Busy Busy

Second week back in Perth and already I’m beginning to feel the strain as the workload begins to pile up. It has been hard to find a balance between my academic studies and instrumentation practice however, I have been able to regime myself between the two.
A new world was opened up to me this week in drum class as my tutor began teaching me the basics of Jazz drumming. I have always been passionate about the style but have never known were to start in terms of playing it or its history and so an introduction showed me the many ways I could explore and develop the style on my own. It is a shame that the college does not delve into the realms of jazz as part of the course as people who consider becoming session players like myself could extremely benefit from it. For the time being however I believe that listening and playing the style as much as possible is the best way for me to learn the concept.
Other highlights this week in college took place in graded unit class, which consisted of a talk from Musical Director Fiona McKenzie given her story and experience from working in the music business.
She was very passionate about music and her career and talked about the highs and lows she went through to be “living the dream” in her ideal profession.
The talk really helped to inspire me to my aspirations of becoming a session musician and always to keep passionate and to aim high, for as the businessman W. Clement Stone once said, “Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.”
In other news this week recording began on my band from outside of college with the main objective being 3 drum tracks solidly put down onto the mix. With a full day of college however and an empty stomach this was to prove a little more exhausting and challenging than I had first thought it to be. It also made me notice a few bad habits I had picked up over the summer holidays such as not paying attention to the click track and “less is more” sometimes. In the end I managed to get all three tracks down in the time we had with a slight drawback in the period I hoped it would take. It taught me a valuable lesson that you should always be at the top of your game before going into a session and that its better to play less and asked to play more than to be told to take it down a level due to overplaying.
This Thursday gone I did my first slot in “That Bar” as an improviser of both trombone and drum over a DJ with Felix the saxophone player. This was a paid gig and had potential of becoming a regular slot so I did not want to disappoint when it came to playing. Throughout the night I swapped from drums and trombone but by the end it was mainly trombone orientated, as that was what Felix preferred. Improvisation has never been my strong point and so I did struggle a little, but there was only one way for me to learn and that’s to keep it going and with a little help from Felix I learned how to approach it better as the night went on.
By the end of the evening I would like to think that I had made some progress as I was asked back for the following and so I look forward to playing again in the same venue next week.
This week has been a lot more eventful and tiresome than I had first anticipated however, with all this comes recognition – a key factor that I have to work on all year if I am to reach my goal as a session musician.