So I’ve been putting off posting again. I wanted to update on that last month (two month ago now), but things weren’t going all that well so I elected to not worry about it until early or mid-December. Which is fine. I haven’t progressed at all with the drawing or painting. I’m still poking around once in a while with the idea of writing stuff, or going through older notes, stories and texts, but I’m making no illusions about ending up with anything concrete anytime soon. Maybe next year. It’s really secondary to a bunch of other stuff so further stressing over that is overly futile.

Now December is (was) in its last week, another year at that, and well, yeah. One nice thing is that at the start of the month I was gifted with a subscription to Drumeo, which I had mentioned to a few people, and started looking at some of their lessons. This sorta gave me the motivation to write down some notations and make stock of some of the things I’ve playing and practicing up to this point, give myself a marker of sorts, or benchmark of where I’m at after a couple years of learning drums, get serious about keeping track of my progress and take good advantage of the coaches and classes I now have access to. The daily journal died somewhere into November, again, and without any art or content to show… well, just blogging to complain about stuff, wether personal, societal or existential, isn’t much of an appealing concept to me. And I’m definitely not short on things to complain about.

Having had to move 3 times in 2021 (making it 4 times now since this same time in 2020), and for that ending up in enough debt to mean I’ll be broke for the next 2 years paying it off, is one of those things. Where I’m staying at now is almost twice what I was paying before all of this, and the engines from the refrigeration of the store in the adjacent space (not to mention all the beeps and ringing) is wrecking hell with my tinnitus, which has only gotten worse, are even more of these things. Otherwise the place is fine, free from the worst of what had me move around so much. The layout is nice, there’s enough space for everything and doesn’t feel cramped or claustrophobic at all.

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I didn’t know how to keep naming these tracks, or even if they’re tracks at all instead of just a semi-random assortment of practice patterns glued together as to pretend to be grooves forming a coherent structure. Since they basically started from one idea which then led to another as I tried to line up various things I was working on, I went with Rabbit Hole. Part I more or less stopped evolving much and had been around, nameless, since early 2020 or so, Part II is from the beginning of the month when I realized I had too many little incongruous parts I was spending time on that didn’t really fit anywhere, and needed to find something around which it could, which is where its first measure comes in, and how it got tied to the end of the first part. I’d like to keep the parts relatively short (ideally to just 1 page of notations), so there’s still quite a few exercises left out. I’ll stick with the name for now going forward, since Part III evolved in pretty much essentially the same way, but is more intentional: two versions of the double paradiddle rudiment continuously orchestrated back-to-back around the kit, as an exercise in independence mainly focused on left foot control. And that’s basically it.

The notation for both parts are here:
Rabbit Hole jpeg or PDF
Rabbit Hole II jpeg or PDF

It’s still improving, I’m focusing less on nailing all the bells and remembering motions, more on having better consistency and dynamics. I’ll update with a better video once those are in a comfy zone. One that doesn’t feature breaking the take at measure 30 for some nebulous reasons (must’ve suddenly remembered I was recording or something).

Aside from my obvious stop in the video at that measure there in part 2, I otherwise fell kinda satisfied with it as a whole. It unfortunately kills the momentum at that point where I go at the triplets too slowly, pausing and then just restart the 2nd half of the measure at the next metronome tick. Measure 33 and 37 are still the ones that usually confuse me the most though, strangely enough. Next level or step after that is getting comfortable at hitting the hi-hat parts either way with the hands crossed or open, and refitting in more left foot hi-hat somewhere perhaps. More likely though, I’ll leave it in its current notation form, seeing as the 3rd part already taking shape focuses heavily on left foot independence anyway. Really looking forwards to having more facility with that and have fun giving those hi-hats more range in expressions.

Beyond that, there’s still 3 more ‘pre-lessons’ so-called tracks left that’ll need proper video and notations: August Tom Groove, Stupendously Huge Massive Object (cause why not, better than calling it just ‘Track #N’ I suppose), and Boson Bagel (fermion free). I haven’t set up for the double-bass yet, I could and don’t really know why I don’t, so it’s not like I’ll be trying to learn Chainsaw in F♯ any time soon. It’s starting to feel like I’m at the point where I could manage it though. That’s nice.

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And this is where I’ll wrap this up. Again, I’m kinda sad at not getting around to making more drawings or paintings. I currently have at least one digital and (at least) two canvas paintings stalled at various steps of completeness, and finding it really difficult to get back into. Also, seeing there’s consistently several visitors to this blog every month, I’d like to say thanks for coming by. And if you’ve been reading this far, thanks again, I very much appreciate it. This goes the same to all my followers too, and those of you who over the years have regularly fed my blog’s traffic stats page with their continued interest and occasional feedback. It does encourage me to be more diligent about posting, somewhat, and is a welcomed little extra source of motivation that I’m grateful to all of you for. Regardless of all that, there’s a healthy aspect to diaries too, it does help at processing and expressing things, it has its definite benefits, and because I did and do want to journal and blog more, if only to poke out that creative part of me. Never mind the angst-fuelled, parasocial-intolerant starved abyss staring right at me, what power does it have to stop me? I mean, what else does it have? Might as well take advantage of the situation and share stuffs on the internet, right? I usually feel good and all the better for it when I do. So again, thanks for letting me share it with you.

Happy New Years !