Posts Tagged ‘clinic’
As if Halloween wasn’t scary enough already without having to meet customskins.co.uk
Posted by tim in Uncategorized on October 12th, 2009
As we all know, Halloween is a big pointless made-up thing, invented entirely for people who want to throw bricks through old ladies windows, and companies who want to sell you something. Fortunately for our countries’ aging population, we at customskins.co.uk fit into the latter category.
In fact, even that’s not really true. We don’t really want to sell you something, we’d just like to meet you. That’s why we’re going to be at the Jobeky UK Custom Drum Festival on Halloween; October 31st. Here’s the lowdown:
The nice people at Jobeky Drums thought it would be cool to host an event showcasing small custom drum makers and suppliers here in the UK. This mad concept evolved into the Jobeky UK Custom Drum Festival, and it’s the first one this year. Of course, customskins.co.uk were high on the list (top, obviously) of companies Jobeky wanted to be there, so here we are.
The event is being held in the Staffordshire Pavillion at the Staffordshire Country Showground, and runs from 10am to 5pm. There’s lots of custom drum companies exhibiting, plus a really quite enticing selection of clinics from the likes of Robin Guy, Martin Ranscombe and Karl Brazil.
Entry is an absolute bargain at £10 and you can buy advance tickets here.
We’re not entirely sure what we’re going to be doing or showing, but you can rest assured that it will not include contemporary dance or firearms.
Drum Clinics – Informative? Or as useful as seeing a GP ?
Posted by richmond in Uncategorized on August 26th, 2009
Sometimes there is nothing better than to go out and see someone smash several shades of s**t out of a house sized drum kit, better still if they are actually someone who knows what they are doing then you may learn something.
On the occasion of 14th July the highly skilled one was Simon Philips (The Who, Jeff Beck, Toto etc) and the kit was suitably LARGE. Unfortunately local traffic combined with the aforementioned kit delayed proceedings by a full 40 minutes as each of the 16 drums (that’s what I could see!) were tweaked and twisted to ensure sonic perfection.
The event at the Brit school, Croydon was kicked off by Drumsense founder Colin Woolway with a varied solo on a much more modest set. A brief but informative Q & A session and we were on to the main event.
I have to say I’m not a huge SP fan. However, it’s obvious to anyone from the get-go what a class player he is and unless you read through his vast CV it is easy to forget what a privilege it is to get this close to a proper big name in the world of drums.
Along with a couple of lengthy solos Mr. Philips played to tracks with mind boggling time-signatures but all the while staying as ‘musical’ as possible.( His words ;-) However there was THAT keyboard sound ever present which had me digging my nails into the seat in front less it stray too close to musak territory.
Philips Q & A section was surprisingly funny and the few nuggets of wisdom that he imparted were worth the ticket alone. One such nugget from the studio wiz is that once back in the studio control room following a ‘take’ you dance along to the play-back of your own drum part, for the benefit of the producer who of course wants a track that will ‘get people moving’! (And your drum track is just so damn funky you can’t even stop yourself doing the electric boogaloo). Okay, even if you only shuffle about a bit, it will surely look better than standing static, staring blankly at the studio monitors.
There are drum clinics happening all over if you look out for them. These events need supporting as it will be easy to grumble when they start disappearing through lack of attendance. Check UK music mags and online forums etc for details of upcoming events.
Whilst at any one event you are unlikely to find the ‘magical-secret’ that will make you play like Steve Gadd (unless of course you go see Steve Gadd), you are certain to get a few bits of useful information whether it is about the business or playing drums themselves.
Go be inspired and check out some different players from styles/genres that you don’t normally listen to. The background a lot of the ‘pro’players have had can be pretty unexpected so don’t be surprised to hear that Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden) started out playing jazz!
And I’m afraid that whilst we were busy saying hello to the re-vamped Blog we had to wave bye-bye to Mr. Jim Chapin. Yes in true Custom Skins blog tradition we’ve have another aged drummer pass on. U.S. drummer Chapin was known as a teacher to the stars, a dapper man to boot and a proper old school drumming gent – amongst other things a master of the ‘Moeller’ technique, Jim’s encyclopaedic knowledge of hand techniques came straight from the source as Chapin was taught by Sanford Moeller himself. Chapin was keen to impart his knowledge and produced a number of books and videos which mean his sizable legacy will live on. Check out the J.R. of drumming do his thing: