ABC easy as 123

Back in the summer I realized that for someone who loves music as much as I do to only have an 8G iPod was both ridiculous and sad. I replaced it with a 120G iPod Classic and have been diligently, yea even obsessively, working towards filling that behemoth ever since. I have scored (get it, scored?) countless CDs at thrift stores, closing sales, and who knows where else... Just yesterday I bought six, and would have gotten seven if that pesky man hadn't picked up U2's Rattle and Hum before I could grab it. ;p Still, I did okay, having harvested:

Rush: Roll The Bones
Billy Joel: Koehupt (a live album)
Wynton Marsalis: Standard Time Volume 3 (had this one in college)
Harry Connick Jr: Blue Light, Red Light (also used to have this one)
A Putomayo sampler of the music of Israel
A Midsummer Night's Dream soundtrack (mostly opera)

All of these were from thrift stores. Total Bill... Sixteen dollars.

At this point I have close to 5500 songs on my iPod. And a good chunk of them are songs I have never heard! At thrift store prices, I can pick up music just to try it out...however the tendency to listen to the comforting and delighting strains of songs I already know is often so strong...

I decided we needed a systematic approach. The alphabet. From henceforth, we (my boys and I) will be using the day of the month to dictate the letter of the day and therefore the music(s) of the day.

Today, for example, is the 7th...which is the letter G! So we may listen to Genesis, Gershwin, Glenn Kotche, and/or Glenn Miller. That may not sound like much until you factor in that Gershwin is one of my absolute favorites and I have ten CDs of his work on my iPod! ;) But we don't have to listen to ALL of any letter. (the Js would be impossible!) I aim to start with the most unfamiliar before going to the familiar. Drummer Glenn Kotche, for example. His CD Mobile is absolutely stunning. But we've only listened to it two or three times. So we will give it serious play today. Maybe we'll even pull out our DVDs and watch him. His technical skill is breath-taking...while his creativity is jaw-dropping. So you're left breathless with your mouth hanging open which is rather uncomfortable and silly, but hey, he deserves it.

Here's a sampling...



I'll try and report back daily on what we listened to and how we enjoyed it...

Discovering Drums

How this journey began

As of this month, I have been taking drum lessons for about a year. And it's still a few months from the anniversary of my starting to play live percussion with the band. Only a year...

The decision to start playing was such a small thing. I have four young sons. My older two play the drums (and the piano) and are really good. The second one is something akin to a prodigy actually, scary is the word our teacher uses. As I watched them learning to play, I started noticing exactly how important the drums, the rhythms, have always been to me in my musical tastes. Strong rhythms, strong harmonies - those are what I gravitate towards. And I prefer the exotic. Brazilian beats, for example, do strange and wonderful things to me.

I am the musical parent in this house. I have been singing and performing since preschool days, I play some piano... I knew that if the boys' drum talent had any genetic component, it must be from me...so I started thinking "What if I could... Maybe I could...."

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was also profoundly influenced by my rediscovery of the music of Vinx. I saw Vinx live twice when I was in college. Fall of 1990, I believe it was. He was opening for Sting and I vividly remember being entranced by this blue haired man with his rich voice and his evocative drum. Something reminded me...I don't even know what..of how much I loved that music almost 20 years ago. So I went looking. I have no idea what happened to the CDs I had back then, but I found some of his music on iTunes and fell in love all over again.

Vinx plays the djembe. So I liked the djembe. Just one simple drum which can talk and sing so beautifully... Plus there's just something so lovely about the its shape. Silly I suppose, but I just love that drum. So djembe it was to be for me. (in one of those strange coincidences that make life so vastly amusing, turns out my teacher used to play with Vinx. )

So lessons began. Singles. Doubles. Paradiddles. Simple exercises. Simple patterns. Within a few weeks, I used some money for a voice-over gig to buy my own drum. I was tickled with this new hobby and it was fun... I didn't have a hunger for other instruments. And I was convinced that I would not ever be able to play the drum kit. Oh no. Not ME...

Video of Vinx performing It's Too Late

Relax

Fall into the flow
Relax with the groove
Breathe in the music
Let your heart guide the moves
Of your hands as they’re dancing
So rhythmically smooth
And loose
No need to force
or to push
or to pound
Simply play
As the sound and the silence surround
Sweetly surrender and softly slow down
Slow down