RPM 2012: Year Of King Richard
Occasionally, between the software, traveling, work and more work, I get a rare opportunity to play the drums. The call usually comes at the end of January, and has become the most welcome distraction in February in years. It’s The RPM Challenge In February 2011, Tim Alexander asked me to "play on a few tracks" [...]
The RPM Challenge and The Power of Constrained Creativity
It seems like there is a time-boxed challenge for everything out there on the internet. For writers there is NaNoWriMo, for moustache growers there is Movember. Game programmers have Dream.Build.Play. If you do it, there is a challenge for it, and if there isn’t, you can create one. I’ve always wanted to get involved with [...]
The Hybrid Drum Kit
Back in June, I wrote a short piece on changing my music studio environment. At the close of that piece I mentioned a buddy of mine was selling an old Alesis DM-5 kit, and that I would soon be incorporating that into my setup. Although 6 months isn’t exactly soon, I managed to tackle the [...]
Mandala Meets Drumset
I’ve had several chances to play my new setup now, including the Mandala. I played a live gig (recording to come) on Friday of last week, and learned a few lessons. Now that I’ve got things under control, I started to create some basic kits in Battery for my Mandala. The Mandala is capable of [...]
New Music Setup
When we bought our house a few years back, I finally had enough space to consolidate all my music gear into one space. I had big plans for my basement studio. Mix desk over on one side. Wall-mounted monitors. Jute coffee sack sound baffles and just the right location for recording the drums. Later I [...]
Christmas Time is Tabla Time
I’ve had Christmas surprises in the past, but my wife pulled a fast one this year that is particularly noteworthy. As many of you know, I’ve been taking tabla lessons for the last few months, and having a lot of fun at it. I had been borrowing a pair of my teacher’s to practice on, [...]
