Light Being

This is my first vert ramp session in over 12 years! That’s enough time to have seen a whole new generation of pro skaters begin to rise. I skated with a few of them today and I’m glad to see a lot of excitement and support in the vert community 🙌

There’s so much I could say but for now I’ll just say I am overjoyed, relieved, and very grateful to get to do this today. My smile at the end of this clip says it all.

I believe the ramp total height is 13’ with 2.5’ vertical. Krause Family YMCA skateboard park in Mission Valley / Clairemont / San Diego.

Thanks for filming and nice meeting you today

Week 6 lesson material from my elective class “double bass drum workout.” It seems simple enough at a glance but it took so much brain power and time to get this right.

I’m playing different right hand ostinatos (here is two 16ths and an 8th, and vise-versa) over a “broken” (as in there are rests and not a continuous single stroke roll) rhythm with both feet, and 4 different snare patterns (only one shown here, backbeat on 2 and 4). I’m not going to do the math but when you mix and match each limb’s responsibility there’s like 32 different combinations for each exercise.

For a person who has a tendency to think, and over think - a lot, I am in the right place, for there is plenty of mind melting to be done as a drumming student! This is eliminating old habits of limb association/dependence, something double-bass drummers especially tend to default to, for example the right foot and right hand always needing to hit together - old habit. There are so many ways to do the job and it all takes practice, examining each approach to a musical situation, so that when I need to use that skill in the future it will feel and sound awesome!

This is filmed during my learning process so you’ll notice as I’m spotting mistakes and correcting them in real time. Oh and I’m having an absolute blast 🙃

It’s my first time drumming whatsoever since I filmed my audition videos for my school application at Musicians Institute over a month ago. Now I get my own private room to practice in. I have a lot of drumming homework - on technique and reading. I needed a mind clearing moment to get acquainted with the new setting and to “dust off the cobwebs.” This video is when I stopped to recall a song of my own, so that I could play something that I had composed in this new room.

Before this though, the first grooves I played out from my memory was the song “Volumes” by The Unborn, featuring drumming of a brilliant young who I will always remember. In 2006 Emerson Wahl taught me how to play and practice a proper blast beat at a private drum lesson at his childhood home, we must have both been 15-16 years old at the time.

Now that I’m at school learning rudiments and steady grooves that will “get gigs” I will always keep my blast beats sharp for many personal reasons but also because I know Em would have loved that.

He is a big reason I decided to focus all of my working and creative energy to music and advancing my education. We weren’t on a basis of everyday talking, but we emailed about some of my music career and academic dreams at a critical moment in my life, 2019ish. I had no idea he was ill. Since then we also responded to each other’s stories, such as his posts about food or my posts about Cannibal Co**se. I remember the day I heard he passed I said out loud “well I’m grateful that there wasn’t anything I wished I could have told him.” That comes with a big reluctant gulp of acceptance however, because every day since I have thought about him and how wonderful it would be if he were with us and in good health, and not just for my sake…

As the distant old friends that we were, I have been feeling this loss in a somewhat estranged and solitary way, and yet it’s in this that I feel his positive and endearing impact that others must also be feeling. The world is truly a better place because of Emerson 🕊

Improv with a goal: I always want to play what feels good and from the heart. Here I observe togetherness where notes occur together, and even space in between all the rest. So my improv is a relaxing meditation around a “Cannibal blast” with fills and syncopation. I would like to be able to play these kinds of runs steadily like 70% faster than this but slow practice is necessary for integrating proper relaxed motion and free joint mobility. My biggest focus here is actually on posture, noticing what kinds of motions cause my habit to tilt off balance- notice the forward and backward leans over time. It’s especially hard because I’m tall and hunch sometimes (always correcting that “tech posture” that has affected so many of us 🤬) and my long limbs seem to throw me off my center, especially when both feet are moving because when the feet are floating there is no anchor. Vertical center of balance, with core stability and controlled breathing have been some of the most challenging lessons to work through but it’s taking me where I want to go. Hopefully this will help someone else learn too.

How many times have I had to unlearn everything I think I know about drumming, surrender that old information and start from scratch on a new technique, sounding like a new and sloppy drummer every time. Drumming nearly 20 years … I tell you it’s been a lot of times. I’ve been practicing my ass off for nearly 3 years not in any band. Practice is where we sound the worst because this is where we seek, identify, reckon with and destroy our bad habits. Maybe when I join a band I’ll have something that sounds awesome to post. Until then, and even then, it’s practice time!

POV: you’re mouth-breathing really close behind my head while I learn this groove from a song titled “The Cell” by and Gojira , you’re trying to tell me “it’s supposed to be with closed hi hat” but I can’t hear you over the magical ringing of my ride cymbal
🎶😌🎶

A minute of free association. Imagining a pulse without meter, playing whatever comes to mind. The object is to play as long as possible without mistakes, to play spontaneously (avoiding ostinato) with focus on keeping in time and hitting properly. If an accident should happen then stop and begin again.

Fun moment of playful exploring that felt good in my last drumming of 2021
Happy new year

🔊 is it a rushing river or a blast beat? Is it a raven call or a china cymbal? Ghost note or an acorn falling from the branch and knocking on the roof?

5 years ago I had just finished writing and arranging my full length Light Being self-titled album and posted it from the Chetco River wilderness. Many of the songs were written and recorded in this cold garage, off grid running on solar. This old version is still up on Bandcamp. This set of songs, soundscapes, sensations, and memories would later become A Way Into Dreams.