Enjoy your self and your playing at every level of your experience. And at the same time continue the search and quest to refine and improve your playing and skills. Drumming for everyone no matter what their level is about learning.

We can learn from everyone around us, it does not matter if they are “better” then us or not. There is always something interesting to learn from each other if we listen and look. Everyone has their own intrinsic rhythm or beat they come into this world with. And we can learn from almost any situation if we are open enough.

Of course at some point, and it is different for everyone, the drum starts to teach you. You sit down and practice and things start to happen, ideas start to come, flow and we create and grow. And we find our own voice. But we need to have a deep rooted base planted firmly in the ground in order to grow. It’s a process that does not happen over night.

Without a strong foundation, the walls can not support the roof of your rhythm house. And it’s the walls that make the space useful.

So we study and we learn from our teachers, friends and masters. And any combo thereof. The hand drums all come from a lineage of being passed down hand to hand vs a literary background or schools of notation.

For me it all starts with strong fundamentals. The basics. How we sit or stand, what we think, our attitude and our posture. Hitting with minimum effort but getting maximum output. Rhythm concepts and compositions. How to hit the drum and bounce and lift the sound out. Leaving the ego outside.

Learning and studying traditional phrases and structures. Learning to play with relaxed technique…Just a few of the many things that go into our formula for successful drumming.