Life Lessons From The Drum Show

 This past weekend I attended the Nashville Drum Show. If I had to describe this event in one word, it would be LOUD. Imagine a room with a cement floor, cinder block walls, tin roof, and hundreds of drums and drummers. Even the sales reps were wearing earplugs.

It was difficult to talk during the show, but I did see some very nice things. Check out the beautiful work on the drums in the photos in this post.

However, no matter how beautiful the drum is, what matters most is the sound and it was difficult to hear anything clearly amid all the noise.  It’s like trying to hear a conversation when there are a few hundred people shouting around you.

My husband and I talked when we left the show. He’s worked with a lot of drummers and he said that he’s found that some of them just hit as hard as they can and let the producer set the levels in the recordings (or sound guy in a live situation). Other drummers play according to the situation and adjust their volume to the size of the room, type of event, genre of music, and the people they’re playing with. In other words, some drummers pretty much do one thing: they’re very solid, lay down the beat, and let someone else make it fit. Other drummers are more collaborative in their approach and see making music as a team effort.

I think I’ve come across people who approach life from each of these perspectives, also. The ones who hit hard and let others sort it out have the ability to drive the song, but they also tend to leave a lot of broken pieces behind. The ones who adapt to the situation and adjust their playing accordingly have more friends. I don’t know if one approach is more valuable than the other, although I know which one I prefer. I know that sometimes what we need is a strong beat to help us keep going, but most of the time what we need are people who can work with us as collaborators. Those are the situations where life is most beautiful.

Poetic Justice?

I recently posted the above photo on Facebook.  I admit that I stole it from someone else on Facebook (my buddy Nick) and don’t know the original author.  However, I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen and a work of genius.  People who love books seem to enjoy it, anyway.

Now here’s the funnier part: 

Shortly after I posted this photo and laughed my head off I received an email that MTV has licensed two of my band’s songs.  What this means is that MTV can use the songs in any of their TV shows, including Jersey Shore.  If this happens it would be an excellent example of poetic justice.  One, of course, that I would encourage as it involves royalty checks made out to yours truly.

For those of you unfamiliar with poetic justice, it’s a literary device that involves irony.  In my case, I poked fun at a TV show and then found out that I may now serve to gain financially from the show (or at the very least from the show’s network) making me something of a hypocrite.  Now that’s ironic. And funny.

By the way, I still think the photo is hilarious.

P.S. Check out my band (of which I am the drummer and lyricist) Lucky Munk here.

Summer NAMM 2011

Last week I attended the Summer NAMM (The National Association of Music Merchants) show here in Nashville. This is the show where a ton of music vendors come and whore their wares to music stores, artists, and other unsuspecting buyers of musical merchandise. I leaned a lot while I was there. For example, guitarists need special lotion and if they don’t use it their hands will not channel their soulfulness into their music accordingly. The irony is that I thought I was a terrible guitarist. Turns out I was just using the wrong hand lotion.

In addition, I had no idea how much musical kitsch was out there. I’m not talking about bags, shirts, and other stuff with logos on it. I’m talking about really tacky useless things like pick holders shaped like a pewter dragon and playing cards with sharps and flats on them.

The great part about the show is that a lot of the instrument vendors set up drum sets and cymbals and they shove sticks into your hands as you walk by them. You can try the latest models of drums and percussion instruments from just about every brand out there. This is how I learned one of the most important lessons at the NAMM show: sitting behind the wrong drum set can make you look fat. So here are a few tips to help my fellow drummers look good on stage:

1. Choose the right color of drums. Dark drums are slimming. Avoid spiral designs or anything with stripes, regardless of whether the stripes are vertical or horizontal.

2. You need a pretty low BMI to pull off white drums. Avoid them unless you’re already exceptionally thin.

3. The larger the drums, the thinner you look sitting behind them. If you’re a portly drummer, you may also want to consider adding extra toms because you will look smaller when dwarfed by the volume around you.

If you are particularly self conscious of your weight, add a gong behind you. Large gongs will distract the audience from your waistline. The shimmer can also be hypnotic to viewers.

Cymbals represent who you are. These are the accessories that no drummer can live without. Large glossy symbols are the most slimming, but take into account the color and finish of your drums so that the cymbals don’t clash.

Finally, once you’ve narrowed down your choice of drums based on these criteria, you can then listen to how they sound.

Enough of this fun. What I really learned at NAMM is that there are much better sounding cymbals out there than the ones I’m currently using. I now suffer from cymbal envy. However, therapy for this condition can be quite expensive. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s cheaper just to buy some really nice cymbals. Problem solved.