Nice weather today. Went on a nice long walk with my walkman mp3 player. Cleaned the house, packed all my clean clothes away in preparation of moving again in about two weeks. Read 90 pages of High Times about growing indoor/outdoor just to brush up for the outdoor season, purely out of boredom/interest (I've done outdoor twice now, and learned a lot from watching my mom growing up, but it's nice to read different ideas and maybe pick up some new tricks or knowledge). Had a Papa Murphy's All Meat stuffed pizza for dinner. Bought a 6er of Pabst 16 oz.ers and some Peace Teas: Ceylon, Raspberry, and Green Tea (those are for later). Found a damn harmonica in my room today in a case, brand new. I don't remember getting it, but vaguely have seen it before - years ago. Considering all the moving I've been doing, I'm happy to have it.
Oh yeah, and probably the highlight of my day was playing drums earlier for about two hours. Beat the crap out of Mastodon's Colony of Birchmen and Blood and Thunder, and am working on Megalodon. I'm using downloaded youtube videos of the charts from Rock Band 3, of expert pro drums (uses cymbals symbols as well), so it's basically like drum tabs that move at the correct tempo. I just have to know which symbol corresponds to which piece on my set, and/or improvise. I have about 80-90 tracks downloaded, and have been doing this for about a month now, but hadn't mentioned it before. I think it's really clever and helping me learn to play real songs better. I've only been drumming for 9 months so far (but played the Rock Band series for years, graduating from expert to a real kit finally), and I feel like I'm making big strides. Down side to this idea is how to wean myself off reading the charts and just knowing what to hit and when. Do I memorize the notes? Do I just get really familiar and then improvise and pay attention to the other instruments to see where I am? Not that I'm going to be hitting a stage soon, or even playing with folks yet... but it's something that's been crossing my mind now and again about this. Also beat the crap out of Jimi Hendrix Exp.'s Hey Joe [live] and Wait Until Tomorrow, the latter being much easier.
The rolls seemed daunting at first, but I've really nailed them consecutively, and they even sound good! I'm fairly excited about this. All I need to really work on is getting my double kicks down more precisely.
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