Members 12OzEpilogue Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 i personaly started drumming because i was offered lessons... at first i wasnt realy intrested but then my uncle taught me a fill from iron man and i was stoked .. thanks bill ward lol how bout you guys? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the DW Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 Back in the early 70's, a friend of mine wanted to start a band, and knew I had played percussion in band for a year. I figured, "why not?" I got my Dad to get me a used Ludwig kit, practiced for 3 days, then we had our first rehearsal. It wasn't the greatest performance of our lives, but it was passable. And the rest is history..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MPF Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 back when I was in 3rd grade, my music teacher wanted me to join up for percussion. I tried it and i loved it, back in 7th grade I got to try the actual kit for the first time. I haven't stopped playing since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members headway Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 for me it was just something that i was good at. i could'nt get the beats out of my head untill i played them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members naturalbluesky Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 Ever since I was very little I would always beat on things with my hands. When I was in high school I would get so board that I would start creating beats on my desk. I would use my thumb and ring finger on the edge of the desk. Just going up and down to get a fast steady beat, then mix it up with my other hand. One time at lunch someone looked at me and was like, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BBDrums Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 I started in a marching band playing snare. Got my first set that same year and am still useing it today slightly modified, soon to be replaced with my own Maine made custum drums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ulank Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 I love playing/making/writing music. I started on guitar and had a band. The drummer kept his kit at my house. I would noodle on it periodically and eventually realized I could actually do some things on the skins. After college, a friend of mine needed a drummer for his band and we figured we'd give it a shot and I learned how to develop drum parts for a song. About 4 years later, we're still rockin it....And still have our day jobs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members D Carroll Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 well... when i was 8, i thaught drummers were cool, so i begged for a set, and got lessons, and all that {censored}, and i loved it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members summit111 Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 My Brothers, I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in the 60's as a kid, and I was hooked ever since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members FitchFY Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 This is an awesome thread. I wanted to play saxophone, so in 5th grade, my parents and I went to the music night. Saxophone cost $180; snare drum package cost $90. Money was kinda tight, so my parents willingly made their son a drummer. God bless `em for that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members manoeuver Posted July 20, 2006 Members Share Posted July 20, 2006 Mister Rogers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Old Steve Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 Great thread. When I was in 5th grade, students were eligible to get into the band program. The upside was that while everyone else in class was stuck working on math problems or some other nonsense, the "band kids" got to go do something else for an hour. "Something else" was appealing to me, so I signed up. Being in 5th grade and wanting to be "cool", I decided that the "coolest" instrument in the elementary school band was the drums (duh). Ironically, for the previous 20 years, and probably still to this day, so did every other kid who wanted to be in the school band. Obviously, this presented a bit of a dilemma to the band teacher. If he let everyone do what they wanted to do, he'd have a band with 48 boys playing the drums, and 23 girls playing the flute. So in order to acquire a brass section and fill out the woodwinds, the band teacher told every potential drummer to pick out a "2nd choice" instrument and that there'd be 5 kids picked to play the drums. I picked saxaphone as my 2nd choice and went to the tryouts with every other boy in the 5th grade. Anyway, I had my tryout which consisted of playing back some basic rhythms that the band teacher slapped out on a desk with his hands. I guess my "1 & a 2e&a" was a little sharper than some of the other losers, and at the end of the day, I made the cut to become a drummer. That's the official story. The unofficial story is as follows: As early as kindergarten, I wanted to be in a rock band. I vividly remember watching a drummer from the Detroit Police Band play a concert at our school and staring in slack-jawed unbelief as this cop played one thing with his right foot, had something else going on with his left foot on the hi-hat, and used his hands independently of all of this to play along with the band. A few years later, my folks took me and my siblings to a traveling tour of the musical Annie and I remember going down to the pit and checking out the show's drummer as he was warming up. Again, I was in complete amazement. These previews of the drums that happened prior to my 5th grade 'tryout' certainly had an influence on what I wanted to do. The tryout in 5th grade was really just the seminal point where I was either going to go forward with the drums, or end up doing something else (like playing the oh-so-uncool saxaphone ). Sometimes I actually wonder how "random" the tryout was in 5th grade. If I hadn't made the cut to become a drummer, no doubt my musical life would have been very different, and I believe short-lived. On the other hand, my 5 minutes of slapping out rhythms for the band teacher has resulted in almost 30 years of an activity that literally defines who I am as a person. Funny how the little things in life impact you on a much bigger scale as time goes on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rockbeat Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 I saw a guy do a drum solo at a talent show when I was like 8 or 9 years old. the crowd went nuts. I totally dug it. The memory stuck with me, and so when I was old enough I joined the school band as a drummer. It also helped that my oldest sister had played the drums in the school band, so I already had access to a snare, a practice pad and some sticks. Oh! I also had access to a pair of brushes, with which I damn near put my eye out, but that's another story for another time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members headway Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 well this one time at band camp...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members farfignewgon Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 In 5th grade i picked the saxophone...which was cool for a bit. Then in 10th grade i started playing guitar, which was tons cooler than saxophone (which i did still play through high school). Guitar thrust me into the world of rock music. On of my good friends also played guitar. When we would jam in the music room after school, it was always cool to have a drummer...so we would take turns playing drums while the other played guitar. That was about 10 years ago. My main instrument is still guitar but i still love playing drums. I've used other peoples kits and borrowed some for years on end but never bought my own set. I wanted to wait and get something nice. Well, in a few weeks MY first set will be arriving! A Mapex Saturn Pro...i can't wait... Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members FitchFY Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 Anyone besides me seeing a correlation between sax and the drums? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dyzio Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 I too started playing saxophone in our school band in 5th grade. It wasn't until a year or so later when I started listening more to rock and jazz music I started getting into drums more and more. So after a while I decided to quit the sax and get into drums. I been lovin it ever since... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tmetaler Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 personally... ive been drumming all my life! it all started when i was 2 years old... *wistfull look in eye* i was only a wee tot, and being a wee tot, i liked to make noise! so, one day i decided to bring out the good ol' fashioned pots and pans and serenade my parents with my amazing noise abilities! lemme tell ya, wooden spoons on metal is the best attention getter (mebbe not really...) out there! so a photo op ensued and 15 years later, here i am! bangin on real drums... my lifetime drumming fantasies werent fullfilled to their fullest extent till about two years ago, when my parents finally decided that they had enough money to split the cost of a cheap $350 drum kit with me (actually... i think it was the fact that we finally had a basement with a ceiling higher than 4', and i had finally worn them down...) soo yhea... the drums were no suprise to them, but i think the metal band was!! lol!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JSimms Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 Fate brought me to the drums. Literally. At the end of fifth grade the band director came to our school and tried to convince us to choose band as our 6th grade elective. My other choices were choir and art. Now, I have an art allergy: Anytime I try to draw something, the paper ends up looking like a rash. And as for choir, to that point I had never sang except in church and I HATED church, so no way was I going to spend an hour every day feeling like I was in church. Thus my only choice was band. Now the band director demonstrated every instrument in the band except for percussion. He was really pretty talented. Anyway, at the end he gave us this sheet that had all the instruments written on it. I took it home and remember thinking, "any of these will do; I don't care." So I closed my eyes, took a pencil and pointed blindly into field where the instruments were listed: Right between the u and the first s in percussion. We too were told to choose an alternate instrument in case our first choice was not available. I choose trumpet. The next day we were dismissed to go to the "try out." My director took my sheet and said, "Ah, you want to play the trumpet." I quickly corrected him that that was my second choice--I think he needed trumpet players. Anyway, he said, so it is, and he gave me some simple rhythms to play on the desk and apparently I had aptitude for it. At some point in the sixth grade, I fell hopelessly in love with the instrument. Haven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mraia Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 1973 or 74. Im 8 years old and think that Kiss is the greatest band ever. Peter Criss and his Double Bass Pearl !! 100,000 Years off of Kiss:Alive!! Man I thought that was IT!! Too young to know how mediocre he was and how bad the music was, it was my first real band that I could follow. And I did. Anyway, fast forwad a couple of years. Im exposed to Bonham. That ends it for me. I begged for a set, and got one of those toy things they sell in Toys R Us. Year or two later, I got a set of Mica-Sonics (anybody ever hear of them?) and started aping Bonham and Alan White. Found Peart in 7th grade with Permanent Waves, and moved on from there. When all is said and done, I owe most of it to Peter Criss. He made the drums LOOK cool (remember, this was to an 8 year old) and then Bonham who made them SOUND cool. I'll never forget the day he died. I was stoked because i knew they were going to tour, and that I was going to finally see him. Kid came running into my 5th period english class screaming about how he had just died. I got up and went home. I couldnt just sit there anymore, I had to watch the news to see what had happened. There were'nt any real reports on it. He wasnt really a public figure that the general public would recognize. Anyway, I was devastated. Still am! He made it seem like any old bloke, big fat, and sloppy, could sit behind the kit, and become a God of Thunder. What a talent he was. Sorry this went on so long. I didnt mean to be maudlin, but I've got practice tonight, were covering Rock and Roll and Good Times Bad Times, and I'm gonna be missing him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators BATCAT Posted July 21, 2006 Moderators Share Posted July 21, 2006 In high school, me and my friends liked to talk about bands, watch 120 minutes, exchange CDs/tapes. We thought it would be fun to form a band ourselves. One of us already played guitar fairly well and could sort of sing, and another said "I always wanted to play bass", so I said "hmm... I guess I'm the drummer then." I spent my savings on ordering a cheapo-"Power Beat" kit (I was in Costa Rica in the late 90's- kit options were limited) and while I waited for it to arrive I set up pillows and hit them with drumsticks, playing along to my favorite CDs. When the kit arrived I kept playing to CDs and just tried to figure out what sound was what. I didn't know anything about what a ride was, or a crash... I pretty much just tried to watch music videos, and listed to CDs and tried to understand what sound was what. There wasn't anyone around to really explain it to me. Evenutally I sort of figured it out. We played a lot of obvious stuff like Nirvana, Weezer, and Green Day, and attempted (poorly) stuff like NIN and The Cure. We were horrible... but I've been playing in bands ever since. (10+ years) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members FitchFY Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 Keep these stories coming! For some reason, I find each of them wonderfully inspirational! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mraia Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 I Do too, Fitchfy. Im getting a kick out of this. Its cool your parents hooked you up early on. When I told them I wanted to play drums, my dad told me "Why? You cant make music with Drums" It was a naive point of view, but totally understandable. He has since changed his mind. I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members FitchFY Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 Matt Cameron (Pearl Jam, ex-Soundgarden) made a comment in a MD interview awhile back of "Behind every great drummer is a great mother," and I thought that was incredibly down-to-earth of him. My parents (mid 50s) came out to my show Friday night while I (25) played in a 100+ crowd at a rock club. They took it like champs, but when I got off stage, my dad said to me "Well, looks like 10 years of noise was worth it!" I thought that was touching. Supportive parents rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WillyRay Posted July 21, 2006 Members Share Posted July 21, 2006 There are pictures of me before I could speak, banging on an animal the muppet drum. Before I turned two, my brother had stepped through it. Later, when I was six, mom enrolled me in piano lessons. I hated it. My brother (the same jerk who stepped in my drum) was a few years older than I, and hopelessly better at piano. The instructor was a female body builder who scared the hell out of me. I fought my parents for about 3 years until they finally let me quit. About 3 years later, they said, "You will learn to play an instrument. No argument. This time, we're going to let you pick which one." So... I thought I had them beat. "Drums," I said. I thought there was no way they would bring a drumset into their house. Christmas morning, shiny drumset under the tree. Damn. Still, what 12 year old can resist a drumset? within a month or so I was "boom-chuch-boom-boom-chuck"ing, a few weeks later I was "dugga-dugga-dugga"ing, and the rest is history. Hard to believe it's been almost 18 years since then! On a side note, for years, I had credited learning to play in rhythm to a dream. In it, I was with a large bunch of kids, and a strange old man was handing out instruments for us to play. My brother ( you know the one...) got a trumpet, which he knew how to play, and I got a drum. The music started, and I was banging on the drum. Totally out-of-time, just banging on it like a kid. The strange old man glared at me, and I was frightened. Suddenly, because I was afraid, I realized, "I'm doing this wrong. There's something I'm missing... ah... I should be beating... like this!" And I found the beat, and beat every quarter note for the rest of the dream. Later, when I helped my folks move out of my childhood home, we found an old 110 camera in the junk room. Still had a roll of film in it. When we got it back from the developer and looked at it, I almost fainted. There was a picture of little me (maybe 4 years old), my jerky big brother with a trumpet, a whole bunch of kids with little toy-instruments, and a strange old man. Turns out it was a family trip to Busch Gardens, and some sort of kids music program... Hadn't been a dream at all! Crazy! /willy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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