Hi Thomas,
Thomas Altmann wrote:I can hear you have a truly professional mindset and quite a bit of experience under your belt.
Even though I've probably played around 700-800 gigs at this point, and have been paid for a large percentage of those, I've never really thought of myself as a "professional" musician as it has never been my primary source of income. I always had a "real" job to earn a living.
Growing up in Los Angeles at the height of the music scene (1960s to 1970s) there seemed to be
amazing musicians all around all the time who were
far better players than me. I've never had any formal training or instruction so I always felt at somewhat of a disadvantage. I did not have any desire to go “on the road” and cringed at the horror stories I would hear about playing in bars or clubs (for very little money as well) so it seemed the fantasy of making it big in music was to remain just a fantasy. The reality is that only the very smallest percentage of the top players ever really “made it big” and of those, their active careers were usually relatively short lived.
Until I started my own business in 1989 creating and designing high performance audio equipment, I was the general manager of a chain of retail audio stores selling high end stereo gear for home systems. While doing that I'd usually play anywhere from one to three paying gigs on the weekends with the “casual” band until I started my own company. At that point I was getting somewhat burned out on playing live anyway and needed to devote myself to building and running my business as I had now had a factory and employees. I did play in a few bands doing originals which was musically fulfilling but did not generate a lot of gigs which was actually fine by me. As my business grew I was playing less and less with other people but still keeping a drum kit set up and practicing a few times a week.
About fifteen years ago the "bug" returned and I was ready to start playing again. I started a band with a few friends to play music (pop and rock with amplification) and also accidentally met a few people who were part of a large network of acoustic players. This opened up a whole new musical world for me as I was exposed to a fantastic variety of instruments* and quality players. I also seem to have a natural talent to blend in well and I’m the only drummer which with they are comfortable. About two years ago I became involved with a different network of
absolutely amazing musicians who already had a number of phenomenal drummers on hand so I play hand percussion with them and have since become the primary percussionist. I feel privileged every time I play with them (three to four times per month). I play with the acoustic network once or twice a month. My pop/rock band practices once a week and we gig about once every six to eight weeks. I feel like I'm a pretty active player at this point and I'm having a lot of fun! I fortunately have the flexibility to choose to play a gig based on the quality of the other players and how interesting the music is - not about whether I'm getting paid or not - but I still get paid for certain a percentage of the gigs that I play.
Thomas Altmann wrote:I have never made it to a 5000 piece audience!
Just to clarify: I've only played to an audience that large once, which was the UCLA Royce Hall quad gig. Most of the gigs with that "casual" band were between 200 - 300 people but we did play a fair amount of gigs to audiences of up to 1,000 people. The first time we played to a 1,000+ audience was at the Grand Ballroom at The Beverly Hilton hotel for an organization's event. This was about six months after we started doing gigs and less than a year since I had started playing drums. I was SO nervous that I literally couldn't hear ANYTHING for the first sixty seconds after the downbeat! I came back to reality and realized that I must have been playing on auto-pilot because no one thought anything was amiss.
Thomas Altmann wrote:there is also another class of percussionists who I can see constantly moving and grabbing something to rattle or to hit, and incessantly producing various sounds throughout a number; but the sounds are right, and there is nothing disturbing in their playing! I cannot understand how they do that, and as with most things which I could not do, I admire them for that.
In the vast majority of cases I find that most people tend to overplay percussion instruments - especially non-percussionists. Singers are typically at the top of that list starting to shake a tambourine at the downbeat and hitting every accent on the two and the four until the song is over. No change in emphasis or volume and, heaven forbid, not playing at all during particular sections of a song! The same seems to be true when they have some type of shaker in their hand. Unfortunately, even many people that are the percussionist in the band feel it's their duty to always be playing "something" throughout the song. IMHO, the song is not very well served in those cases. The song needs to "breathe".
Your example of percussionists that do play throughout but still serve the song well is much more rare and shows the great talent and sensibilities of that musician. Ray Cooper is one of my percussionist heroes. He always plays with such exuberance and joy yet he still manages to serve the song very well.
Thomas Altmann wrote:Dynamics are surely important. At one point, however, I have found that in percussion, just playing softer is not always the answer. There are instruments that lose their sound when played under a certain level of volume
I agree but tend to think about it from the
opposite direction. Many hand percussion instruments have a fundamentally different sound when played at higher volumes compared to lower volumes so I often treat them as two different instruments depending on how I play them.
Thomas Altmann wrote:I really never stop learning ...
I absolutely agree and also feel that I am constantly learning and discovering.
Best,
Barry
*Again, my time spent with the "casual" band was musically formative as that band had acoustic guitar and violin as staple instruments and for for a few years also had a horn section (sax, trumpet and flute) in various combinations.