Insert Name-Only-I-Find-Clever Here

Applying the WD-40

2011-01-19T21:23:00.011-05:00

Been a while since I've blogged. I've been thinking about this one for a while and the timing may be right on this.

At one point in my life I was a real busy drummer. I was in a blues band, big band, and played regularly in the community concert band and symphony. When the kids came along adjustments needed to be made so I set aside the big band and the symphony. Then a couple of years later the blues band fell apart. There were many years where my only drumming was for the six week concert band season. Each year I could feel myself getting rustier and rustier and it was discouraging.

When I joined the church I'm currently at, I eventually got the opportunity to sit in on drums once a month or so, which was both helpful and sometimes more discouraging, in certain ways. Even after a couple years of that, and even considering I spent some time practicing at home when I could, I still felt rusty...Obviously there have been some big "ups" (the biggest being the first entry in this blog) but there have also been many "downs" along the way.

Late last summer, the main drummer at church took an extended leave of absence and I was called on to fill in. Let me just preface what I am about to say by saying that I would gladly trade every positive thing that has happened for him not needing to take that leave, but circumstances are what they are.

Playing every week has its challenges. But I do enjoy it and appreciate the opportunity to serve. Not surprisingly, doing this for a few months now has really helped in a lot of ways:

I can feel the rust has pretty well kicked off.
I now feel like I've gelled w/ the rest of the team. With multiple guitarists/bassists it can be hard to get in synch playing just once per month. Weekly helped me get there.
Playing enough of this music I've "found" myself as a Christian music drummer. There are some nuances to worship playing that are slightly different than straight-up rock-n-roll, and I think I've picked the important ones up.

All of this adds up to having much more confidence in my playing, which allows me to stop worrying about my playing (trying to sound like the recording, or the main drummer) and just do what I've always done best as a drummer: listen to what's going on around me and try to complement it the best I can. I'm not at 100% of where I was before things dried up for me musically but much more comfortable with where I am.

Now to how I see God working in this. Just as playing every Sunday was becoming too burdensome, a new family joined the church. Their 16 year old son is a drummer and in fact has come in to give me some relief. We now share the load 50/50 which is fine with me. After helping with the kids' ministry it gives me one week per month to just attend a single church service with no extra commitments, which is really nice.

The other interesting thing that has happened: my "phone" has been ringing off the hook. The big band I used to play with? Their very reliable drummer retired at the end of last year and so I will be playing with them again. I've also received calls about playing with the local Chorale (which I had to turn down) and to play in the pit band for the high school's musical (Grease, should be fun!). I would have been too afraid to take them on with the way I had been playing before, let alone the fact that I wasn't even getting the calls. That they came after the rust had been knocked off and during a time when I scaled back my commitments at church would be called "coincidence" by some. Not me though...

Twitter Lists: What Good Are they?

2010-02-26T14:51:00.003-05:00

Apologies to those who have read this before in a previous post but I thought I'd break it out and provide updates when I find new, interesting things to do with lists. Came up with a new one recently so thought I'd add...

Twitter Lists
People have been trying to figure out lists since Twitter introduced them. I'm still figuring it out. I do tend to use/organize lists differently on Twitter web than I use, say, groups in TweetDeck. The ones I've made public are for the benefit of those who follow who are looking to follow certain categories (including myself!). But I'm doing/thought of some interesting things to do with private lists that I thought would be worth sharing:

Build a "must-reads" list. Thanks to the computer situation around the house (and sometimes, the time I have to check Twitter), I don't always have TweetDeck at my disposal. I only follow about 300 folks but that can be a lot to try to read/catch up on if I've been away for a bunch of hours. With Tweetdeck it's easy, especially if you skim past "conversations." I will freely admit that there are those whose tweets I don't want to miss, especially some who don't tweet so often. So I have built a private "must-read" list that I can go-to during quick check-ins. It's worked great...just trying to settle on the sweet-spot of how many I can put on that list before it becomes burdensome.
Start an "ungrouped" list. I love Tweetdeck, but one area that is notoriously bad in it is group/following management. They have the whole "new followers" column thingie, but still there are times where I may decide to follow folks from the Twitter interface. When I do that, I always have to remember to go into TweetDeck and search the person so I can add them to a group. Not any more with my "ungrouped" list. I put new follows in there, then pull it up in Tweetdeck to see who I still need to "group." And Tweetdeck does have a nice means to move people to/from lists/groups.
"Anonymously follow." I don't do this (yet) but I can see where this could be a neat feature of lists. One of the neat things about lists is that you don't need to follow everyone who is on your lists. So you could conceivably add folks to a private list without actually following them and keep up with their tweets without their name showing up in your "following" & yours in their "followers" list.
"Mobile (TXT) Management" For those of us in the growing minority without smart phones/data plans who use the SMS interface at times to interact with Twitter, it can be a real bear to manage. I have a limited text plan myself so I don't just have all tweets coming to my phone. But, for example, when I go to a concert and I follow the band members on Twitter I like to see their updates show up. But Twitter does not make it easy to turn on mobile updates on a user-by-user basis. So why not use a list for this? You still need to pull up the person's profile to enable mobile notifications, but at the same time you put them in a private list called "mobile." That way, you have an active list of people whose tweets are coming to your phone (provided you remember to take them off the list when you turn mobile notifications off!)

That's about it for this post. Appreciate comments and your suggestions on things you do with lists!

It's a Small World After All...

2010-01-07T00:02:00.006-05:00

...thanks to the Internet! Those of you who follow this blog (I'm talking to both of you) will remember that I recently put my North drum set up on Craigslist. I picked Craigslist because it's free and it's kinda local. I didn't want to have to be responsible for packing those beasts for shipment. Got a guy in Boston who was looking to grab just part of the set. I wasn't too keen on doing that because I felt I had no chance to sell just pieces of the set locally. He offered me a price that was fair for the number of drums he wanted, and found I could do okay with the remainder (thanks to a North-drums related Yahoo! group). He also offered to come pick them up.

I was on the verge of taking it when I got an e-mail from a guy calling himself Phoebus. The e-mail simply asked if the drum set was still available. I'm thinking "interesting nickname," then go to his website and find that is his actual name and that he's a big-time songwriter/producer...in Greece (as in Athens, not the Rochester NY suburb). As in multiple platinum records to his name and described by many as the go-to guy if you want a hit song. Realizing I don't have a random crackpot on my hands I decide to write him back, telling him I have a deal pending and that it would take a good offer for me to back out of that. Oh and I'm not keen on shipping.

He offers my asking price for the set (the entire set) and says he'll try to arrange for a friend in NY to pick it up. I decide to counter-offer by telling him I could take it to a UPS Store (not an option for most as they are normally unwilling to pay the packing rates). He said no problem, so we worked through the course of a couple weeks swapping e-mails back-and-forth with the details, while I figured out the best means to package and ship (many thanks to Rick at Orcon Industries in Leroy for getting custom boxes together for me!) and today I shipped the drums! In the process I learned a lot more about International shipping, USPS shipping limits and "dimensional weight" than I ever thought I would! Phoebus was a supremely nice guy to deal with, patiently answering my ignorant questions despite a very busy work and home life. I really hope he enjoys the drums!

So to summarize: guy in middle-of-nowhere NY posts an ad to the Rochester Craigslist and ends up selling to a mega-producer in Athens Greece. Exactly what I expected to have happen when I listed them...

Selling (Update: SOLD!) my North Drum Set

2009-12-22T21:25:00.007-05:00

Update: SOLD! More later!

Well I finally got the nerve to put my North Drum Set on Craigslist: http://bit.ly/5GmPM0

Don't worry, per my previous post I still have my trusty Slingerland set:

Feel free to pass on the link to anyone who might be interested in the North Set! Thanks!

2009...never could have guessed...

2009-12-21T14:14:00.006-05:00

Well, 2009's just about ended and this has been what I'd call a surprising year for me in many ways. Looking back on the year I see a bunch of things, mostly small, certainly trivial in that grand scheme that I never would have expected to have seen/experienced at the beginning of the year. I'll list some out, then you take your turn:

Twitter-related:

If you told me I'd be following nearly 350 people on Twitter at the beginning of the year I would have told you that you're nuts.
Never thought I'd win so many things on/thanks to Twitter over the course of one year. CD's, "gift baskets," tickets to concerts but of course the biggest thing I won had no monetary value to it. (yes, I brought it up again!)

Music-related:

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that there was an artist that I would buy all the CD's he's put out and travel 100+ miles to see him...twice, I would have gone through a pretty sizable list of names before coming up with the right one.
For the first time in years we had a 5-month span of seeing at least one concert per month. Did not expect that.
This has also been the biggest year for buying CD's/"downloaded albums" in a long time. If you add in the CD's I won this year and singles that companies were giving away my library has grown tremendously.
Of course I'd have never expected fulfilling a life-long dream (or two) as a drummer this year.
Related to that, I wouldn't have thought at the beginning of the year that I would have truly revived my interest in drumming again.
Never would have expected I'd play host to a touring musician either.

Life in General

Though I guess I should have expected it, I did not expect Kiera to get weapons from Santa for Christmas (just happened to be top-of-mind).
On a sad note, I never thought I'd lose 2 friends this year, one I knew in real life, and another I only knew thanks to the Internet. Rest in peace, Marty and Jason.

Beyond all that, my life was filled with blessings too numerous to mention this year, I just thought I'd mention some of the "surprises."

What about you? What happened to you this year that you didn't expect would happen?

I am a Drummer...

2009-11-17T10:01:00.009-05:00

People reading this title who know me will probably say straight up: "Well, duh..." but it's not that simple, or at least hasn't been so cut-and-dried of late. Otherwise I wouldn't be dedicating a blog to the subject. I hinted at this in my first blog entry but it has really been hitting home in the time since.

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:

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.

Twitter - The "Follow Fallacy" and Lists: what good are they?

2009-10-09T08:38:00.008-04:00

Late to the game in this debate, but I only recently started blogging. This is something I've been thinking about for some time and it clearly could not be condensed into 140 characters. I call it the "Follow Fallacy."

There's a camp of people who feel that Twitter common courtesy is to follow back everyone that follows you. They especially seem to feel that sense of entitlement when it comes to celebrities at various levels. I am clearly not in that camp.

Here's the thing: let's say a celeb that is followed by 10,000 people follows them all back. Do you really think he reads every tweet? I would expect that would be no. I would expect they'd do what most do: read the @replies to them, maybe peruse a few tweets, but he'll skip reading about what you had for breakfast. Most use a Twitter client that allows them to group so they may not even see your tweets in their feed. They may "follow" you but still read only the folks that they'd read if they didn't follow the courtesy. I know of folks who have/follow 10,000+ who keep a read-only Twitter account for their "favorites." So yeah, they may "follow" you but they don't read your tweets.

What's that? Oh, if they follow you, then you can DM them? Guess what happens when you have 10,000 people DM-ing you? Yeah, you tend not to respond. Maybe it gets read but not any more so than the @replies.

Really there's no point in celebs to follow-back. There's nothing that the fans get from that move in particular, and it can be an onerous task for the celeb to manage (if you use an auto-follow tool then all of a sudden you're following the Brit.ney's and other assorted garbage back. How does that look to your fans if you're following spammers?). I've dealt with some who follow-back and some who don't and I don't see where the former are any more interactive than the latter. Heck, I don't follow everyone back.

Finally, for those who say "But following back is common courtesy! Those who don't follow back don't 'get' Twitter!" I say "then I guess @ev and @biz don't 'get' Twitter."

Twitter Lists
Now, on to lists. People have been trying to figure them out since Twitter introduced them. I'm still figuring it out. I do tend to use/organize lists differently on Twitter web than I use, say, groups in TweetDeck. The ones I've made public are for the benefit of those who follow who are looking to follow certain categories (including myself!). But I'm doing/thought of some interesting things to do with private lists that I thought would be worth sharing:

Build a "must-reads" list. Thanks to the computer situation around the house (and sometimes, the time I have to check Twitter), I don't always have TweetDeck at my disposal. I only follow about 300 folks but that can be a lot to try to read/catch up on if I've been away for a bunch of hours. With Tweetdeck it's easy, especially if you skim past "conversations." I will freely admit that there are those whose tweets I don't want to miss, especially some who don't tweet so often. So I have built a private "must-read" list that I can go-to during quick check-ins. It's worked great...just trying to settle on the sweet-spot of how many I can put on that list before it becomes burdensome.
Start an "ungrouped" list. I love Tweetdeck, but one area that is notoriously bad in it is group/following management. They have the whole "new followers" column thingie, but still there are times where I may decide to follow folks from the Twitter interface. When I do that, I always have to remember to go into TweetDeck and search the person so I can add them to a group. Not any more with my "ungrouped" list. I put new follows in there, then pull it up in Tweetdeck to see who I still need to "group." And Tweetdeck does have a nice means to move people to/from lists/groups.
"Anonymously follow." I don't do this (yet) but I can see where this could be a neat feature of lists. One of the neat things about lists is that you don't need to follow everyone who is on your lists. So you could conceivably add folks to a private list without actually following them and keep up with their tweets without their name showing up in your "following" & yours in their "followers" list.

That's about it for this post. Appreciate comments and your suggestions on things you do with lists!

First Blog - Playing with Aaron Shust

2009-10-08T11:35:00.006-04:00

Wow, look at me, I’m blogging! I have avoided this for years now, but I guess this weekend’s events were so grand that I needed to start a blog to explain it all. I make no promises about how frequently I will blog, and am uncertain about the topics I will cover, but I have begun. My first blog entry covers what I call a “God story:” a series of events that many would regard as a simple series of coincidences, but I realize as so much more. This is actually the 2nd "God story" related to experiences with Aaron Shust this year, maybe I'll go "backward" and blog the first at a later time. I can tell you that most blog posts will not reach the length of this tome.

This epic story starts a month ago. Two things happen that set this up:

1.) @amazonmp3 gives a coupon code for $1.29 credit for 1,000,000 follows. I intend to use it to get "One Day" (from Aaron's first CD, that I didn't have) because my wife loves the song. Forget to apply coupon before-hand so having the coupon still available I download another song off his 1st that I wanted but didn't have: "Matchless."

2.) 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.

On 9/8 Aaron posts the "contest" video, offering the opportunity for those who audition to play "Matchless" on stage with him.

Having my very-recently legally obtained version of “Matchless” ready I decide to give it a try. I cleared out a spot in the basement and set up part of my North drum set. I figured I’d distract Aaron w/ the visual of the North set so that maybe he wouldn’t pay so much attention to the playing. Over the course of practicing the song I'm realizing that I'm actually enjoying practicing by myself (something I never liked). I make the vid one night and post it.

There were two dates on the same weekend that were “close enough.” One was a Saturday in Central PA the Sunday was in Binghamton. Could have signed up for both (and I toyed with the thought) but I was scheduled for worship team that Sunday so I picked the Sunday concert in Binghamton. 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.

Fast-forward to Wednesday before show. A guy I play in concert band with posts a FB status saying he needed a drummer for Friday night. I go there, and play decently. I don't think I wowed anyone but it went all right, all things considered. It was the first social non-commmunity-band gig I had played in ages and it felt really good.

Saturday night I get the verification from Aaron that indeed I will get to play. Sunday morning went well with the worship team. Of course 1st song, 1st service, I had a.) forgotten to plug the ear buds in, b.) dropped a stick, and c.) knocked the ear buds out of my ears, but it still went well. Rushed home, then off to Binghamton. Aaron had said in a DM a couple weeks before that VIP time was usually 2 hrs before show, so the plan was to get there by 4:30. Pull into Binghamton at 3:40, find the church, then proceed to look for someplace quick to eat. After a long search we find an Italian place where they managed to get us in and out in 15 minutes.

Back to the church about 4:20. Line of people at door (about a dozen). Go up to door, talk to church member inside saying we had VIP passes waiting for us. He didn't know what was going on but let us in. In lobby, we happened to run into tour manager. He says "no VIP passes this show [I guess because it was a 'free' show]. You will play w/ him, but wait outside." So no goodies (VIPs get T-Shirt and CD, plus M&G and pre-show acoustic show), and the show was “free” so “free” tickets weren’t “worth” anything (we had been planning on giving a “love offering” anyway), but obviously the reason we were there still stood, and though I was a bit disappointed that's all that mattered to me. Went back outside, got back in line. In the end it was fortunate that we thought there would be the pre-show stuff as we might have arrived later and been much further back in line had we known.

When the doors opened, we went in, saw seats in the third row in a pew that had two people in it w/ a good view of the stage (including drum set). Asked the folks there if they were saving, they said "no." Found out later the first 3 rows (including the pew we ended up in) were "reserved" for church VIPs. No one kicked us out so I guess we ended up w/ "VIP passes" after all, LOL! Loy made sure to clear videotaping my performance (we brought an actual camcorder and a tripod) before the show. I also decided to complete my Aaron Shust collection by buying his first CD.

The show itself was great. One could feel the Spirit descending on the place as the night went on. It was Chris Sligh's "Back to School" tour and featured Sligh and Shust with opening acts Andrew Witt and Meredith Andrews. Witt, Andrews, and Sligh played before intermission, then Aaron was to come out after. The tour manager had told me to talk w/ the stage manager at intermission so when that came along we found him. He said "Aaron will call you up when it's time." (Very detailed directions, LOL). Then he led me to the stage where I dropped my stick bag and checked out the drums, where I plug in my ear buds, etc. I was somehow still calm, though anticipating...

Aaron came out, played a couple songs, then calls out my name. I sprung to the stage, went to the back (quick handshake/hug from Aaron on way by), said hi to the drummer, and pulled my sticks and ear buds out. The minute I sit on the drum stool it fully hits me, and I about vibrate out of my skin. I told the drummer my fear of playing too fast due to the nerves, and he just chuckled and said "Aaron will count it off for you." Song started and I just played. With the set so far back I did not see the crowd but I could hear them. I was pretty much in automatic mode and my wife noted my excitement did not come through in my expression. Was so focused on playing I guess. I saw in the video that the guitarist looked back at me a couple times. Don't remember that, and I hope he doesn't think ill of me for it. I do remember at the end when Aaron came to the back of the stage and turned toward me. I think he might have been slightly worried that I wouldn't end the song on time, but when I hit those final crashes I remember he flashed a real wide smile my way before turning back around. As you can see in the vid I took no real time to "bask," but rather waved, gathered up my stuff and got off the stage. Don't know why I rushed like that, but I guess it was "I'm done, time to get off the stage!"

Afterward was a blur. Tweeted about playing and was numb for 2-3 songs after. I remember Aaron thanked me again and I managed a sloppy sign-language “thank you” back at him. A couple folks around me asked how to find the video when it gets posted…

The show ended at 9:30, and since there was no M&G before we decided to stick around to see if Aaron would show up. Some people recognized me and offered kind words (Loy told me that when she was off by herself she would hear people talking about “that drummer”). I was still kind of in and out of it so my responses were of varying lucidity. It was getting on 10:00 and I'm thinking it’s about time to go home and then I see someone in the lobby in a Steelers jersey. Of course it's Aaron. At that point there were only about 6 die-hards there. I let everyone else go first, then had a nice chat w/ Aaron for about 5 minutes. The end of an obviously great night!

I say all of this because it shows how I realize how God worked in all this. I was really discouraged in Sept, and this contest got me playing again, practicing, working on getting better. Then He gives me this weekend, a shot at redemption in big ways, and the desire to keep working at it. Of course that it happens 10 days before I turn 40 (and as I celebrate 30 years playing drums) is not lost on me. With all these coincidences adding up I thought it was something that was too "perfect" to have happen and was just waiting for that "one thing" that would make it not happen. At the end of this I find myself thanking God yet again for blessings I do not deserve.

People have talked (I’m guessing half-jokingly) about how this experience was perhaps a beginning, but it was to me more a culmination. I harbor no fantasies that this would “turn into” anything. This is not the "first of many," it was a "once-in-a-lifetime." If Aaron continues doing this will I audition again? Sure, but I won’t put my family out so much to do it and would only do it if no one else auditions. I’ve had my turn, I’ve lived a couple of my life-long dreams in one night and I am extremely grateful for the experience. But hey, Aaron, if you need help in the studio with your next album, call me okay? ;-)

In closing, many many thanks to Aaron for being crazy enough to do this (sad thing is when I talked to Aaron after the show I believe it's the one important thing I forgot to say! *DOH* ), to Jon Skaggs (touring drummer) for letting me use his drums, and to the tour and stage manager for their support. Thanks also my friends and family for tolerating me and supporting me through this. And definitely thanks go out to God, for lifting me up in my time of self-doubt and giving me this past weekend’s experiences. To God alone be the glory!