Lately and Detroit 442 and 11:59 Update

So a couple of weeks ago I was hoping for some major breakthroughs. It didn't happen quite as I'd hoped. And since then I've been busy and a little discouraged and haven't been working on it much. Yesterday I sat down and, much to my surprise, I can now play Detroit 442. I'm cheating just a hair on the floor tom to snare fills...but for the most part the song is in serviceable shape start to finish and will only improve with practice now. It feels a little like magic, though I know that the work I put in a few weeks ago has probably been cooking in the back of my brain ever since...so it isn't really magic at all. The song actually feels a little slow to me now, and I have to work really hard not to rush. Considering I thought it was too fast for me to play just a month or so ago, this is very strange indeed. Riding the floor tom is still stupid fast...but the rest doesn't feel so fast anymore.

Of course, in that way that I never give myself any credit, I've moved on to feeling stupid and lame about other things I can't do now. I'm still really struggling with the hi hat opens on 11:59 (though the independence between bass and hi hat hand is getting better)...and after seeing a friend play last weekend with ease and grace and finesse...I feel like I'll never be that good. Playing hard things and making them look easy to the point where the untrained eye would think you aren't doing much at all...that's impressive.

I was having a pity party late Saturday night about all the lost time in my past. For 7 years I sat alone in my room during middle school and high school for hours every night. I knew that I wanted to be a musician, but I did so little to push that forward. Sure, I taught myself guitar during that period, but I really didn't move very far forward with it (note to parents...the primary reasons I don't think I moved far forward were...#1 my parents did not see my true passion and therefore did not foster it with music lessons on guitar #2 my parents bought me a shitty guitar. I still have it and love it...but it is not physically possible to play barre chords on that, and so I never went beyond open chords in first position). I'm not blaming my parents because they gave me everything they could and did their very best. I was lucky and treated well. No I mostly blame myself and really have no idea why I didn't work harder. Beyond that, I'm sad that I didn't figure out that I wanted to play drums until I was an adult. You really can't beat the discipline of playing drums in a high school marching band or kit in a high school jazz band. The fundamentals are just mind blowing and I never had that.

Of course...there are flip sides to all of this. I can't deny that playing the cello gave me the basis for teaching myself both guitar and bass. Sometimes I still think in terms of the cello. Someone who is trying to learn the bass recently mentioned to me that the hardest thing for her is remembering the names of the notes and where they are. I beat myself up alot for not having a total mastery of the fretboard...but at a very basic level I know the notes. And I can't say when or how I learned that...it just came from playing the cello. I wouldn't know how to tell someone to learn that except...play the cello for 20 years...which is not helpful advice. It is not unlike "if you'd played drums in your high school band you'd be able to do that."

So I am where I am. I have to start where I am and move forward. The alternative is not moving forward...and then I will be even more sad 30 years from now. And I have to cut myself a break and acknowelege that I do make improvements and that I am light-years away from where I was in December 2005 when I bought that drum kit on a whim. I am even light-years away from where I was when I started learning Detroit 442 a month or so ago. Progress happens whether I see it or not and whether I give myself credit or not.

"What if this is not my best? Well I'm gonna die trying."