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Showing posts from December, 2023

Recommended Video

  Ballaké Sissoko and his playmates created a very special concert sharing world music in a beautiful and visually striking way. https://youtu.be/diA2MlFJggo    * 1 hour 20 minutes Check out the Kora player. notice the long strings... those ropes of hide braided for tuning.  The guitarist who joins about 20 min in adds this Kora-like playing to a unique guitar - note the double strings, and the wildly different strings, (per normal 6 strings)... making it a 12 string but obtaining different tones due to the sized strings.  ~~  Find us online via :  https://taplink.cc/brummet  ~~

Recommended Resource

  Western Canadian Music Alliance is an organization created by the Music Industry Associations (MIA’s) of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory. Its purpose is to promote and celebrate western Canadian music.  BreakOut West , the Western Canadian Music Awards , and the Western Canadian Music Industry Awards are the primary events, among their many projects.  Learn more @: https://breakoutwest.ca   ~~  Find us online via :  https://taplink.cc/brummet  ~~

If Drums Were Lost - Part 2

Part 2 of 2:  If Drums Were Lost (con't from Dec 3rd):   For a time I was a very busy studio drummer in the Okanagan (BC, Canada) as well as playing with some of the top bands in the area at the time. I went through the trials of the road touring BC and Alberta (Canada) and definitely learned the “ paying your dues ” part of the business; there is an entire book to be written on that alone!  When my wife and I relocated to a smaller city there was not many openings for drummers. What few bands there were had some one already playing the drum kit. So I switched gears and played mostly auxiliary percussion (congas, bongos, timbales, etc) in bands. Also I was lured into a few local theatre productions, which incidentally, was a great way to hone my reading skills.  Now I have a perfect balance of playing in a weekend rock band, teaching both drum set privately and hand drums in groups. I also build and repair just about anything to do with drums and percussion and I have plans to purs

Part 1: If Drums Were Lost

Part 1 of 2:  If Drums Were Lost As  drum teacher I was asked recently by a student: "What would it be like if there were no drums?"  It took me a minute or two to come up with an answer that could possibly explain the loss of what I do for an income/hobby, and more importantly what it would mean to music. It is hard to imagine life with out the rhythm we hear in our popular music. No rock and roll, blues, funk, disco, reggae, jazz as we know it - as they all are rhythm based.  It is almost unthinkable what the world itself would be like if the drums were gone… First lets go back to an era where there was actually was an absence of drums in music. James Blades author of Percussive Instruments and Their History , wrote: “With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, percussive music was banned as “mischievous” and “licentious”; the drums and cymbals were particularly singled out as evidence of “the devil’s pomposity” .  As B.C. becomes A.D., drums were kicked out of t