I've surprised several friends with the news that I decided to leave PCWS, the wind ensemble I auditioned for last summer. I rehearsed with them for 10 weeks and played the fall concert with them. The following week I decided to quit.
Without trying to sound like a selfish whiner -- and it occurs to me that I may sound exactly like one -- I basically decided that there were too many factors that, taken singly, might have been tolerable, but taken all together were just too much for me to want to stay. While there were definitely some organizational factors that turned me off, my bottom line is this: This isn't really the kind of music I want to play anymore. If I'm going to give up two to three hours of my time each week to rehearse, I want to play music I want, in an environment that is positive and fun. PCWS simply didn't feed that need, so I left.
In the meantime, I am continuing to play on my own. In a surprising turn of events, I now find that at age 45 I actually enjoy practice for its own sake, something I almost never did when I was 15. I can easily spend an hour just standing at a practice pad; at the beginning my arms and wrists feel stiff and slow; by the end they feel fluid and relaxed in ways that remind me of how comfortable I used to be whenever I sat down to play. The difference is that now, I spend much more of my practice time working on rudimental snare drumming skills. I start with single strokes and various tempi; then progress to two or three of the basic 26 rudiments (open-to-closed-to-open); and end with one or more of the drum corps-based exercises I got for free online. The feeling of playing diddles so cleanly again is like hitting the sweet spot on the drum head or practice pad; it tweaks the little pleasure center of my brain and there's a tiny sense of elevation, a little "ping" that goes off in my brain.
I'm playing drums again, this time just because it feels good. And that has helped me to get clear on why I play, and what I want to play.
I've had a couple of discussions with Dave, a fellow who used to play in PCWS with me (he has also since left, for other reasons), and we've begun to kick around the idea of getting some Portland-based drum corps alums together to play. I'll probably pursue it more after the holidays, but it's definitely in the back of my mind as I practice (at least 15 minutes almost every morning before I go to work, or for a little longer one or two evenings a week).
This is what I've had on the brain lately:
It's a beautiful thing.
Without trying to sound like a selfish whiner -- and it occurs to me that I may sound exactly like one -- I basically decided that there were too many factors that, taken singly, might have been tolerable, but taken all together were just too much for me to want to stay. While there were definitely some organizational factors that turned me off, my bottom line is this: This isn't really the kind of music I want to play anymore. If I'm going to give up two to three hours of my time each week to rehearse, I want to play music I want, in an environment that is positive and fun. PCWS simply didn't feed that need, so I left.
In the meantime, I am continuing to play on my own. In a surprising turn of events, I now find that at age 45 I actually enjoy practice for its own sake, something I almost never did when I was 15. I can easily spend an hour just standing at a practice pad; at the beginning my arms and wrists feel stiff and slow; by the end they feel fluid and relaxed in ways that remind me of how comfortable I used to be whenever I sat down to play. The difference is that now, I spend much more of my practice time working on rudimental snare drumming skills. I start with single strokes and various tempi; then progress to two or three of the basic 26 rudiments (open-to-closed-to-open); and end with one or more of the drum corps-based exercises I got for free online. The feeling of playing diddles so cleanly again is like hitting the sweet spot on the drum head or practice pad; it tweaks the little pleasure center of my brain and there's a tiny sense of elevation, a little "ping" that goes off in my brain.
I'm playing drums again, this time just because it feels good. And that has helped me to get clear on why I play, and what I want to play.
I've had a couple of discussions with Dave, a fellow who used to play in PCWS with me (he has also since left, for other reasons), and we've begun to kick around the idea of getting some Portland-based drum corps alums together to play. I'll probably pursue it more after the holidays, but it's definitely in the back of my mind as I practice (at least 15 minutes almost every morning before I go to work, or for a little longer one or two evenings a week).
This is what I've had on the brain lately:
It's a beautiful thing.