At the beginning of this summer (1999), I started drumming on a rented ashiko in the Introduction to Hand Drumming class offered by Alan Tauber through the Cambridge Center for Adult Ed. The class was eight weeks and an excellent introduction, even for someone who felt as much as an imposter as I did when I first picked the thing up and pounded on it. Lo and behold! Sound came out. And unlike the piano, where tripping up would result in a sour combination of notes, or the clarinet, which, under my careful study, produced an incredible range of squalks and shrieks, the worst I could do with a drum was make noise at the wrong time. I'm sure that kind of mistake will become more traumatic as it becomes less frequent, but it's a pretty minor thing in a class full of beginners, so the intimidation factor decreased fairly rapidly.
There's something special about picking up a drum and tapping it a few times and then getting into a rhythm with it. Even in the beginners class, we got into some pretty good grooves a few times, where it seemed like (almost) everyone was together. Really neat.
Now that I've finished the intro course, I know I don't suck horribly, so I'm buying a drum, a djembe from Everyone's Drumming (get in touch with Alan Tauber (URL above) if you're in the Boston area -- he's a very good go-between, plus, if I've done the math right, makes for a bit of a discount in the purchase.)
I obviously expected to like drumming, otherwise I wouldn't have signed up for the course in the first place, but I have to admit that I'm surprised at how strongly I'm feeling about it. Of course, I'm still in that honeymoon period of, "Wow! There's this new, exciting thing in my life! I wanna do it for ever and ever and ever..."
Anyway, sometimes when I try something new, I love it for the first little while, but then it gets old. I'm hoping to avoid the second step in this case, which is, I think, a reasonable expectation, since something like drumming (or any music, really) isn't static. You never run out of newness, and things to keep it exciting. And unlike some things, I expect drumming to get more exciting the better I get at it, rather than boring, as some things can do.
Additional thoughts:
September 19, 1999 (Philosophical musings on
drumming)
October 13, 1999 (A eureka moment!)
I expect to be posting more thoughts on the topic in the future. In the mean time, check out these drumming links:
Alan Tauber's Drum Connection
-- my instructor
Drums not Guns -- I don't know much
about them, but it seems like a pretty cool program
Djembe-l FAQ --
lots of useful info for drummers.
Drumcircle.com -- a tad
new-agey...