Let's Drums!

This Thursday is Terry Jinn's Enormous Television 7.5, and during Sunday's rehearsal, Lou the drummer asked if Robin or I (the only two singers present) could help out with the drums for one song.

Here's a pretty standard Year of Yes decision. I can't play the drums; my only experience with them is from Rock Band. But I know they're fun to bash and bash and bash and watching Lou is lots of awesome. So, Yes, I wanted to help. Hitting things is fun. But No, I'd be terrified and probably bad at it and didn't want to screw up the song.

But since I'm blogging about it instead of hiding my shame, I obviously said Yes, and so I got to be up there playing the hi-hat and learning what a triplet is while Lou could whale (wail?) away during the very extended solo.

[It might not make sense why a drummer needs a second set of hands to play a neverending triplet on a hi-hat, but if I named the song, you'd go, "Oh, that makes sense..." (or should I say "cents?" No, I shouldn't.) but that would also spoil the song, and part of what I like about ETV is keeping the set list a surprise.]

It was really cool. I had this stupid smile on my face like a baby discovering how much fun it is to bang two pots together, and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger as the music grew and grew. Because this is one hell of a solo.

Man, I like music. Doesn't everyone? Even cavemen loved making things toot, whistle, plunk and boom, and I've never really gotten to experience the fun in boom.

Drumming's amazing! Watching a drummer up close, I always knew but never appreciated how complex it all is. There's so much going on that it just seems like a good drummer has to be ambidextrous. There's the standard one-two-three-four rhythm with one hand and the other is either one-two or one-three or two-four and every fourth beat comes the foot pedal and there's another pedal for a cymbal and then you spice it up every two measures, or maybe four. It's all numbers and math and runs like clockwork but it's also this great-sounding chaos.

And you can experience this great-sounding chaos over at Kenny's Castaways, Thursday at 8 p.m. at ETV 7.5.

Also, you can watch this cartoon to learn about music's humble beginnings, as taught by Professor Owl.