Hi Ho, Hi Ho...

...it's off to camp I go. I feel like I'm recycling the title for my post from some other entry. Anyhow. I'm going to Drum Camp this weekend--not to be confused with Taiko Camp later on this September, which I'm not planning on attending, though I know a good time will be had by all. The camp I'm going to is a drum camp for women called Born to Drum. It should be pretty awesome. I'll be there as an assistant teacher, but really, I'm going to be learning way more. Even the assisting will be a learning experience, since I'll get to observe how a totally beginning taiko class is taught to non-taiko players. Not that I haven't seen something like that before, but the context and expectations will be different. These women come from all kinds of drumming backgrounds, and one of the perks of this is that I'll have time to take drumming classes from different disciplines. It should help me along towards my goal of learning everything there is to learn. And the other teachers are amazing drummers in their own fields. I'm telling you, I'm going to be surrounded by greatness.

Now there's just the matter of my solo, which has been coming along well. I think I try to make things more difficult than they need to. I was trying to start it out with a flourishy type of roll, and I was having the hardest time trying to remember was it a 5 beat roll or a 6 beat, and was there a flam at the very start, and will I remember when it comes time to start my solo, or will I just freeze? but then I was like, why don't I just start it with a don-don-don since it is just as effective, and since it really is just an opening to get me into some movement. And then there is the movement. I was making it really hard on myself because I don't really have a lot of cool moves, so I just borrowed some of the moves that were already built into the meat of the song, and I was tweaking those a bit to fit into my solo. I don't have a problem with that because I don't think it's a bad idea for portions of a solo to tie into the rest of the song. I read somewhere that one guy thinks you should be able to hum the melody of a song along with the drummer's solo. I don't know if I'd go to that extreme, but hey if you have big arms in the meat of the song, seeing big arms in the solo shouldn't be totally foreign.

So I'm feeling more confident. I'm gonna nail this. Hopefully it'll be this weekend, but if not I know in the end I'm going to have a solo I like. Love even.