I am often reminded that autumn is coming, since I have a flurry of activity just before school begins, and a lot of quiet for a couple of weeks afterward, then a lot of new lessons. We are all creatures of external schedules, even (maybe particularly) free-lance musicians and teachers. As a teacher of several percussion instruments, it’s interesting going from drum set to timpani to keyboards in a matter of an hour and a half.
Students come in to have their skills assessed after being away on summer vacation and busy with camps, trips to relatives and other pursuits. They have to find out where they need to put their limited rehearsal time after they play in marching band or church band, or orchestra, and, by the way, make fall baseball practice. All of those things are part of our usual annual cycles, and happen most every year of our life.
I still work at budgeting my time so that I don’t forget to improve my mallet chops, even though I’m not using them on a gig at the moment. At the same time, I have to push my drum set chops to learn things that I might need, or will help when I have to write a drum part for an original tune (as yet unheard). Some things never change.
Play Drums for Life.
Have a good week.