Creatively speaking, once you have learned how to play your drum (well) all drumming is an experiment, the more experiments you make the better. I had a great teacher who told me, “your next mistake is actually your next creative idea”. The same impulse that creates the alleged mistake is the same impulse that creates the new creative idea. They are cousins living across a border. Its the same land divided by a time line (earlier on when you are a beginner, and later on when you are advanced). It is the imaginary line of our thinking that say’s one is good and one is bad. But neither is good or bad it’s just our thinking.

The concept that there are no mistakes and using the impulses to create from is very powerful if you are indeed ready to handle it.

Struggle is what it means to be alive and free. Drumming and learning can indeed be a struggle. But the pay off is huge. Like anything else you get back what you put in to it. For some of us it never gets easy and when it does, something difficult is right around the corner. Personally I have learned to love and accept the various ups and downs that frequently occur in my drumming career.

If we are not from the culture of the drum, from the native land it comes from, if we did not grow up with it,it is useless for us to try and “own it” in a western way. It’s not ours. We can experience it, love it, let it come and flow through us. But we must give up the desire to control it, to be the best. JUst experience it fully.

We have to just to let it flow. We have to do our best, learn the best we can, study and grow with it and be happy at all times and every experience we have to play. We just have to let our hair down and go fishing so to speak. Ease up and relax about it. Don’t try to get it all at once. I see beginning drummers all the time going to every class, trying to get every bit of information. which is fine and I encourage this. But they are “striving”. Striving =stress. You won’t last in this business if you strive and stress. I have seen so many people who started off hot like this drop out, burn out and thats that.

The same goes for how you hit and play the drum. If you do it with stress and tension when you play you are not going to enjoy yourself, you are not going to get the right feel and you can possibly even hurt yourself. Relax.

We have to love the questions we ask them selves. To have patience and understand we might not ever fully understand this music or life itself. The music is just a microcosm. A smaller version of the universe. We have to have patience with ourselves and others. And simply just experience it.