it was because of something I was doing wrong. And it's not about simple "don't forget the chorus goes here" type stuff but criticism that strikes at the core of what I considered my strengths. Very discouraging day...
...After posting the video I tore down the North drum set...and set up my other, smaller Slingerland set (the one I play when I play out). Thus begins almost nightly wood-shedding sessions. I practiced like I haven't in ages, not because I felt the need to "get ready" for Binghamton but because I actually wanted to practice....
And so it continued for a while after that. Of course with the practices came more continuity to my play, less messiness, even picking up a few licks I used to be able to do. Rust started shedding quickly, and with that my satisfaction with playing grew. Those couple of months were the beginning of a shift to me. From being someone who considers drums one of the things I play back to being the main thing I play again. It took a low then a high to get there, but I'm glad I went through both. Yeah, I still mess around with the guitar, but I am a drummer first and foremost, and I'm comfortable with that.
