Sidingsound

Sticks and carrots

One of my more unusual musical activities of late (at least, compared with the rest of my musical 'career') is that I've been taking some drum lessons on Saturdays with a friend of mine.

It's something that I've wanted to do for some time, not least because drums is the one instrument in the conventional rock band lineup that I don't have at least some measure of ability with. I've been playing guitar to what I'd call a reasonable standard, for twenty years now; I can handle bass guitar competently enough; my keyboard skills are at what I'd call "John Lennon" level (i.e. I just about know where the notes are!); and I'd say I can pick up a few other instruments (e.g. mandolin, ukulele, recorder) and get acceptable results out of them.

This has meant that I've been able to record multitrack demos over the years, playing most if not all the instrumental parts myself. However, when it has come to drum parts, I have either had to program them into a MIDI sequencer, use sampled drum loops or basic drum machine patterns, play other kinds of percussion parts, or just do without them altogether.

My hope is that I will soon be in a position where I can 'play' drums on my recordings, if the need arises. I'd really like to buy a Roland HD1 "V-Drums Lite" electronic drum kit in the future, which would allow me to play drum parts into my MIDI sequencer, or record the actual sounds from the kit onto my audio multitrack, whichever was the best approach.

Although I doubt I'll end up drumming for a live band, I just thought that being able to play kit drums would be a useful skill to have. I don't know which direction this will take me in, but it should be fun finding out.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering where the 'carrots' part of the title came from... well, I did roast some vegetables for dinner last night, but that's about as far as it goes!)

Labels: drums, instruments, music

posted by Tim @ 20:33