Somebody's Watching You

I've been blogging since about 2002 and have always had a love-hate relationship with the fact of other people reading my blog. In fact, my first blog had "big mistake" in the title...because I just knew it would be. And though it took over five years for it to be a mistake...it was in the end. Well...not a mistake...but a problem. Something I posted pissed someone off and there was a spiral of doom that led to me making that blog private.  Unable to contain myself, though, I went off and started two other blogs in which I did my damnest to

1. be anonymous
2. not post anything that could possible upset anyone
3. not promote the blog

I figured that if people happened upon them that was fine...but they'd usually be people I'd never met and I felt best about that.  I realize that the internet is a scary-connected place though...and all that's here there and everywhere will eventually end up here there and everywhere. But I try to play dumb for now.

Anyway, blogger did this remodel a month or so ago and in general I don't like it...but part of what they added was lots of stats (I've largely ignored my Sitemeter) and just some more organization. I happened across comments today. COMMENTS! I had no idea that anyone had commented on anything ever. I don't get an email notice when it happens. Anyway...it is weird to know people are reading this...random people. People who have lots to say about what bass Kim Deal plays and all kinds of other things. Strange.

Checking In

This blog has gone a bit off the rails in the last few months.

My original intent for this blog was to have it be fairly anonymous and to keep the bitching to a minimum. Just track my progress and post info along the way that helped me. Drummer profiles. Resources. Songs to learn.

Not having a weekly lesson hurts the blog AND my progress I suspect, but it isn't the end of the world.

I've been focused on learning songs for auditions and post-audition ramp up the last few months and this has thrown everything off too. And since the new band doesn't have videos online, I can't even post those.

But I'd like to get back to the basics here. In particular I want to get back to posting drummer profiles. I've been reading plenty of Drum! and Modern Drummer articles about people whose names are both familiar and new to me. I'm way behind.

I'm also in the slow, painful process of digitizing my entire cd collection. This will make it much easier to hit "shuffle" and get hundreds of drummers streaming to my ears to play along to. I think this may make me want to learn who those folks are again.

I admit too that this past weekend someone said something to me about blogging and it reminded me of one of the reasons why this blog was started...to post information on a particular subject that, while it would have a personal edge (my journey) would be less about me and more about the subject matter. A blog that would be useful to people who never met me...rather than useful to people who knew me for reposting and screwing me over with my words. Less drama, more rock. I fear I've started to editorialize here too much on my personal daily experiences. And I want to get away from that. I'd like this to be a place that drummers (or bass players) stumble upon and get drawn into...and that people who know me stumble upon, instantly find super boring, and never come back to.

End of unneccessary administrative hyper-self-aware post. Back to the drums.

Visitors

Just a little check in on the blog in general...

I've never written blogs particularly to solicit readers. Mostly my intended audience, for my personal blogs, has been myself and a list of less than 10 friends and family. I was never looking to expand my audience.

A couple of years ago I starting contributing entries about bicycling to a collaborative blog. In that case I WAS interested in having a broad audience. But I was shielded by the collaborative nature of the blog and the fact that the entries weren't really much about me personally.

With this blog, Rhythm Movement, my intention from the start was to recreate a kind of anonymity that I had lost in my other blogging (with disastrous results). I also wanted to focus on one topic, drumming, which had started to take over my other blogs. Further, my intention was partially to reach out to others with my same interest. Tentatively, for sure, because the internet seems prone to flaming. And I hate that. I certainly didn't anyone telling me that my playing and/or my opinions sucked...but I did have a small glimmer of making connections with other drummers.

And this is the kind of blog that no one but a drummer or musician would want to read. It isn't interesting unless you have a passion for playing and for learning about someone else's experience navigating learning an instrument.

I gave out the url to a handful of drumming or music friends, but pretty univerally Site Meter tells me that they don't visit. I suspect the topic bored the hell out of them if they checked it out even once.

So, aside from myself...who is the audience becoming?

It seems that most people are coming from Google searches on specific drumming topics. PASIC brought alot of people in. I can't find any regular readers yet. People find the blog because they are looking for something else. They come...they leave...they don't come back. So far anyway.

This doesn't entirely bother me. I'm writing mostly for my own reference. But I think it will be interesting to see if a regular readership develops at some point. I've made no effort to promote, so it will be slow to develop if at all.

I've not made any particular effort to make the entries interesting to anyone but me either. I ramble a bit and give reflections on my own playing and practice. I don't know if this would interest other people or not. I think it would interest me if I was reading someone else's. And the drummer profiles aren't anything new under the sun (already covered in other places)...it's just a way for me to catalog my studies. Since reading Drummerworld start to end isn't an option for me...I note who I've looked into as it happens.

We'll see how things progress. I seem to still be pretty low profile and that's okay with me.

Videos: Intro Post

After yesterday's walk down memory lane it got me to wondering how many videos are out there. I count 42 that I'm aware of in which I am playing drums with a band.

Wow. That's alot of wasted ether.

Just imagine 6 billion people with 50 videos each.

Anyway...I downloaded them all to my local disk for posterity. And now I will subject my non-existent audience to massive video embedding...

Tags

I've been pretty conscious of trying to keep the number of tags that I use for this blog to a minimum and to be sure to tag every entry. I also try to keep posts to one topic/tag, or two at most. I'm not sure, but I feel like this will make things easier to find in the future. And it keeps posts somewhat succinct, which I prefer in a blog. One topic...couple of paragraphs. New thought/topic...new post.

This is somewhat new for me as I never used to tag blog entries. It is useful for a resource kind of blog like this. It is good for me (or any one else reading) to be able to find all the posts about drummers...or tunes...easily. It's part of the reason that I started this blog, to be able to organize my drum thoughts beyond just "drum." I had started to notice that I'd try to find certain information and couldn't, because the tags weren't specific enough. Yes...I read my own blog. Alot. No...alot is not a word.

I was noticing that some people really go nuts with tags, though, to the point that they seem pointless. I actually saw a blog post the other day where the list of tags was longer than the actual post. Something to avoid.

Intro Post

Well, we'll see how this goes. A blog about drumming. Open to the public. Don't flame me.