Returning To My First Love
Not literally — I’m still quite happily married. I started playing drums when I was six years old. My older brother begged and begged and begged our parents for a drum set and he finally got one that Christmas. Granted, at six I wasn’t Buddy Rich or anything; it took me probably a year or two of banging around to start and get the hang of coordinating both arms and one foot in a repeatable fashion.
When I was growing up, I would probably play drums for an hour or two a day, every day. It’s a great way to work out stress and anxiety, and what could be better for an angsty teenager then working through both real and imagined problems by pounding them out in 4/4 time? Throw in the fact that if you started drumming in the 80′s and came from a rock music background, and you were pretty much issued Rush cassettes as aspiration goal fodder. Neil Peart is a high bar, but a good one to shoot for if you’re just learning. And, yes, I am one of those drummers.
Things continued like this until I was 19 or so. I didn’t have room at college for a kit and I wasn’t home enough to justify keeping it with my parents, so my old set ended up being given away to a cousin (hope you enjoyed it!). After graduating, I never lived in a place where the people living in the apartment below would appreciate the kick drum impact overhead for a few hours a day. But that’s no longer the case. So….
Yesterday, I went out to a local music store and picked up a used Roland V-Drums TD-20. Sure, I could have gone with acoustic drums — and, let be honest, there is a very big difference in how things feel on an acoustic kit versus an electric one; the cymbals as a main indicator — but the electric kit fits better with my personal life these days. The ability to play softly while full sticking is a nice plus, particularly with two small children.
I’m way out of practice, but the first 30 minutes I took sitting behind a kit was like going home again. I had forgotten just how much fun it is to play and how good it felt. It’s nice to be home.
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