Juan

I'm decided to go out to more live gigs now that things have become more normal. Yesterday a friend wrote on FB he was about to go to a concert of an unknown to me band. Bought the tickets as I grabbed a jacket, jumped in the car and drove there.

I really recommend the band, "Silver Synthetic" from New Orleans Very good songs, a familiar soft rock sound, with their own style.

It was at a small, standing up venue I had never been before. We were like 60 people. I could be first row, five feet away from the band. It was revealing how good and complete the drums sound with just a small 3-piece, snare and ride. I've though of cutting down my kit to that to push me to do more with less.

The drummer, a pretty tall guy sat relatively low and played without much arms movement, right arm tugged, resembled my own that I've thought I should change. Maybe I don't. 🤔

He did a lot of ghosting with the fingers after the snare hits, like dropping the fingers and doing a short roll. That's something I've seen other times and liked. I think I can do it, more or less. Another thing I noticed was that he played much more on the ride than on the HH, though he did too. Foot on the HH a bit stompy.

The drum parts were nothing fancy, I did not see anything that seemed really complex. I think I could play most of what he did. That made me think I could be better learning to play these simpler songs in that solid way, with more groove and pocket, that going after the next coordination or speed puzzle.

That connected with my watching a lesson grom Benny Greb that morning, a the one @Sean shared, with Nate Smith. I had never had really specific goals about drumming, until now. I declare 12 months of nurturing groove.

Here's what I saw for a good part of the show:

The idea is to go to as many live music events as I can.