On my kit, I’m finally getting to the stage where I can play a very complex beat and transition in and out of it with ease. That’s been a goal for months. Sure, I could always sustain a simple beat, but not always a complex one. Now I can play a complex one and start and stop it with whatever bizarre transitions I please. It’s a huge deal. All those rudiments are finally paying off. I can sight-read any intermediate snare music and quite a bit of advanced stuff. In my snare book, it’s getting to be slim pickins of what I can’t play.

What’s really amazing to me is how much I have to rely on muscle memory to play difficult stuff. With flute, guitar and piano I would just read and play. With this beast… my god. The injection of a microsecond of conscious thought throws everything out of whack. I have to maintain this total suspension of disbelief (that my arms and legs know what they’re doing) and concentrate my full attention on the music – as opposed to my body making it. Friggin cool. You can never ask, How am I doing that? ‘Cause I’ll screw up. It be like taking my hand out of the puppet for a second to look at it. It just don’t work that way. Either you’re in it or you’re not. You make music or you make confused silence.