Rock Star on the Rise

A Place for my Head

2009-11-19T18:01:00.001-05:00

I know I haven't posted lately - truthfully, I often don't find my life interesting enough to share. I guess you'll have to be happy with what meager offerings I can produce.

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I think about weird things. This is probably an understatement. I'm sure that most people have strange things running through their heads, but I am an engineer. We think about the world in a different way than normal people.

Let me give you an example. I was driving toward a traffic light the other day and it was green. My first thought was, "I hope I make it before it turns orange". Then I started thinking of several scenarios. It could turn orange while I had enough time to stop, or while I didn't have enough time to stop. It could turn orange while I could still make it under, or while I couldn't still make it under. And there are overlaps. Let me make a chart (because that's how I think):

That is how my brain works. I think of random stuff like this all the time. Here's another example:

I was eating some cereal one morning and started wondering if was going to go stale because I always have two boxes open and tend to run out of milk for days at a time. Let's call the milkless period a "drought". A drought is wasted open time that just causes open boxes to go stale even more. I always rotate between cereals - one day it's Multi-Grain Cheerios (MGC), the next day it's Sugary Cereal X (like Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms, etc). So I always have one box of sugary and one box of MGC open at all times (except when I finish one).

I was trying to figure out the shelf-time of each cereal so I knew which ones were more likely to go bad. So I defined a system where "one box-time" meant "the average length of time it would take me to eat one box of cereal if that was the only one I was eating, excluding droughts". You can see that since I'm always rotating cereals, it takes me about two box-times to finish one box of cereal, more if there's a drought. Furthermore, since I usually have two boxes of sugary and two boxes of MGC in my cabinets (so that there's no shortage when one runs out), each box can spend a maximum of four box-times in my cabinets (two while closed and two while open), plus droughts. However, they're only getting stale when they're open (or at least the process happens more quickly in that case), so the best thing I could do is rotate cereals on a box-level, not on a daily basis. Then I would reduce the open time to one box-time instead of two. It would also eliminate the possibility of having two boxes open during a drought.

From there I kinda lost my train of thought because the only thing I learned was that I would have to rotate on a box-level to decrease staleness, and I don't really want to do that. But you get the idea - I often break down simple problems into overly complex ideas to try and figure things out on a more exact level. It's a blessing and a curse, I think.

Is it Winter Yet?

2009-09-04T11:51:00.000-04:00

Quick update - I found some great deals on snowboarding gear so I made some purchases. Everything I bought was about 50% off. Below are the items which now invisibly bear my name.

First is a nice pair of checkered boots. At one point I was trying on one white boot and one black boot to see which fit better, and I told the clerk I wanted one of each - you know, as a fashion statement. He believed me but wanted me to buy both pairs :(

Next is the board and bindings - saved about $200 by getting the board on sale! In case you can't read it, the top says Seek & Destroy:

And the bottom:

And finally, apparently my board came with some sweet stickers:

I'm ready to go!

The Camera Eye

2009-08-26T20:42:00.000-04:00

As many of you know (many being like 3 of the 4 people that read this) I have become a little interested in photography lately. I like to carry around a digital camera and snap pictures of random stuff. First it was just a way to document parts of my life for the blog, but then I got more interested and started taking pictures of things I didn't have any intention of ever posting. Eventually I decided I would share some of those things with you. As always, feel free to click on the pictures to see the full-size version.

For some reason one thing that really captures my imagination is clouds, so here are a few of my favorite cloud pictures that I've taken:

Here is the road leading to my parents' house. Years from now this is how I will remember the drive to their house (and yes of course I stopped the car before taking these):

My brother Brian grilling up some delicious food:

Rush in Rock Band (I hadn't yet beaten YYZ when I took this):

My uncle Russ' new old Camaro - it's a '68 that he just finished rebuilding:

My stove - probably some chili or spaghetti brewing:

My grandpa's barns (for you city people, tractors and horses don't just exist on TV):

IS THAT A FLYING SAUCER?!?! Why yes, it is a Frisbee flying straight for my face. I do believe Anderbra is reponsible for this mess:

Kaeden chewing on a bike tire:

Nikki, Kaeden, and someone trying to fish:

I hope you enjoyed my random pictures. Maybe some time in the future I will post more of them. Last but not least, I leave you with a weird juxtaposition. This is one of my favorite pictures I've taken, but it's also one of the few that looks worse when you zoom in because it's a little blurry.

So peaceful.

A Milestone

2009-08-18T18:42:00.001-04:00

Due to my lack of access to a real drum kit, I mostly satisfy my drumming fix by using my electronic kit (e-kit) to play Rock Band 2. It's pretty realistic in the sense that I have a full drum set of pads to hit, and I can hit the correct ones to play the game. For example, in 99% of all cases the green note in Rock Band games is either a crash cymbal or a floor tom, so my e-kit has a crash cymbal and a floor tom both mapped to green. It's up to me to hit which one is correct based on how the song sounds (even if I hit the wrong one the game counts it as correct, but it's more satisfying and realistic when I hit the right one). I've mentioned this before but I wanted to say it again anyways.

So as I played through the songs of Rock Band 1, RB2, and DLC (downloadable content) on Expert, the list of songs I couldn't beat got smaller and smaller. I don't want to get your hopes up - I haven't beat them all yet, but today I did hit a milestone. There's a song called Visions which in my opinion is terrible. It's fast growling metal, has very little discernable rhythm, and often times feels like you're just pounding on the drums with no regard to any sort of song structure. This was the hardest song in RB2 on drums because of the above characteristics. I tried it a few times and then for the longest time didn't even play it because I thought it sounded awful. I finally decided to try it again and beat it, the last song in RB2.

(By the way that 53 note streak is hilarious. Most songs I have over 200 note streaks.) I have now officially beaten all Rock Band disc songs on Expert drums. That means that I have finished all of RB1 and 2, and only have DLC to go. The last songs for DLC that I can't beat are:

Prequel to the Sequel (Between the Buried and Me)

More Human than Human (White Zombie)

Jesus Christ Pose (Soundgarden)

Stay Away (Nirvana)

I think on a good day I could beat Stay Away (I've gotten as far as 90% through the song) and maybe More Human than Human (if I can ever learn the weird disco beat). The others, though, are going to be very difficult. Jesus Christ Pose has a pretty constant pattern through the whole song and the farthest I've gotten through it is like 15%. Prequel to the Sequel just has sections that are ridiculously fast that I can't keep up with. Maybe someday...

Is Three-peat Actually a Word?

2009-08-05T19:07:00.000-04:00

Quick picture post today - just wanted to congratulate the MCM Ducks on winning the Portland Roller Hockey Championship for the third year in a row. Part of me secretly wished they couldn't do it without me, but I am happy for them regardless. Here are some pictures of their final game.

My photographic skills didn't get much use until the third period. The Young Guns (in red) were down 5-2 at one point, until two goals by Chris Griffin make it 5-4:

Here you can see that they tied it up at 5 shortly before the end of the third period. We're going to overtime!

The fans are tense as the game goes into overtime and the sun begins to set:

Overtime fails to decide the game so it heads to a shootout:

Two shooters go but the goalies do their job. The next Duck takes his turn and barrels toward the Young Guns' goalie. He scores!

Two more shooters are turned away so it comes down to the final shot. Young Guns star Derek Brown needs to score to tie up the game and send it into extra shootout rounds:

But fate was not with the underdogs today. The Ducks skate off with their third championship in as many years.

Adventures in Cooking

2009-07-21T20:09:00.000-04:00

So it's been awhile since I've posted, but I decided to get back on the horse. So you get a long post today! It's like reading a post, then going back for seconds. This may not come as much of a surprise to most of you, but I don't cook exotic meals very often. It's not that I'm lazy - I mean I am, but that's not the only reason. Mostly it's because it's only for me - I don't want to put a lot of effort into a meal that is just for me. Also there's the leftover issue - I will put more effort into something that will have leftovers that taste good for a couple of days. It's a simple effort v. reward calculation. But I decided to show all 6 of you or however many people read this the meals that I do make (I don't think that sentence was grammatically correct). So here's the main list:

Chili

Shown above is my famous (at least in my own mind) chili in its bowl form (with optional beer).

Short instructions to making it:

Cook 1 pound of beef and drain. Add 1 can of chili-ready tomatoes and 1 can of italian-style tomatoes (and half a can of beans if you're into that). Add cayenne pepper and A1 sauce liberally. If you want it a little spicier, use the A1 sauce with peppercorn - that is my preferred method but regular A1 works great too. Cook until there's not much liquid left. Enjoy.

Favorite way to eat it:

Crush a few saltines in there to soak up the extra liquid, then take spoonfulls and put them onto whole saltines and eat like nachoes. Absolutely delicious.

Mexican-style chicken and rice

Holy cow, I don't even know how to describe this. When you have got chicken, melted cheese, sauce, colored peppers, and spicy rice in your mouth at the same time, it is hard to imagine anything tasting better. It is a symphony on my tongue.

Instructions:

Cook chicken halfway, put some sauce on, add a layer of cheese, cook the rest of the way, add more cheese. In parallel: cook rice, add taco sauce and a little cayenne pepper while cooking to give it some color and flavor. Add colored peppers (red, orange, or yellow) and enjoy.

Possibly my favorite food to eat, but if you cook the chicken too long or not long enough, it doesn't taste right. On a scale of 1 to difficult-to-make, it gets an "easy to screw up" rating.

Tacos

Pretty standard taco - tortilla, meat, two kinds of cheese (mozarella and colby jack), sauce (ortega medium). I add my standard colored peppers because they taste so good.

Instructions:

Don't be silly, you know how to make tacos. I usually make nachos with the leftover meat the next day, so here is a bonus picture of nachos (again with my standard colored peppers - have I mentioned that they are good with basically any Mexican-style food?):

Hungry Howies' Pizza

Ok I don't make this, but I eat it a lot. They have a special where on Sundays you can get a large pizza for $8, so if it's Sunday and I am feeling lazy (which is often) I tend to get this.

So those are the top foods. Maybe I will show some of the experiments (both the good ones and the bad) I have done in a later post.

Camping and Walking

2009-06-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a little while since the last update. I've been pretty busy. One of the things that kept me busy for a long weekend was camping. It was a ton of fun and I wish I could do it again. The cast of characters (in case you don't see them all in the following pictures) were: My friends Anderbra, Reuben, and James; Reuben's brother Derek, and Derek's friends Brian and Ange. So here is a pictoral recollection of the major events of the weekend (before my camera's battery died). I hope it helps you relax as much as it did for me.

First, a tree along the lakeshore. This was in the city of Ludington and the picture turned out surprisingly well given that the car was going 35ish when I took it (and no, I wasn't driving!).

We drove a little further up the highway and into Ludington State Park. Reuben and Anderbra went to check in, and I took the opportunity to get a picture of the lakeshore. Those sand dunes mean we are definitely in the right place.

We checked in and drove to our parking space. We didn't have a campsite in the main area, so we went to the designated parking lot and started to unload. I believe in this picture Reuben is already regretting the fact that we have to carry all this stuff for a mile and a half.

Speaking of a mile and a half...here's what most of it looked like. We probably saw this particular stretch of sand and gravel path 8 or 10 times over the course of the weekend.

Here is Reuben and Anderbra carrying equipment to the campsite (I was carrying stuff too but I put it down to take pictures). I was half of the cooler team for about a half mile until Reuben complained that I was too short and promoted Anderbra to the job.

Anderbra, Reuben and I were the first to arrive. We made one trip with gear and then walked back to the car. James got there about an hourish later, and the four of us made another trip with more stuff. Here is James chopping firewood at our rustic site (no electricity, one water pump for all 10 sites to share).

A couple of hours later the other guys hadn't arrived yet, and we started to get worried / annoyed. Furthermore, none of us had a good cell signal so we couldn't count on the others calling us when they arrived. Finally, Reuben, James and I decided to walk back to the parking lot to get a cell signal and see what the deal was. I specifically remember Reuben saying "Now that we made the effort to go find them, I'm sure they'll be here already." He turned out to be right. Just as we started up the path, there they were coming to meet us with all of their gear. They had the tent, so we unpacked and set everything up. Here is Derek finishing up the main tent.

We had a nice relaxed night of beer, hot dogs, and s'mores. We even walked to beach and hung out there for a little while. It was only about a quarter mile away so it was no big deal. The next morning we got up and had an amazing breakfast of bacon, eggs, potatoes, and cheese cooked over the campfire. My only regret is that I didn't get a picture of it. After our stomachs settled we walked up the beach to the nearby lighthouse.

My goals of the lighthouse trip were this:

1) Nobody gets hurt or killed

2) My camera survives without falling 100 feet to its doom

3) Get some good pictures

4) Have fun

There was a beautiful view from the top. As you can imagine, I took this picture while holding onto my camera with a vice-like grip.

I got a nice picture of the dunes through a porthole on the way down the lighthouse.

Here is the lighthouse from up close with Anderbra and Ange.

Mmmm hot dogs. We had those for dinner on Saturday night. We also had some beer-battered brats that I sadly don't have a picture of but tasted amazing.

Also on the menu: Beer-battered burgers. Mmmmm.

Saturday night the Wings game was on and some people wanted to go watch it, so we drove into town and found a local bar. We also brought along our camping neighbor Nick, who was a big sports fan. The Wings won 5-0 and I won a t-shirt. It was a good night, except for my nearly empty beer glass that you can see at the bottom of the picture.

I got a nice shot of the evening's fire with James (and I think that's Nick on the right) deep in thought. I believe we made another trip to the lake that night.

Unfortunately at this point my battery died. That's ok though because not much else happened. We packed up and left the next day. Cars 1 & 2 (not Derek's group) stopped at a minigolf course on the way home. I won because of my solid mid-range putting skills (that and the hole with the water puddles that the other guys couldn't stay out of).

It was a good trip. I wish I could go again.

A Convergence

2009-06-09T17:10:00.000-04:00

A strange thing happened recently - one of the songs I played briefly in the Band was released for Rock Band. It sort of feels like coming full circle - I started playing Rock Band, which caused me to play the drums for real, and now there is a song that I have played both on real drums and in Rock Band.

The song was "Linger" by the Cranberries. It's a fairly famous song and I'm sure most of you would recognize it if you heard it. It's not terribly interesting to play on any instrument, which makes it a great song for beginners. I bet it would be fun to sing though. Anyways, I had to buy the song, and here are the results of my first attempt:

Not bad. I'm pretty sure I could gold star it if I play it one or two more times. I do wish I could play it for real again though.

Masquerading as a Musician

2009-05-28T22:14:00.002-04:00

I almost always have some song bouncing around in my head; usually it's something I just heard on the radio. But every so often I get a certain drum beat stuck in my head with no song to back it up. I don't know if it's a fragment of something I've heard before or just inspiration, but one day I decided to do something about it - I opened up my copy of Guitar Pro and wrote it down. It took me a little while to transfer the beat from my head to musical notation, but eventually I got it figured out. What follows is the result (click for a larger image):

Then one day about a week or two later I was screwing around in Guitar Hero and remembered that they had a song creation mode that they call GHTunes. So I decided to try and transfer this drum beat that I wrote to a custom song in GHTunes. After some tinkering I got it how I wanted it, then decided that wasn't enough. So I laid down a bass track to go with it (which was surprisingly simple). I thought about doing a rhythm guitar track, but given how the song sounded so far, I thought it would be best to skip that. Then came the challenging part - the lead guitar track. I am not a guitar player. I have a general sense of what I think sounds good in regards to lead guitar, but trying to write something new was a completely different story.

Basically here's how the process went:

1) Write an intro

2) Write a main riff

3) Write a bridge

4) Spend two hours tweaking the intro so that it sounded right, even though it's like 10 seconds long

5) Decide that the bridge and the main riff should be switched

6) Decide that the intro sucked and that the bridge would be the new intro

7) Decide that I actually liked the intro and rewrite it from scratch

8) Spend two more hours tweaking the intro AGAIN

9) Accept the fact that I don't know how to write guitar parts and move on

To elaborate on steps 4 and 8, I basically spent 5 minutes writing a simple version then 2 hours doing things like "move this note up one step (like from D to E)" and see how it sounds" and "move this note forward by one eighth-triplet of a measure and see if that sounds better". It was actually pretty interesting trying to get it to sound how I wanted it to sound.

At this point the track was about a minute long, so I copied the main riff a few times and added an outro (which in my case is the same as the intro, but at the end) and called it good. I would venture to say I spent at least 4x as much time on the lead guitar part as on both the bass and drum parts combined. The result is here:

Link to YouTube

If you can't see the video for whatever reason (boss walking by, slow connection, etc), here is a link to an audio-only version of the song (and don't forget to put headphones on if you're at work!). The lead guitar sounds terrible in that version, but I think you can get the essence of the song.

I have since started two more songs that are soundly in the "rock" genre rather than whatever the hell this one is, and I will post them when I finish them. So that's how I have been spending my time the last few days - attempting to write some songs. Please let me know what you think of the first one, I'd love to hear your comments.

Too Young to Die

2009-05-22T22:11:00.000-04:00

Well, I figured I'd make it official (nothing is official until it happens on the blog) - there is no band anymore. I kept lying to myself saying that people were just too busy or sick or whatever, but eventually I admitted what I had known for awhile - it just wasn't going to happen. One thing that I consider to be an essential truth of life is that people make time for what is important to them, and it was clear to me that people just weren't making time for the band anymore. I think also one of the band members didn't like another's musical style, so this person may have just quit and I wasn't informed, but my way sounds a lot deeper and more romanticized so I'm sticking with it.

I think I would like to try and join another band someday (one that will last for longer than two months), but for now it's just not realistic. I don't own an acoustic drum set and probably can't buy one until I move out of the apartment. At least I can keep practicing in the meantime on the e-kit.

It's unfortunate, but I have still been playing video games to get my drumming fix.

The number jumped up quite a bit since last time (276 songs) for two main reasons - there are ~50 songs in Guitar Hero:Metallica (GH:M), and I finally downloaded the 20 free songs for RB2. However, I have still been buying new songs in Rock Band as well. Some recent additions of note are "Stupify" by Disturbed and "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Ant Farm (remake of a Michael Jackson song). I'm also still making up my mind about a live version of "School's Out" by Alice Cooper. Classic song, but not very interesting on drums. As a side note, Smooth Criminal is SUPER fun on drums. It would immediately be in my top 10 except it gets really hard during the guitar solo (yes, the drum part gets hard too) and I need to use overdrive so I don't fail.

So if anyone out there wants to play Rock Band or GH:M, you're welcome to stop by the apartment and play. I will certainly make time for that.

A New Look

2009-05-13T22:42:00.006-04:00

I decided to get artistic one day so I bought some construction paper and got to work. I just thought it would be fun to label my drums with colors the way you see it on a standard Rock Band drum set. Here is the result:

This is what I call the "Rock Band labels". I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I also added another crash on the right side there (neatly labeled with green construction paper). If you ignore the left crash, you can kinda treat the kit as having "zones" that make it very similar to a RB kit. That is shown below:

As an interesting sidenote, the kit looks a little intimidating to play on, but it's fairly straightforward to play it like a regular RB kit if you so choose. Just ignore the cymbals:

That's actually what I do on some harder songs. Well, I still use the ride (blue) and crash (green) cymbals, but sometimes I ignore the hi-hat (yellow) because it's easier to play hard sections without crossing my right hand over my left. I also made some more cymbal-shaped pieces of paper for the "Guitar Hero: Metallica" setup. That particular layout is shown below:

It's slightly awkward because the yellow tom doesn't have an analog in the GH:M setup. In Guitar Hero games, the yellow note is always a cymbal - sometimes hi-hat and sometimes a second crash. It's essentially useless, except when (as mentioned above) I want to be lazy and play the yellow tom instead of the hi-hat.

Anyways, that's how things are now. It's pretty fun to play with everything labeled this way, even though it doesn't help me much anymore.

The Highest of Hats - Part 3

2009-05-01T18:06:00.000-04:00

Time to wrap up this series of posts about the hi-hat. This last one will be short - it's just a demonstration of me using the hi-hat pedal within the context of Rock Band. Here is a video I took of me playing Radiohead's "Creep". Watch for the single blue notes within a long string of yellow notes - that's where I lift up my foot to switch the hi-hat from closed to open and then back again:

First - the audio track is not the same as the note chart, so it won't quite line up when I miss a note. Second, special thanks to David Shek of Wounded Soul - he suggested the song, did the editing and put in the intro. He and all the other good people at Doc's Rockband Mods are amazing.

A few more notes about the video -

1) In case you didn't notice, it's actually two separate runs spliced together. I only have one camera so I had to record the chart and the pedal separately.

2) The long stretches of blue notes (like the ones that start at 1:22 and 2:25) are not the hi-hat - they are the ride cymbal. That's why my foot is still down on the pedal - I'm playing a different cymbal.

3) I can't believe I missed some easy parts in this song. 0:26 and 3:02...wtf. Nailed the fill at 3:05 though - I was happy about that.

4) The hard part at 2:20 when I try to hit an open hi-hat and a kick pedal - that takes some coordination that I don't really have yet. On a brighter note, if you watch the pedals during that part (the hi-hat pedal and the beater of the kick pedal), I did actually hit it correctly and kept my combo there on the pedal run, just not on the chart run.

So that wraps up my 3-part series on the hi-hat (my hi-hat trilogy, you might say). I hope you liked it.

My Temperamental Car

2009-04-27T20:40:00.001-04:00

Here is my car:

Sometimes I think my car is lonely. Occasionally it just decides "I'm bored. I want to go to the shop, it's time for something to break." Do I not give it enough attention? Maybe it found out that I was going to start running and took offense. I even park it next to the other Malibu that I'm pretty sure it likes:

(Speaking of - Malibu [can I call you Mal?], you know that little scratch on your front bumper? Chicks dig scars. Trust me on this one)

But it gets moody sometimes. First it was the anti-theft system (caused the car to randomly not start when I turned the key). Then it was the windshield (still haven't fixed it). Now the fuel gauge doesn't seem to be displaying anything under 1/4 tank. And then there's that darn front tire that always seems to be low on air. I think that's the car's way of always keeping my attention on it. If I could hear the air seeping out of the tire, it would sound like whining. What an attention-whore.

But now...it decided to up the ante. This is what a car spring is supposed to look like:

See how the spring sits nicely on the plate? That's a finely tuned mechanical device. A work of art. Unfortunately, this is what mine looked like a couple of weeks ago:

You know what I see when I look at that picture? A hole in my wallet with all of my money falling out of it.

Listen, Mal. I like you. We've had some good times. But you're so high-maintenance. I'd like to be friends, so please try and scale it back a little.

-Your friend, Aaron

The Highest of Hats - Part 2

2009-04-21T22:48:00.010-04:00

In a previous post, I talked about the hi-hat cymbals and how they can be difficult to play if you mix in both "open" and "closed" notes. I decided to make a few videos explaining this concept further - I expect this to end up being a 3-part series in total. You may see videos from me more often - I found out the video recorder on my camera doesn't completely suck (although the sound isn't very impressive) so I've had some fun making videos lately. Below you will see a video I made describing the various ways to use a hi-hat pedal, artfully narrated by Windows Movie Maker:

Don't ask me why my drum throne squeaks so much. I don't even notice it when I'm playing but it seems dreadfully loud in the video.

Pedal Technique

Next I have a short video I made of various pedal techniques - heel up, heel down, and heel-toe. It's the first video I narrated in real-time! Notice my failure to pronounce the word "frequently" on the first try and my success in using the word "umm" as every third word:

For the record, I am embarassed that my short double pedal sample quickly devolved into "mashing pedals with no real rhythm". I am better than that, I swear. I would re-record this video but I am way too lazy for that. I thought you guys should see my first real attempt at narrating an instructional video and see how horrible it is.

If you want a way better video than mine, click here (seriously, Derrick Pope is the man. Watch that video). Now I know what you're saying - why link a video that's way better than yours if it's going to make yours look bad? Well because a) I want people to actually know what a real heel-toe method looks like, and b) I like making videos (so I can't just link his and be done with it).

So there you have it - the hi-hat and various pedal techniques. For the record, I mostly play heel-up on both the bass pedals and the hi-hat pedal. I think most people play heel-down on the hi-hat pedal for more control, but I am not one of those people.

Shocking update

2009-04-16T23:12:00.003-04:00

I am apparently not a superhero yet. This is disappointing. Stay tuned for details.

Bang Camaro - the party on stage

2009-04-04T09:48:00.022-04:00

Another picture post today! I went to see Bang Camaro on Thursday. I first learned about Bang Camaro when I played Rock Band - one of their guitar players and one of their singers works for Harmonix (HMX), the creators of RB. So when I heard they were playing in East Lansing, I had to go see them. Here is my awesome RB shirt that I wore to the show:

I left shortly after work on Thursday, and I had to drive fairly fast to get there on time. I guess the other people on the road were in an even bigger hurry! Here you see me going 80 and STILL BEING PASSED BY EVERYONE:
I stopped in Fowlerville to get some food. Fowlerville is exit 129 on I-96. I have stopped there many times driving to and fro my parents' house, especially when I was in college:

This is the sky. There are clouds and it looked cool. I took a picture of it while I was driving. That's probably not very safe.

This is a Lotus Elise that I was driving behind in East Lansing. A Lotus Elise is a very sporty, expensive car that you don't see very often in the US. It looks awesome.

This is my cousin JT. He goes to MSU (eww). He went to the show with me. He is a pretty cool guy when he is not rooting for State.

The show started around 9. The opening band was like Alco or Alpaca or something. They were pretty good. They had a lot of instrumental stuff that sounded really cool. They also had a keyboard player who sat down instead of standing up (minus points in my book). After they got done, Bang Camaro got on the stage. Bang Camaro has a very unique setup - they have two lead guitar players, a bass player, a drummer, and a "choir" of singers (4 at this show, but more sometimes). There are so many people dancing around and drinking and having fun - it's like a party on stage. You can see (from left to right) one singer, Bryn (the HMX guitar player), a second singer (I think his name was Morgan, he was the other HMX guy), a third singer, and the bass player:

I got some individual photos too. This is Bryn. He is a lead guitar player and he works for Harmonix. He plays a Gibson guitar:

This is Alex. He is the other lead guitar player. He plays a Fender. He is wearing an awesome Rock Band guitar shirt:

This is the bass player. I didn't catch his name, but he seemed pretty cool too:

Here is Bang Camaro playing their song Pleasure (Pleasure). This song is featured in Rock Band 1 and is probably my favorite song of theirs. The sound quality kind sucks and my camera work is shaky (since I was only using one hand to keep it above the people in the crowd), but here it is:

Here is the fourth singer headbanging with some random person in the crowd (yes, he was right on the edge of the stage, and yes, I was really that close):

The person that was headbanging with singer #4 got pulled up onto stage and sang the last song as singer #5 with the rest of the band. This is just another reason Bang Camaro is so cool - pulling someone up on stage and letting them sing the last song with the rest of the choir:

At this point something awesome happened. The person that I call Morgan jumped off the stage and told everyone nearby to gather around. I and about 7 other people crowded around him and sang the next song with him...it was amazing. Seriously. It was unbelievable. I was singing into the mic with one of the singers of the band. Crowd interaction - yet another reason why Bang Camaro puts on a great show.

After their set ended, I walked over and talked with Bryn and (Morgan?) about how awesome RB was. Morgan talked about another game that they worked on (Titan's Quest), and Bryn said he thought it was awesome that RB convinced me to start playing the drums. I bought one of their CDs. Lately I like to buy CDs from bands that haven't made it big yet - try to help them out.

After that, there was another band that was going to play, but it was 11:30 so John and I left. We both had to work the next morning and I don't work very well on 5 hours of sleep. I finally got home - it was kinda late but wasn't too bad:

Overall it was a great show. I would recommend seeing them if you get a chance.

The Highest of Hats

2009-03-30T18:12:00.005-04:00

Basically every drum set, from rock to country to jazz, has a piece called a hi-hat (or hi-hats, depending on who you ask). It looks like this:

It's two small cymbals sandwiched together. It's great for keeping rhythm without making a loud sound, like during the verses of a song. The pedal changes it from open (where there's a small space between the two) to closed (where they are right next to each other, touching). The picture above shows the hi-hat as open. Here's a good demonstration - the long string of yellow notes is the drummer playing the hi-hat closed, and when it switches to a blue note, the hi-hat is opened, quickly played, then closed again before the next note. The first time it happens is at 0:12 in the linked video. That splashy sound you hear is the hi-hat being hit while it's open, then the drummer pushing down on the pedal and closing the hi-hat while it's still ringing from the hit. It's a pretty cool sound. You can also just leave it open, but it sounds more similar to a standard crash or splash cymbal that way, as opposed to the cool closing sound.

The problem is that this is really hard to play correctly. It's not just the coordination of using a fourth limb - that is a challenge in itself, though. The hardest part is the fact that you end up opening and closing it between notes. If you look at the demonstration below, the drummer is holding down the hi-hat pedal until the red line, at which point he lets the pedal up for a sec, plays the blue note and the yellow bar (hi-hat and kick drum), then presses the pedal down again to close the hi-hat at the purple line, then plays the next set of notes (yellow closed hi-hat and red snare).

It's tough! My brain wants to either let up the pedal at the same time I hit the note (which is too late), or wants to press down on the pedal again at the same time as the next yellow note (too late again). It's very hard to get used to lifting up the pedal and pushing it down again between notes. The reason I mention all of this is because I've been trying to learn how to play the hi-hat correctly. I can do it fairly well on simple (slow) beats, but something as fast as Tom Sawyer (shown above) absolutely kicks my ass. It's just another one of those things that really makes you appreciate how talented and coordinated good drummers really are.

A bit of Shocking news

2009-03-24T22:34:00.000-04:00

I've tried to keep this mostly about drumming, because well that's what it's about. But sometimes I just have to talk about something else. So every now and then I will talk about something that is not at all related to drumming and pretend that it is. This will be one of those times.

Recently I have begun to think that I am becoming a superhero. You know how all superheroes have origin stories, right? Spiderman got bit by a spider, Dr. Manhattan got fried in a some kind of a particle physics reactor, etc. Well I have been getting shocked a lot lately. And I know what you're saying now - it's winter, the air is dryer, everyone gets shocked! You must be an idiot! Well I probably am. But listen, this is supernatural levels of shocks. Like, every time I see a metal doorknob I brace for impact. I went out for a pizza the other day and it was dark at the time (late meal, what can I say). When I touched the doorknob of the pizza place, I saw a blue spark of lightning shoot from my finger to the door (or maybe the reverse, I forget which way it goes). It was like this:

At least that's how it felt. Not only that, but when I got home, I kicked my car door shut (so I wouldn't get shocked), and I got another visible bolt of lightning from the car door THROUGH MY SHOE. So I know what you're saying now - ok you get shocked a lot, but that's not an origin story, so you can't be a superhero (you're probably not saying that but I know I would be). And that's where you'd be wrong. You see, I've been having some problems with my hands lately so I went to the doctor. Apparently the test for carpal tunnel is SITTING IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR. I kid, it's more like sticking various parts of your arm in an electrical outlet.

The point of the story is, I feel like ever since I had that test done, I have been getting shocked more. That definitely qualifies as an origin story. So if you see me shooting lightning bolts out of my hand someday (not like this), you will know why. Also, I haven't decided if I'm going to be a hero or a villain yet, so if you were mean to me in high school, you might want to start praying for hero. Just sayin'.

And this related to drumming because...umm...I played Ride the Lightning in RB the other day and helped Reuben pass it for the first time on expert guitar. See, I told you I would make the connection somehow.

I suck at Rock Band now

2009-03-20T18:48:00.001-04:00

Things used to be so simple. Little notes falling down the screen. I see a red one, and I hit the pad with the red ring around it. See this below? This was easy. Four colors and a pedal. Evenly spaced, all on the same plane, in the same order that they appear on the screen. Equal, predictable rebound.

I used to be able to 5-star most of the songs in my collection. I gold-starred over 1/3 of them. I could get 100% on some songs! Oh, how the times have changed. The first time I played a song with the new setup, I barely passed. It was one of the easiest songs in the game. Sigh. This is what I have now:

Chaos and madness. I know it'll get better though. I played a few songs and started consistently 4 starring harder songs (instead of failing them outright), so things are looking up. It's easier if I just ignore the cymbals and pretend I'm playing a weirdly-shaped RB kit, but that's not really why I got this kit.

I've done a little thinking, and I'd say there are a few reasons why it's harder now:

1) I haven't adjusted to the new kick pedals yet. I get a lot of double hits because the pedal springs back after a hit and I'm still pressing it down, so it hits the pad again. I feel like that's something I can learn to control.

2) My muscle memory isn't in place yet. I used to see a yellow note and know exactly where I had to put a stick to get the right result. I could play my RB kit with my eyes closed. Now, I find myself missing pads (cymbals especially) or getting there late.

3) There are choices to make now. If I see a green note coming down the screen, I have to decide if I should hit the floor tom or the crash cymbal. In a lot of cases it's obvious - you play the cymbal during the long streaks in the verses and chorus. You play the toms during fills. But many times it's not obvious. In the two cases below, the top one is much easier to deal with. There's no thinking, you just do it:

It's a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing. If I'm playing a song that's 120 BPM (which is not even very fast), that's two beats per second. BPM counts quarter measures, so that's two quarter notes per second. If I'm playing 16th notes during a fill (four notes per quarter measure), that's eight notes per second. I think I did that calculation right...

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, if I have an eigth of a second to decide what pad to hit, that's not easy to do. It's tough to get used to, but overall I appreciate the challenge and I think it will make me a better drummer in the long run.

(Seriously though, look at those MSPaint skills)

Making some upgrades

2009-03-15T20:25:00.000-04:00

Special Edition Super Long Post With Pictures today! But first, a brief intro. I have known for some time now that a stock RB drum set wasn't going to be good enough. It's fun, of course, but I wanted to simulate the experience of drumming a little more closely. So I did what any reasonable person would do - I bought an electronic drum kit that I could hook up to Rock Band. After doing some bargain shopping on ebay, the packages arrived:

First I opened the smaller box that contained my kick pedals. It's a double pedal, but I don't imagine I'll be using the left one any time soon. Some assembly required, it seems...

Next I opened the big box, and the first thing I noticed was DEAR GOD THAT'S A LOT OF CABLES:

After my cablephobia subsided, I started pulling things out of the box. Below the frame you can see the hi-hat pedal, the kick trigger, a couple of cymbal mounts, and above them the drum brain:

But we can't forget the pads! Laid out on my couch you can see the three small pads for toms, the big white pad for the snare, a smaller hi-hat cymbal, two big cymbals (crash and ride), and the massive nest of cables:

So I started assembling everything and noticed something peculiar - the bolts that held the frame together had a square head. But then, a flash of inspiration - I took the bit out of my screwdriver, and it worked perfectly:

Then I hit a bit of trouble - I realized everything was on the wrong side! Whoever I bought it from must've been a lefty. You can see in the picture below, the small snare arm and the hi-hat connector are both on the right side instead of the left. I checked online to make sure that my assumption was correct:

Yep, it was on the wrong side all right. So I took off the top cross-frame-piece-thingy and moved some things around. I then started attaching some pads and eventually got things how I wanted them. I then put my kick pedals in place, as seen below:

The final piece was a great adapter box made by Doc at Doc's Rockband Mods (those guys are amazing). This box allowed me to hook up my drum brain to an Xbox 360 controller so I could use it for Rock Band. Here is a picture of the box:

And that was it - I had to do a little research to find out how to map my drum pads to the right MIDI codes for Rock Band, but the guys at Doc's did most of the research there so it wasn't too hard. Below is the finished product:

Click on that last one for labels. I got a little crazy with the labels..so sue me. But now I can play Rock Band on a real drum set!

A Few Words About Ebay

2009-03-12T19:04:00.003-04:00

I recently decided to try and upgrade my Rock Band setup a little bit. Get a real kick pedal, maybe a few other things. Make it so it is better at helping me learn to drum. I figured that I could get some used equipment for cheap, and Craigslist has turned out to be near useless in this regard, so I thought I would give ebay another try. Up until about two weeks ago, my only experience with ebay was buying a used Guitar Hero 3 guitar so that I had two guitars for RB. This was almost a year ago, so I was a little rusty.

After bidding on various things throughout the week, I have come to a few conclusions about ebay.

1) You can get some good deals if you get lucky.

2) People are jerks.

3) The end of an auction can get CRAZY.

To illustrate point 3, here's the approximate timeline for an item I bought recently. At the beginning I decided that I would pay $115, given the condition it's in:

5 days, 17 hours to go - The item is up for $20. I bid $100, so I am in the lead at $21.

2 days, 3 hours to go - Someone bids $30. I lead at $31.

0 days, 14 hours to go - Someone bids $40. I lead at $41.

0 days, 45 mins to go - Someone bids $80. I lead at $81.

0 days, 40 mins to go - I up my bid to $110. I still lead at $81.

0 days, 5 mins to go - someone bids $100. I lead at $101.

0 days, 1 min to go - they bid $111. I am no longer in the lead.

0 days, 45 secs to go - I bid $115. I lead at $112.

0 days, 20 secs to go - They bid $116. I am no longer in the lead.

0 days, 8 seconds to go - I bid $125. I am in the lead at $121.

Time expires before the other guy can outbid me again. I win at $121, which is $6 more than I wanted to pay. I know that it's still a good deal though - if I had bought that item new, it would easily cost me $250+. Here's the thing - I was easily the leader no question until less than an hour to go, and then it just got wild. Some people really like that about ebay...it gets on my nerves. I would rather just buy an item and get it over with.

This can just as easily go the other way though - there have been quite a few auctions over the last week where about 3 hours before it ended, the bids went higher than what I was willing to pay. I have won 4 auctions over the last couple weeks, but probably bid on 50 things.

Here's one of the things I bought - someone may be getting a gift soon (if you can read the inscription on the side it may be a clue). And no, this isn't what cost me $120 (it was more like $10):

A brief sidenote on scammers - they do exist on ebay and you have to be careful. I have a solid team of Internet Experts that help me out with this kind of thing (actually it's just Anderbra, but that's close enough). It's hard for me with my Frugalitis to buy things that I'm not sure about the quality, but so far so good I guess. Maybe i'm just not built for ebay. But as long as I keep finding deals on stuff that I want, I'll keep playing the game.

A Jagged Gorgeous Winter

2009-03-09T21:49:00.004-04:00

Not much happening around here. For various reasons The Band (name pending) hasn't practiced lately. There was a birthday dinner with parents, then a sick band member, then someone working overtime on the weekend. It's ok though - I don't think anyone's avoiding the band or bored with it or anything. I mean it sucks - I wish I could play, but the time will come. I am thankful for the time I've had playing so far.

The good news is that I can still play Rock Band, which I love to do. RB has a score tracking mechanism called gold stars - to make a long story short, it stands for "really good job, almost perfect". So I decided to try and gold star as many songs as possible. I'm up to about 1/3 of my catalog now. There's a cool website I use to track this stuff - you can see my profile here.

It says there's 11 songs I haven't beaten, but that's a clerical error. There's really only 5 or 6. A bit of explanation about the graphic above - 5 stars means you did pretty well on the song. 100% is obviously, you hit 100% of the notes. FC means you never broke your combo - that is, in addition to hitting every note on the chart, you never hit a note when there wasn't one.

Anyways, I'm not trying to brag about how awesome I am. Just wanted to say - RB2 has goals I can work toward. I know that when I gold star a new song it means I'm getting better. It is a good reason for me to keep practicing and playing (besides being fun, of course!). Hopefully next week we'll get back to practicing.

Meet the band

2009-03-02T18:09:00.001-05:00

I decided I should finally introduce you to The Band. I was going to get some better pictures, but we haven't practiced the last couple of weeks for various reasons, so I'll see what pictures I can dig up.

Erica - bass

(Flattering picture right?) Erica is my coworker and the band's bassist (is that a word?). I don't know how many years she's been playing for but she's pretty good. This is her third band at the moment, besides the previously mentioned Ducksicle and Blueflowers. She plays bass in all three bands. I guess when you like an instrument a lot, you stick with it.

Erica also owns not only our band's practice space (her basement), but also the drum kit that I play on. At least I think she owns it. Either that or somebody just left it there one day like an orphan and she took it in and raised it as her own.

Erin - vocals

Let's see if my history is accurate - Erin and Erica have been friends for many years (I think). Or maybe Erica was friends with Erin's roommate, Erica (I know, I'm confused just typing it. Erica, Erica, Erin, and Aaron...sigh). Erin is the singer in the band. I believe this is her first time being in a band, so I guess we have something in common (other than an awesome name). She always seems to be smiling, laughing, etc which is a good quality to have in a band member (although I don't know if happy singers write good lyrics, haha).

Helmut - lead guitar

Helmut is our German guitar player (he is German, not the guitar. At least not that I know of). Helmut is in Ducksicle along with Erica and they've known each other for a few years. He seems very mellow and is always willing to help me out with things like "maybe throw in a crash there at the transition" and "try hitting the toms during the bridge instead of just the bass". He's very good at giving me suggestions without making me feel like I suck for doing it wrong.

Mystery member

Supposedly we will also be having a rhythm guitar player (who possibly doubles as a keyboardist too), but as I have not practiced with said mystery member yet, she cannot be introduced. I also have no pictures of her.

So that's the band. They're all pretty cool and I've had fun playing with them so far. I hope that things work out and we get to play together for quite awhile.

Watercolor Ghost Town

2009-02-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Picture post today! Click on pictures to see the full-size version.

I ended up going to a show on Saturday. One of Erica's bands by the name of The Blueflowers (formerly Ether Aura) had a CD release party - they had two bands open for them then played a bunch of songs from their new CD. The CD is called Watercolor Ghost Town.

I met Erica at her house so we could meet up with her friend Erin and head to the show (since I had no idea where it was). When we hit the road, the conditions were not so great. My poor car is below:

Erica (on the right) getting ready for her show, along with Erin (on the left). If you look closely you can see the Blueflowers' lead singer Kate in the background:

This is the stage at The Belmont in Hamtramck, where the show was - if you click on the picture you can see that the first band is chatting on-stage and getting ready to start their set (it was pretty dark in there):

Two opening bands played - they were both pretty good. The first band didn't have a drummer though, which I can't condone. Then the Blueflowers started their set. Below is their song "The Reason", recorded by my camera:

After the Blueflowers played their show, they were handing out posters. I bought a copy of their new album (on the left) and they gave me a free Ether Aura CD (on the right) to go with it:

The time on the clock when we left the Belmont - 2:35 in the AM.

We made a quick stop at Mickey D's on the way back to Erin's place. After all, it had been ~7 hours since I last ate.

The time on the clock when I finally got home - 3:18. I really wasn't that tired for some reason, but I went to bed anyways:

Quite an eventful night. I hope I have more chances to do this kind of thing!

The Proud new Owner

2009-02-22T11:29:00.007-05:00

Short post today - just wanted to say that I bought some equipment so I have officially invested some money into drumming now. I bought an HQ RealFeel practice pad and some Vic Firth 5AN sticks to play on it. They are shown below:

Not surprisingly, the practice pad has WAY more rebound than my RB2 drum set. It's more like a real snare drum in terms of rebound. If I practice a little on the practice pad, then switch to RB, it's like I'm playing with lead sticks. I guess that means the practice pad is doing its job.

The sticks are also nice. They've got nylon tips, which I didn't mean to get (newbie mistake). They just feel great - they're really smooth and feel well balanced somehow. I must say though, they're somewhat similar in terms of weight and balance to my RB1 sticks (which I still use for RB now). Good job by Harmonix picking good sticks for RB1.

Just as a last point - if you are thinking about learning to play the drums, get a practice pad! It's allowed me to practice much more often, especially since I don't own a full drum kit. You can watch a tv show and drum along with the sound track or just do some rudiments during commercials. It's great - I feel like I can practice a lot more now without putting too much effort into it.

Learning songs (part 2)

2009-02-18T17:46:00.003-05:00

While playing Rock Band, you don't really have to learn songs. There are skills to learn (like fast drum rolls and using the bass pedal), and there are tricky parts of songs to learn (like complicated drum fills), but the notes scroll in front of you so you never have to memorize songs (that is, unless you're like this guy). It's a totally different story on a real kit. I am responsible for keeping the rhythm and memorizing my part of the song. Sort of. It's more like 3 parts memorization, 1 part improvization based on how I feel like playing the song at that given time.

At any rate, I do need to learn and memorize songs. I used to search for Guitar Pro files and practice the sheet music that was contained in the files. This method has some pros and cons.

Pros

You see the exact sheet music for the song.

Most of the files you find are good quality.

Cons

This is someone's interpretation of the song, and it is not necessarily perfect.

You may not be able to find a GP file for the song.

You have to own a working copy of Guitar Pro (eventually).

Occasionally I ran up against the second con - I was never able to find a good drum tab for Linger. Eventually I ran into the third con - my trial version ran out and I didn't have a spare $60 for a full version of GP. So what you see below is my current method of learning new songs:

My new approach now is to listen to a song a bunch of times on YouTube and take notes - what the drum part is for the intro, verses, chours, bridge, etc. I also tend to play along with the song in RB freestyle mode after I've heard it a few times. I think it's helped quite a bit. I'm supposed to learn Alone by Heart for next week, and after listening to it a few times and taking notes, I'm pretty confident that I could sit down at the kit and not totally screw it up. That's a good start, I think.

The cool thing about playing on a real kit is that you don't have to be perfect. There are certainly things you should try and get very good at - keeping a steady rhythm, playing your drums at a consistent volume, etc. Technical things. But when it comes to covering a song, you can tailor it to your own skills. For example, 99% of the audience probably isn't going to know if you did a single kick instead of a double kick during the chorus (unless you're famous or playing a really well-known song or something like that).

It depends on how hard the song is, my skill level, and how well I know the song, but in general I can just play a simplified version of a song and it sounds fine. It's almost like playing on Hard rather than Expert on RB, and I get to decide which notes to hit. It's a good way to start playing and start learning songs.

Sitting on the Throne

2009-02-14T22:40:00.001-05:00

A lot has happened since the last post! I've had the chance now to play on a real drum kit a couple of times, and it is amazing. I'm in a band now (no name so far) and we're learning a couple of songs to play as covers. The songs we've started playing so far are:

So it's...I guess you could say early 90's pop music? It's not really my preferred style of music but at this point I'm just so happy to actually be playing that I don't care. Besides, these are pretty simple drum songs, so it's nice to start off with something easy so I can get the hang of playing on a real kit. I'd say the one that's the most fun so far is Connection.

Here is the drum set that I've been playing on:

As you can see, it's pretty standard except it has a ride cymbal where you normally see the middle tom and a second crash cymbal where you normally see the ride cymbal. The previous post, "Getting Started", shows the standard setup for a basic drum kit.

Anyways, I've learned a couple of things so far. First, playing Rock Band helps immensely when it comes to keeping a steady rhythm and limb coordination. I was able to play songs with basic beats (like Soul Meets Body minus the intro and bridge) with no problem at all. Second, there are some things that Rock Band doesn't teach you. Left-foot usage (on the hi-hat pedal) is definitely something I have to work on. Right-foot usage (on the kick drum) is much different, since the drum has a lot more rebound than I'm used to. Playing "around the kit" (hitting a bunch of different drums/cymbals in rapid succession) is also more difficult since each piece is bigger and spread further apart.

However, I know that Rock Band has helped. To quote Erica (my band's bass player), "I would not be totally embarassed to step up onstage and play those two [Connection and Down by the Water] live." And that was after just the second time playing on a real kit! I'm not trying to claim that I'm awesome or a prodigy or something, just that drumming in Rock Band actually does translate into real drumming.

Now that I've played on a real kit and am learning songs (more on that next time), I am starting to feel like a real drummer. This is how I see the world now:

Getting Started

2009-02-04T17:56:00.009-05:00

I've come to realize there's a slight problem when you want to learn how to play the drums - you have to have access to a drum set. Now this may seem pretty obvious, but the drums aren't like many other instruments. If you're learning to play the guitar, you can pretty easily just carry it around with you. You can play acoustic when you don't want to wake the neighbors. Keyboards are pretty similar in that regard. Drums are just obnoxiously large and loud - or as drummers would say, awesomely large and loud.

So the up and coming drummer has a few options-

1) You can get a real drum kit of your own.

Probably something cheap; you don't want to invest too much money until you know that drumming is something you want to stick with (no pun intended). Problem: this requires you to not only have space for a drum kit, but also a sound barrier between you and your neighbors. I live in an apartment, so this option is out.

1-a) Buy a drum set and play / store it somewhere else. If you're in a band, this can work. You can play it in your bass player's garage or some kind of a practice studio. For someone like me who's just starting...not really a good option.

2) Buy an electronic kit.

There are some pretty good ones out there, but most of the ones that I've seen are pretty expensive. For someone on a limited budget (like me, and let's be fair, 99% of all aspiring musicians), this doesn't really work.

3) Play somebody else's drum set. This is awesome if you have friends that are musicians. One of my coworkers, Erica, plays bass for a couple bands. One of her bands by the name of Ducksicle practices in her basement. What this means is that the vast majority of the time, there is an unused drum set in her basement. If you're anything like me (cheap), your first instinct is - "hey, can I play your drums when you're not?"

4) Practice at your local college / music school. This has pros and cons. Pros: Don't have to own your own equipment, teachers are available if you need help. Cons: It's like leasing or renting anything - you pay money to use somebody else's equipment and don't end up owning anything at the end of it. If I didn't have a drum set available to me, this is probably the route I would take (depending on how expensive time/lessons were).

5) If none of these work, you're kinda screwed. You can (and should) buy a practice pad, but this isn't a substitute for being able to play on a real kit. Make some friends (this can be hard for a drummer), buy a house (hey, it's a buyer's market), do anything you have to do to be able to play on a real kit (ok, not anything).

So I followed my own advice and went with option #3. It looks like I am going to get a chance to play a real drum set after all. The problem is, I don't know any songs. I mean sure, I've played In Bloom and Dani California in Rock Band so many times that I just about have the drum chart memorized, but that's not quite the same. I actually have to learn songs so that I can play them without the notes scrolling down a screen in front of me. This is uncharted territory (pun intended) .

Learning songs

I've asked a few musicians that I know how they go about learning new songs. Not songs they wrote, but doing covers of pre-existing songs. Some good advice I got was to get a trial version of Guitar Pro (GP) and then try and find the GP files of your songs on Ultimate Guitar. It turns out that a lot of these GP files have the charts for the entire band, not just the guitar parts. You'll often find songs with the drum parts included. The problem here is that when the trial runs out, you either have to purchase the full version ($60) or give up on this method. What I did was download a few GP files, open a song in GP on my laptop and play along with the song on Rock Band freestyle mode (insert your drum set / electronic kit / practice pad here instead of RB if you so choose).

So now I'm starting to learn songs, and pretty soon I'll have a chance to play them. Things are looking up!

A Brief History of Time Signatures

2009-02-02T19:45:00.010-05:00

Hi, my name is Aaron, and I'm a drummer.

(Support group: Hi Aaron)

I am going to make the transition from fake drummer to real drummer. Let me explain why this is significant. I didn't grow up with music. My high school was too small to have a band. I never really had any interest in music until college. I don't even own an MP3 player. So as you might imagine, it's a pretty big surprise to me that any of this happening.

A bit of background on how this all came about -

A friend of mine named Reuben got the video game Rock Band about a year ago. In case you live in a cave and haven't seen this game, it lets you play popular rock music on fake plastic instruments. The picture below is a Rock Band drum set:

So Reuben invited some friends (Anderbra, James, and me) over to his house and we all fell in love with it immediately. I played guitar a little (having played Guitar Hero in the past), but as soon as I played the drums, I knew that was my instrument. I quickly moved up to Medium and then Hard, then stalled out a bit. Eventually, I got the game myself and started drumming more often. I moved up to Expert and ending beating all of the songs. Soon, Rock Band 2 came out and I had more songs to satiate my passion for percussion (275 songs and counting!).

It wasn't just about the game, though. There were many times when I would watch Rush or Dream Theater on YouTube to see their phenomenal drummers in action. I was always drumming along with whatever was on the radio or in my head. Recently, I made the decision to try out the real thing. I would love to learn how to play the drums for real and someday join a band. This is the ongoing story of how I make the transition from fake drummer to real drummer. Hopefully it will be informative and entertaining, and maybe you'll get some laughs out of it.