Monthly Roundup #25 - March '20

Hello all, and welcome to my update for March. Well, what crazy times we’ve found ourselves in! I think it’s safe to say that none of us have ever seen anything like it… It’s been a month where I - and many others like me - have had months worth of work cancelled, and we’ve been forced to adapt quickly in order to keep working. While it is obviously pretty daunting, I’ve also been excited at the prospect of finding new ways of continue working as a musician in the midst of this situation, so please do read on to find out about that!

As usual (before things kicked off!), the first spot of playing I had for the month was at church. It was business as usual that time (well, not “business”, but you know what I mean!), but during the month a few changes came in from the drum perspective… For a while now, a couple of the topics of discussion about the in-house drum setup has been consistency and noise control. The solution that was reached was to introduce an in-house set of cymbals and snare drum, which would hopefully be well suited to the room dynamically, the musical genre, and be more consistent from week to week, rather than each drummer bringing their own. In the end, the decision was to get a set of Heartbeat cymbals and a Ludwig Acrolite for the house snare. The hope is that these steps will make it all quite a bit easier for all involved, so I look forward to getting hands on with the new gear! Obviously that might not be for some time now, but I’ll be sure to mention it here when I do!

The usual church setup - although next time it shall feature in-house snare and cymbals!

I did actually manage to get one gig in (before the Coronavirus situation that we’ve all found ourselves wrapped up in wrote off all other gigs for the foreseeable future!), which was one of the regular ones at a local hotel early on in the month. It was nice and straight forwards with a good bunch of guys! As I say, I’ve had lots of gigs cancelled across March, April and May so far, so we shall just have to see how things pan out over time before we can all get playing out and about again!

Needless to say, my heart goes out to those most effected by lost work in the coming months. While I’ve lost a few regular one-night gigs, I’ve also lost a couple of bigger events which were due to go ahead in April (Spring Harvest) and May (Big Church Day Out) which will make quite a significant difference to my coming months work-wise. Obviously the priority is keeping everyone safe and healthy as much as possible, so I understand the reasons for events like these cancelling. While I’ve not been as badly effected as I could have been, with the school teaching keeping me afloat, plenty of my friends and peers who rely on the gigs from week to week are in a really tough position. I wish them all the best and hope we can all support one another through the coming months.

If there was only to be one gig this month, at least it was one of the nice, regular ones!

As far as the school teaching goes, I updated my teaching kit this month. It’s another of exactly the same model as I had previously (a Roland TD-11KV), but it’s a slightly newer one than my last one was, just in order to keep it as up-to-date and reliable as I can - but with that said, the previous one was still going strong! They’re decent kits, those Roland V-Drums… Sure, they’re still very much limited to the capabilities of an electric drum kit - and if it were always an option, I’d choose acoustic drums every time - but they really are so reliable and serve me very well on a daily basis! I use my electric drums when I’m teaching in schools that don’t have their own kits, and I often end up teaching in a room adjoining other classrooms etc, so an acoustic kit would just be too noisy to accommodate most of the time. Also, it packs down very tightly and is nice easy to carry around! Typically though, I only got about a week’s use out of it before the schools closed, so it looks like it will be sitting in it’s cases for a while until it’s next back in action!

The new teaching setup - another Roland TD-11kV

On the subject of teaching, with the schools closed in response to the Coronavirus, I - along with many others like me - was forced to take my teaching online! It was a quick learning curve, as you might expect, but it’s been great to be able to keep up the lessons with some of my regular students despite the current situation. Perhaps it’s even something that could stay as an option for future lessons as I refine the process?! Watch this space! For the time being though, the online lessons have got off to a really good start, with about half my student base opting to finish the last couple of weeks of term “remotely”, and some of them then also signing up to do weekly online lessons until we can get back to usual at school.

My setup for the online lessons

…and the view the students gEt!

By now, it won’t come as any surprise that our monthly “Drum Hang” couldn’t meet either, but rather than cancel, we also went ahead remotely. This time, group member Matt Hobson live streamed a “Drummer’s Health/Fitness Chat”, where he used his expertise from the worlds of both music and sports massage/personal training to talk us through some pointers on things like setup ergonomics, warmup techniques and lifting/loading considerations to name a few. It was a really helpful session for many of us, and it was in fact our best attended drum hang so far with (I think) 25 drummers tuning in from across the county and beyond! We’re so fortunate to have a fantastic online community of drummers (which has been around long before my monthly get-together!) - in fact, it was being part of that community that prompted me to set up the drum hang in the first place, wanting to provide a time/place where we could actually get together in person! So, while we may not be able to get together for a little while, it’s great that we’re all regularly in touch online regardless.

Finally, and most importantly, the local drumming community (and beyond!) lost a dear friend this month… If you’ve been reading these for a few months, you may have caught that back in October we put on a “Sponsored Drumathon” in aid of our mate Craig as he went through his battle with cancer. Sadly, his fight came to an end in March, and the loss has been felt throughout the local community - beyond just the drums. Craig was recognised by all who met him as one of those wonderful, special people who it was impossible not to like, whatever walk of life you knew him from!

I’ll always regard Craig as one of the major influences who lead me to being where I am today... Whenever I came into his drum department as a keen, wide-eye, youngster with my modest paper round earnings and pocket money saved up ready to spend on gear, he always gave me the time of day and treated me as seriously as anyone else. Through the time we spent hanging out and chatting over those early years, he was someone who made it clear to me that a career in drumming was a perfectly realistic option. Then, as I got older and started to make that happen, he was someone who I could always rely on for support, both in terms of supplying me with the gear I needed (and boy, did we exchange some gear!!) and through his friendship and encouragement. 

I’ll be forever grateful for the role that Craig played in my life. While he’s sure left a big hole to fill, he certainly left the world a better place as a result of his being here! I’ll miss him greatly, and my heart goes out to his whole family who will surely be feeling his loss far more sorely than any of us in the drumming world. Once this unfortunately timed period of self-isolation has passed, us local drummers are very keen to pay tribute to him by getting together with our gear and giving him a big send off!

Remembering Craig, with the Black Beauty he sold me many years ago - one of my most cherished drums!

So there we have it for March… What a whirlwind of a month it’s been, with some significant “downs”, and maybe not quite so many “ups” as one might like on this occasion, unfortunately! Still, there has been a wonderful sense of people coming together in the face of the tough situations going on - both in terms of the global situation with the Coronavirus and on a more local, personal level with our friend Craig - and I’m sure in the end it will be the love and care that people show one another during these times that will come out on top. Please do your best to support one another throughout these times and beyond, and keep in touch with each other as best you can! I think I’ll leave it there on a serious note for this month… Thanks as always for checking in, take care of yourselves, and catch you next time! All the best, Ed.