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| by steve sobel (steve) | |
OpeningBands has now been around a few years, and for the most part it remained unchanged, save for a minor facelift. Well, the time has come for some changes, and some of them are pretty exciting.
We've added a ton of new features to the site, but there's so much you might not find it all unless we tell you about it. So, without further ado, a summary of all of the new toys we've added recently:
Advertising:
We've added banner advertising to the site, and made it super easy to submit an ad and pay for impressions. Just submit through our ad submission form and once it's approved you can charge it up via PayPal. Ads are very affordable, and very targeted since you know exactly what readers of our site are looking for!
Pictures! MP3s! Discographies, oh my!
Are you in a band? Find it in our listings (or submit it if it's not there), and let us know that you're a member. By doing so, you've always been able to edit your biography. However, we've added a bunch of great stuff! You can now add photos, mp3s and a discography to your band's profile. There's also a nice text editor built in so that you can format your profile however you like without knowing HTML. If you register for premium membership, you can add even more photos and mp3s to your profile. Guess what else? Those photos and mp3s are linked right from our shows list so people can check your band out and maybe just be persuaded to go to your show!
It's not just bands that get pictures, though. Regular users who register for premium membership also get a photo gallery, a blog, a really nice "my shows" calendar and a whole lot more.
Social Networking-ish!
OpeningBands now has buddylists. As it stands right now, it's just a nice way to list who your pals are. However, these buddylists will be used in a more robust manner soon. Expect cool features similar to that of your favorite social networking site(s), and even cooler and more music related features in the future.
User profiles are a lot more detailed now, and feature several "tabs" (more for premium users, of course!), so be sure to check 'em out.
Favorites
Want to be notified when a band you love has a new show added to the openingbands calendar, or just do your bit to give a band your "vote of confidence"? Click the heart icon next to a band anywhere on the site and add them to your favorite bands list. Email notifications are optional, so if that's not your thing, you don't have to turn it on (it's off by default for your convenience).
Shows List updates abound!
Our shows list has been given a serious facelift and now includes thumbnail pictures of bands, links to mp3s and more.
Band profile pages now include photos, mp3s, discography and even a tour map that shows, through the power of google maps, the path of a band's tour stops! They're also equipped with a nice bio editor so you can make it all pretty without knowing HTML.
The search feature on the shows list has also been significantly improved. You can even search for shows by genre!
Featured Bands!
Check out our front page to see a featured band. This feature was long overdue and finally we've provided it. There's a picture and a short bio there, and a link to the band's profile page where you can give 'em a listen. Do it!
Who's Online -- on steroids!
No, it doesn't tell you who's on steroids -- we've just injected the who's online page with a little "banned substance." Now you can tell what band someone's in, add buddies to your buddylist and see even more useless statistics about this site.
More to come...
There's a lot more great stuff coming, so keep your eyes peeled. Of course, if you have suggestions I'd love to hear from you, so post them to our forums or check out my profile and send me a note.
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| by joseph m. pence (notaninja) | | | Diamonds in the Rough - An Interview with The Vertebrats |  | | | | | [direct link] | |
 | Photo-Collage by Mfooz
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The story of "Left in the Dark" making its way by cassette to WPGU and then to greater popularity is one that's been earmarked in pages of Champaign-Urbana's musical history. And though some might wonder what all the fuss is about for the often-sung band that were only in existence a few short years (1978-1982), to anyone who's heard the song's timeless guitar refrain and indignant swagger it's hard not to wonder why The Vertebrats don't have a street named after them in Champaign proper. On the eve of an anticipated return to C-U, I had a chance to ask a few questions to the four members of the band: Ken Draznik, Matthew Brandabur, Jimmy Wald, and Roy Axford (Axford isn't appearing at this upcoming show but was still invited to join in on the interview).
Joe Pence: First off, to who or what do we owe the pleasure of this reunion?
Jimmy Wald: God and Satan.
Roy Axford: The serious talk about this reunion started immediately after the Greedy Loves impersonated the Vertebrats at the Great Cover Up on Saturday January 28, 2006 at Cowboy Monkey. So you can thank or blame them.
Ken Draznik: Don Gerard and I had been trading some emails about various things, and I shared them with the other guys. As I recall, Jimmy at one point begged us to have another reunion, and it seemed to be about right. Maybe we were scared that The Greedy Loves might start touring as The Vertebrats.
Matthew Brandabur: After The Greedy Loves did (their) set in last year's Cover Up, one of us made the suggestion that we should do another gig. As a Daily Illini alum, I took interest in an email about (the Illini Media) reunion in September, and pitched it to the guys as a good weekend. I kept expecting the gig to fall through, but it keeps not falling through. So much for the power of prayer and fasting.
JP: In the early 90's, Smashing Pumpkins played in Champaign as they were first picking up, and Hum and Love Cup were likewise playing The Metro. Was there a lot of crossover between Champaign and Chicago's music scenes when you were around or were they entirely separate?
KD: Not that much, as I recall. We used to play Gaspar's (now Schuba's), Tut's, C.O.D., Misfits, and Waves in Chicago, but I don't recall a lot of Chicago bands making their way down to Champaign. Maybe there just weren't as many Chicago bands in those days.
RA: I wasn't personally aware of interaction between CU bands and Chicago bands. That doesn't mean there wasn't any ... We went to see some notable Chicago bands when they came to CU. My favorite was the punk outfit Tutu & the Pirates. The most memorable TuTu & the Pirates gig for me was at a bar called Bonni's in Lando Place on 6th St. in Champaign on a Saturday night in 1978. It was frequented by fraternity brothers and sorority sisters who weren't necessarily hip to punk rock. I was with Kenny and Willy Wells (Vertebrat sound man, WPGU DJ, and audio genius) and the place was packed. The assembled regulars had no idea what was about to hit them. First song, TuTuatP launched into "I Got Zits" to the horror of several sorority sisters near us. I remember one's gaping mouth as she yelled "what's this?" Some of the fraternity brothers looked like they'd like to beat up the band. TuTuatP did a memorable version of "I Wanna Be a Janitor" (mom, I got the job) that night. Lil' Richie Spec was in rare form. I believe the opportunity to horrify an unsuspecting audience was a great inspiration to them. Willie and I had to leave early to go do the Roy Bad Show at WPGU. That was the first time I remember wanting to be somewhere else besides the WPGU studios on a Saturday night.
MB: We played a few shows in Chicago, but I don't remember ever taking the time to get to know any of the Chicago bands personally. Unfortunately, I still have Skafish's single "Disgracing the Family Name" stuck in my head, along with a Tutu and the Pirates song about Camus' novel with the lyrics "I killed an Arab on the beach" over and over.
JW: As I recall, they were mostly separate. That said, there were times when Champaign-based bands would play Chicago clubs, and vice versa. Although C-U got some big names, most of the established recording acts played Chicago. I remember seeing The Police at the Assembly Hall, when they were good.
JP: Rightly or wrongly, you've been seen as one of the forebearers of the music scene here in Champaign. Do you think there's anyone else who deserves credit for getting the ball rolling?
JW: No. Just kidding. My memory and answer only go back to 1977, the year that I moved to C-U. I remember George Faber and his bands, Screams, and the Elvis Brothers. I'm sure there were others.
RA: I think at most we can be credited with inspiring some people to start their own bands. They probably looked at us and said if they can do it, then so can I. My favorite local CU band prior to our tenure was Screams. Those guys were good to us when we were starting out. They even loaned us equipment. (So did Tim Vear and Mark Rubel.) Another band I have very fond memories of is Sonny Norman and the Drifting Playboys at the Rose Bowl on Race St. in Urbana. Of course, they were a whole different thing but equally a part of the total CU music scene.
KD: Before I even dreamed of being in a band I would haunt the Red Lion. I remember the first time I saw Screams as being a real revelation. They completely turned it around for me. Before them, it was country rock, heavy metal, and disco, and those were just about the only 3 channels you got. Screams was playing early Who, some British glam stuff, just a completely different mix of music than what was being played out in clubs before that. And they had original stuff, which for that period you simply were not getting.
MB: I think part of the band's appeal was that you heard us and immediately thought "I could do that." That is one thing that set us apart from the music you could generally hear in town when we started. Before we started playing, it was gener ally assumed you needed a certain level of musical skill to perform in public. We forged our ticket from audacity and the will to entertain, and with the help of Kent Carrico, got a chance to play Mabel's on a Monday night. We were comfortable with our imposter-on-the-stage status, and we sort of knew that was a big part of our appeal. You can see us drunk with it in interviews from the time, braying our aw-shucks humility out like mad donkeys. You didn't think "I could do that" when you heard Adrian Belew, George Faber, Screams or even the blues bands that came down from Chicago. So if people who heard us got excited about DIY music, I'm really proud to have contributed to that. And if that's what people mean when they talk about the scene getting going, great.
JP: Did you have a chance to meet or collaborate with Adrian Belew when he was in town?
KD: The thought of getting to know him and interact musically never entered my brain. It would have been a complete joke. I'm not that good a musician, really.
MB: I went to hear GaGa every time I got the chance. I never got to play music with Adrian, but we did play volleyball a few times. And the sax player from GaGa, Bill Jansen, was in the Shells with me.
JW: We met him and knew him a little bit. We knew his (engineer?) better � Rich Denhart. No collaboration, but that would have been cool.
RA: I met Adrian at Mabel's, but I never collaborated with him. He was a very nice guy but he was on a totally different level musically. Adrian is a virtuoso and that word doesn't come to mind when I think of my own playing... Rich Denhart played bass with Adrian for awhile. Rich paid me a great complement once when he told me he thought I had the best bass sound he had ever heard in Mabel's. (The best bass sound... thanks Rich.)
JP: Who would you say has had the biggest influence on you musically?
RA: The 1960s was a golden era in pop music and I was influenced by all of it, especially the mid-60's garage band sound (e.g., Van Morrison's "Gloria" as covered by the Shadows of Knight and "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five). I used to hold the transistor radio against my ear in bed at night. By doing that I heard the bass parts and I got to like the bass parts. I was especially fond of the bass playing on Motown and James Brown records. (Check out the bass part on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" for example. It is probably my favorite if all time.) My favorite white bass player and the one who had the biggest direct influence on me was Stu Cook of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I loved his simple style and deep tone. He also used Sunn amplifiers and I ended up eventually buying a Sunn 215B bass amp and cabinet in The Vertebrats.
MB: I grew up in a house full of music - my sisters and their friends brought so many varied and obscure records in it was like living in a record store. I never had to rely on what the radio played to find out about new music. We made up songs when we were bored, which was often.
KD: I grew up like everyone my age on Top 40 radio. I would have to say Beatles and Stones. I'm that damned predicable, but really, can you get any better than that, as far as songwriting? Neil Young. Simple yet distinctive songwriting and the rare ability to grab you, touch your heart. Matt Brandabur, Jim Wald, and Roy Axford... That's where I learned everything about writing songs, being part of a band, performing. If it weren't for those guys I never would have finished one song.
JW: Other than the 1960's British groups, some of my favorite artists are: Todd Rundgren, Pat Metheny Group (especially Lyle Mays), Beach Boys, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, John Prine... If I could only take one catalog of recordings to my desert island, it'd be Rundgren.
JP: Who's idea was the band name and where did it come about?
MB: It was all Kenny.
JW: Kenny conceived it...
RA: He was driving down I-57 and for some reason he was thinking about what a pain the back little kids can be. "Vertebrats" popped out of his mind and that was that.
KD: I believe I came up with (it) somewhere between Rantoul and Champaign on I-57. It's pure cornball. I must have been falling asleep at the wheel. Somehow the idea came into my head about overworked mothers. At that time there were a few bands, like Siouxie and the Banshees, with that So-and-So and the So-and-So's format for the name. I was thinking about mothers with aching backs, and the cause of that, i.e., leaning over to pick up kids. The mothers had "kid pain", if you will. So -- and really, I must have been well on my way into the ditch with my eyes completely closed at this point � a phrase came into my brain, "Kid Pain and the Vertebrats" � "Vertebrats" being some kind of a double entendre of vertebrate back pain and brat pain. One of us was going to be "Kid Pain" � probably Matt, because at that point I think he was in the 8th grade or a freshman at Central High. Thankfully we shortened it to just "The Vertebrats". The only other name we seriously considered was "The Shells", which Matt took for a post-Vertebrats band.
JP: Did you travel much outside of the Champaign city limits as a band? Do you have any good tour stories?
KD: We were primarily a weekend band. We all had day jobs or were in school. We kept it pretty local, but we did play 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis as part of the Voxx Battle of the Garages tour. We played Indianapolis, Bloomington, Chicago, a few sojourns elsewhere...
RA: Our best road trip was the one when we went to San Diego and Los Angeles in the summer of 1982. We drove all the way out in my Dodge van and some other car - I don't even remember the other car.
MB: Back then my favorite hangover meal involved grapefruit juice, cashews and kippered herring in mustard sauce, which I must have eaten in a hurry somewhere in St. Louis. The mustard sauce baked onto the trunk of the rental car and stayed, along with a cheese puff impaled on the antenna, all the way out and back home.
RA: I remember falling asleep at the wheel between Flagstaff and Phoenix. Fortunately that's all downhill. When we got to Phoenix around midnight it was still 100 degrees outside. We got some beers and jumped around in the motel swimming pool even though it was closed. In Los Angeles we stayed in one room at the now defunct Vagabond Motel on Santa Monica Blvd. Jimmy was jumping on the bed wearing nothing but a sheet yelling "mooning ghost" over and over. You had to be there, but we couldn't stop laughing.
KD: We played two places in San Diego, and then recorded some in Los Angeles, and played Madame Wong's West. Bomp made the arrangements. Oh, we did play the Chanute Air Force Base enlisted men's club � The Pit and the Ping -- two times. Don't ever shout out the phrase "Attitude Check" to a group of 19-year-old enlisted men.
RA: There was a guy there who kept requesting Molly Hatchet, but we didn't know any. We also didn't know anything about military practical jokes so when one of the airmen suggested we yell "Attitude Check" into the mic, we did. The reply from the crowd was predictable in hindsight: "F___ You!" After a few rounds of this, one of the senior NCOs told us to knock it off, so we did.
JP: A lot has been said about the striking underground success of "Diamonds in the Rough" and "Left in the Dark," do you think any of your other songs deserve more attention?
JW: Yes, mostly mine. Again, just kidding. Seriously, yes, many others were and are worthy of attention.
RA: These are both great songs. Kenny wrote them. I remember when he was working on "Diamonds". We were living together in the first Vertebrat house on North Lincoln in Urbana (August 1979 to August 1980). There was talk of re-instituting the military draft and Kenny was mad about that. Out popped "Diamonds". I was in Mabel's with Kenny when the new lover/old lover confrontation described in "Left in the Dark" took place. He was mad about that and out popped that song. Kenny was a great writer when he was mad back then. Another song I like a lot is "Every Once in a While" especially the version of it on Thousand Day Dream which we recorded in the dining room of our rental house on Neil St. (the second and final Vertebrat house). You'll notice that at the opening of Kenny's solo his Les Paul Junior volume goes way up. That was Kim Butler turning the guitar volume knob for him - one of those magic moments you're lucky to get on tape.
MB: I think "How Come" is terrifically punk, "One Without the Other" is tuneful and a great dance number, "Mystery of Love" is moody and clever, and my favorite of my guitar parts is in "Try Again."
KD: I really believe there are a lot of great songs there, from a lyrical perspective, from a song construction perspective, from a hook perspective. If you forced me to pick five, I'd probably have to come up with ten. Personally, I like "Tomorrow's Door", "Heart Touchers", "Johnny Avante", "She's Diggin"", "Hang On To Your Man", "Every Once in a While", "Oklahoma", "This Before", "Face Got You Floored" and "Everything You Do"... And if you can't appreciate "This is Not Earth" you're not human.
JP: Finally, tell us a little about where you are now and what you've been doing since The Vertebrats.
JW: I live in Brighton, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit and about 15 miles due north of Ann Arbor. I am married to a beautiful blonde named Janet, and she's even kinder than she is beautiful. We do not have any kids, but we have a faithful, loving, black cat named Sheeba. I spent a decade or so in the advertising business, got bored with it, got a law degree, passed the bar, and have been a practicing attorney for the past six years.
RA: I've been living in San Diego, CA since January 1983. I work in Navy satellite communications. In 1986 I bought some audio gear and started DJ'ing parties and weddings. By 1988, I had a regular gig (once monthly) at a great dive bar called the Pink Panther. In 1989 I went back to school (University of California, San Diego) to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and the DJ thing went into hiatus. I finished the Ph.D. in 1995 and since then I've DJ'ed a few times, but not at the pace I did in the 1980s. I got married in February 2001 and in November 2001 Sarah and I were blessed with a son, Noah. In August 2004 Charlie arrived, another blessing... I will always love music and I think satellite radio is the best thing since WLS in the �60s.
MB: For me, the Vertebrats was the equivalent of growing up in the circus. I have spent the last 20 years trying to become a rea l citizen, but I have always been involved in music one way or another.
KD: When the band broke up I followed Roy out to California, and lived there for 13 years. A lot of people, including my wife, think I was crazy to want to move back, but the monotony was driving me crazy. I got an MBA from San Diego State while working full-time. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, especially when you're starting from an English background. My wife Jennifer and I have two kids � an 8-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy. Having them is the best thing ever. I wish we had started earlier. I'm a marketing director for the souvenir and collectibles side of Riddell. Musically, when I came back to Illinois from California Matt, Paul Budin, and I started a band called "townie", who will be opening for The Vertebrats at the Iron Post... We hope to have Vertebrats reunions more often than once a decade.
The Vertebrats will be performing September 16th at The Iron Post. Tickets are $10 in advance.
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| by Rushakoff, Holly | |
 | Left to right: Rick Valentin, Rose Marshack, Jim Valentin.
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A hand-woven nest of black, rubbery wires cradles five upside-down light bulbs, forming a warm resonance out of cold materials. Designed by Salaryman "architect" Rick Valentin, his bandmate and wife Rose Marshack thinks it's their best cover art yet.
The electronic alter ego to their rock band Poster Children, Salaryman recently completed The Electric Forest after an incubation period of about six years. Their CD release show on September 23 at The Highdive is one of the highlights of Pygmalion Music Fest. After a two-year-plus hiatus (not coincidentally, Rick and Rose's son, Gram, is almost three), Salaryman tends to come out only for unique situations or settings.
"To prepare for the show, we've been rehearsing as a trio and trying to remember which buttons to press at which time to make all the sounds we played when we first wrote the songs," said Valentin, whose brother Jim rounds out Salaryman. "We each have a small pile of 3×5 cards with cryptic messages on them that take the place of sheet music."
To witness a Salaryman show is to be mind-tricked as visuals correspond with audio: large video projections are displayed onscreen behind them and multiple television sets are controlled by Marshack. But the truth is they allow room for serendipity to step in and form A/V patterns.
"People would come up to me [after a show] and go, 'How did you get the graphics on the TV to synchronize?'" Marshack recalled. "I remember saying... 'No, your mind did that.'" The TV effect can be beguiling. In the late '90s in Gregory Hall, one memorable Salaryman show concluded after Alan Alda as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H proclaimed, "I don't know. None of this makes any sense."
Although past Salaryman shows used random video, this time they will try synchronizing specific videos to the music. (But the TVs, of course, always channel into the mysteries of present-time programming.) Valentin said driving is a common visual theme since a lot of their songs make a good soundtrack for highway travel. (The CD liner notes, for instance, recommend listening to the first track, "Obumbrata et Velata," while "in a traffic jam at dusk after a sudden rain.")
"We wind up shooting a lot of footage out of the windows of moving vehicles," Valentin said. The rest is compiled from public domain footage or sometimes by sampling and editing an obscure Hollywood film.
Valentin and Marshack continue to be innovative in their music and technology projects. Salaryman is a month or so away from presenting a new interactive feature on their website. Visitors to salaryman.org will have the opportunity to remix The Electric Forest songs online, which promises to be accessible even to non-techies. "It's more of a game and people can just focus on the creative part," Valentin said.
The songs on The Electric Forest were actually created a couple years ago, lingering in an unedited stage of 15-minute chunks of music. Valentin's challenge was to distill them into their 3- to 4-minute forms. Fans of Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Joe Meek, and Booker T. and the MG's will find the new Salaryman instrumentals just as pleasurable. Even near-3-year-olds can dig it.
Their son is partial to "Portwine Road." "Every time it pops up on the car stereo," Valentin said, "he starts violently rocking back and forth in his car seat as if it were a thrash metal song. He also likes to scream along with the slide guitar in 'Green Stamp.'"
Salaryman's creators have always been conscious of including a human feel to their electronic music. The album title itself—The Electric Forest—juxtaposes the synthetic and the natural, a relationship that intrigues both Valentin and Marshack on levels even beyond music-making.
"That's really interesting when you can digitize the organic," said Marshack, whose MFA show was based on fusing the organic with the inorganic.
"Down the street from our house there is a cluster of short pipes with caps on them that look like mushrooms," Valentin said. "I don't think of The Electric Forest as technology versus nature but as nature and technology merging together to form new and wonderful things... like glow-in-the-dark bunnies."
Bailey opens for Salaryman at 7:45 PM on September 23 at The Highdive. You can read more about Salaryman and their new album in the November/December issue of Innocent Words Magazine.
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| by jane boxall (jjj) | | | Drums from Day One - Part II: Making Practice Perfect | | | | | | [direct link] | |
Editor's Note: This is part two in a three-part series. For the previous installment, click here.
Practice makes perfect – we all know that. But often in music lessons, we're told how to play rather than how to practice. It's important to know how to go about both.
What do you need to practice drums? A full drum kit is not necessary, but you will need:
- two sticks
- one practice pad (a rubber or drum-skin pad which is almost silent, but feels like a drum to play).
- a metronome (electronic or acoustic device which provides a steady "click track" to play with).
If you're able, make practice a daily event. Whether you play for ten minutes or ten hours a day, regularity is important for progress. And, no matter how keen you are to get bashing, always start each session with a warm-up. Drumming is physical, and like any sport you need to get your muscles stretched before you start. Skip the warm-up and you can quite easily damage your wrists and arms pretty severely (trust me, I've been there – a few years of gung-ho, warm-up free practice and one day my wrists wouldn't bend. Being unable to pull your own pants up isn't very rock and roll).
So what is a warm-up? The first part is making sure that your hands, arms and fingers are warm and flexible, the second part is playing. Something that's not too fast, and is moderately loud, is ideal. Slow rudimental patterns (see part 3 of this series to learn a bit about these) are good. So is taking something tricky that you're working on, and playing it really really slowly. While warming up, pay attention to your technique and how your wrists are moving. Try not to allow tension in any part of your body.
Once you're all warmed up, it's on to the main part of the practice session. Whether you're working with a drum teacher or learning independently, there are a few different things to work on:
- Pieces or songs that you're learning. These can be snare drum solos, kit solos, transcriptions of professional drummers' songs... etc. With these, your goal will be to eventually play through the entire piece, at the correct speed, without stopping, slowing down, or making mistakes. The quickest way to achieve this is to play through the entire piece slowly first, making note of the difficult parts (whether this is a beat, a measure, a chorus, or a particular groove that's tough to co-ordinate). Then go back and isolate these parts. If you can't quite nail a particular fill, take it apart and figure it out. Play it very slowly. Play with hands only, then add the feet. Play the rhythm on snare drum only so you can figure it out, and then apply it to the different parts of the drum kit. Sing along. Make up a rap to the rhythm of the fill. Whatever works for you. Once you've found a way to play the troublesome part correctly, take your metronome and play along with the click. With each successful repetition (or with every 5, 10, or 20), increase the metronome speed. Once you've got the difficult part nailed, then put it back in the context of the piece. Play it together with the previous measure. Play it with the measure that follows. Play them all together. Play the whole piece at the new speed. Wallow in your glowing sense of achievement. Repeat.
- Technique. No matter how good you think your technique is, it can always improve. Things to work on include co-ordination, speed, stamina and timekeeping. Co-ordination can be improved by playing grooves or patterns which use 2 or more limbs independently of one another. To improve foot co-ordination, try opening the hi-hat (by releasing your left foot) at certain places in a groove. Challenge hand co-ordination by playing the ride or hi-hat groove on the offbeat (the "and" of each beat) instead of the downbeat (1, 2, 3, 4). Work on building speed, gradually, until you are playing faster than you could before. For stamina, try playing technical exercises or rudiments for a set length of time (or of music). Timekeeping is very important for a drummer – keeping time is what we do – and it's always harder than expected to play along with a metronome, a click track, or a pre-recorded song. This means you should do it, and do it often!
- Sight-reading. Many drummers don't think it's necessary to read music, and to some extent they are right – if all you want to do is learn music by ear then perform it, you can cope without reading the dots. If, however, you want to take advantage of the wealth of materials available in books and magazines, or sit in with a jazz big band, or maybe even make some money as a session player, then reading music well (even on first sight) is the most efficient way to go about it. To improve your reading skills, try to play through some notated music you haven't seen before every day. Don't stop if you make mistakes – just keep track of where you are in relation to the beat or measure, and continue. This is a skill (successfully covering or bluffing through your mistakes) that will save your skin in any professional sight-reading situation.
- Improv. If you're playing out in an original post-hardcore-math-death-rockabilly band, chances are you won't be eyeballing notated music through every song. As much as it's important to read music, it's also important that you can come up with musically appropriate improvised material as the situation demands. Improvise! Jam! Play-along with backing tracks! Try some styles that you're not familiar with – can you impro in an alt-country style? What about reggae? Have some fun!
Jane Boxall is a doctoral percussion student at UIUC, and also teaches drums and percussion at Skins ‘n' Tins Drum Shop in downtown Champaign. To schedule real-life lessons with Jane, call 217-352-DRUM.
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