A Drummer's Tale, Part 1

Open mic night in Savannah, GA

I started playing drums when I was in the 6^th grade, so I must have been 11 years old.  The only reason I wanted to play drums was because the current drummer for our school band thought he was really good.  At the end of 5^th grade, I asked my parents if I could play the drums.  I don’t remember how that conversation went but they bought me a pair of 2B drumsticks and a practice pad. 

Over the summer I attended several band practices and the music teacher taught me the basics of drumming.  When I say basics, I mean the very basics like how to hold the sticks and how to do a single stroke roll.  I would go home and use the practice pad to work on the things I had learned.  As it turned out, the kid that was playing drums before decided not to be in the band that year so there was only me and two other guys playing drums that year.

At this point, I guess I liked playing drums but it wasn’t until the following year that I really got into drumming.  My family moved to San Jose California and so I thought I would get into the music program at my new school.  The school had an A, B, and C band.  ‘A’ band had the best players and ‘C’ band had the weaker players.  I was in ‘C’ concert band which doesn’t allow much for a drummer to do.  You either play snare drum, bass drum, or another percussion instrument like cymbals and the triangle.  I learned a little more about reading music and playing rudiments. 

The music room also had a sound proof room with a drum set that the drummers in ‘A’ and ‘B’ band used.  During class, the music teacher would allow the drummers to practice on the drum set and I think that is when I really started to like playing drums.  One of my classmates taught me the basics of playing a simple beat.  It wasn’t as easy as it looked but by the end of the year I could play a standard rock beat, play a fill, and go back to the rock beat while staying in time.  For drummers, that’s a big deal since our job is to keep time for the rest of the band.

So that’s how it all started for me.  Of course it also helped that I begged my parents to upgrade the snare drum they were renting to a five-piece drum set.  That allowed me to practice at home and bug the hell out of everyone in the house since I only knew one or two drum patterns.