#2: Starting simply

Welcome back 👋🏽! This week, ya girl finally has her brand-new drum set and learns that knowing how to read piano music is not equivalent to knowing how to read drumming jargon… but we make it work!

I was so excited for my drum set to come that I actually got the box to be delivered to my parents’ house because I didn’t want anyone snatching up my brand-new noise maker from my apartment lobby (trust issues much??) Anyway, it was delivered to my parents’ house, and I immediately opened it up, all excited and giddy, and was stopped dead in my tracks by the extremely daunting …. (drum roll please) instruction manual 😱.

So, a little background about me, I used to play the piano and the trumpet when I was in elementary and middle school, so learning an instrument and its’ specific jargon wasn’t even something I was worried about. But then I turned to page 9 in the manual and … let me just show a picture for reference …

I’m not going to lie, I took one look at all the various drumming options available in the settings and did not touch the drum set for three whole days 😬 . Not great, I know… BUT after the three days of feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of print on that page, I overcame my fear not knowing what all those words meant and decided to just give it a go anyway. So, I chose something short and simple to ease my way into this new endeavour and didn’t require me to change any of the settings 😅.

What, you might ask, was my idea of a short and simple rhythm? Well, have you ever heard of the man who wrote the scores for Tarzan and Brother Bear (and of course many other amazing albums)? Yup, I began to teach myself one of the most recognized drum solos of my time: “In the Air Tonight” by good ole’ Phil Collins 😎.

I had planned on adding a quick video of me trying to hit the drums to the beat of Phil, but alas, technology was not in my favour. So, look out for my first few attempts at “In the Air Tonight” in next weeks’ blog!!

Learning something brand new is not easy, and so this week I allowed myself to start slow and feel ready to learn, rather than trying to understand all the settings of my drum set in one sitting, and ultimately overwhelming myself. And as it turns out, I didn’t even need to change, or fiddle with, the settings because I am SO amateur that none of them apply to me right now (haha who woulda guessed).

Thanks for reading, and please enjoy listening to this masterpiece of a song….

Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight LIVE HD