Drumming was…. disapointing
Alright. So at the end of last year I had found out that our network of community centres had a winter course on drumming. Like actual drums. Well, not actual, the blurb of the drumming classes included a teacher-student ratio of 1-4. And that we would be learning on an electric drumkit. And it would be held in the community centre I called home for many many years. Not literally that I lived there, but I spent much time learning to swim, to ice-skate, to love reading and enjoyed many childhood summer-day camps there. And McDonalds. I learned to love McDonalds there too.
But I show up Monday night with 5 minutes to spare, and the meeting rooms I knew of were opposite the large glass wall where you can watch the swimming/pool. I was in meeting room D, I saw A, I saw B… and that’s it. Finally I went to the information desk and while the girl was listening and explaining refund policies to some teenage boy and his younger brother, and four guys sat behind the counter either staring at me or ignoring me (either way, they weren’t offering to help me, even though they all had work-shirts that denoted they worked for the city) I was able to find out the meeting room I was looking for was basically in the arena section of the centre. WTF.
I figure out how to get there, find the room and grab a seat. Instead of seeing electronic drum-kits like I’d seen in stores, that have at least the look and feel of a traditional drumkit (the drumpads being somewhat the correct shape and position and set up the same as a normal kit) it seems I was going to learn how to play drums out of a box on a desk. With “pedals” being smaller than my computer mouse.
Already displeased, I knew I was going to be in for a boring 8 weeks. And I’m very likely right on that.
I lied when I said I had no drumming experience, but one can hardly call singles, doubles and a paradiddle actual drum knowledge. Then again, I knew what a quarter, eighth and sixteenth note is as well, so maybe I’m way ahead of the game. I knew I was growing bored with every second and was hoping thata my 45 minutes (probably 35 minutes by the time I found the room) would be over soon. The tables our kits are set on are too low, the chairs are too high, the instructor counts WAY too slowly, and the other female (two males, two females in this class) complains too much.
And by “other female” I don’t mean me. Although obviously I’m complaining a lot as well. This class will teach me extremely little on how to drum, because it doesn’t feel like a drum-kit. And I think that’s very important and very over-looked in this case.
Either way, I was overly amused at the fact that halfway through our 4 count rock beat, I switched from playing right handed to playing left-handed. And completely screwed up the girl sitting behind me, as she became overly confused as to why our teacher said play with your right hand, while I was playing with my left. I couldn’t believe someone was cheating off me on the first day.
Anyways, I’ll keep going because I’m sure as the instructor gets more comfortable with us (even though he’s taught this before according to him) we’ll actually get to learning. If not, I’ll just do a lot of what I did during class, practicing my single/double/paradiddle patterns on my knee.
