Old stuff

I was going through some old pictures for a class the other day, and I found this video that I had someone take at the Sugar bowl in New Orleans. It's called Push, and for the two years I played the tenors, it was the bane of my existence. My hands and arms would always seize up at the tenor solo because of the fast sixtuplet notes. I had a hard time getting the sticks from drum 3 all the way on the right to drum 4 all the way on the left. I swear that I tried to relax my arms so that I could play lighter, and therefore faster, but my forearms would seize up. I would have to muscle my way through the crampy arm muscles, which meant I played harder, which meant a loss of control and so it was always really dirty.

However. This night in New Orleans, we hadn't played really heavily for a few weeks, but it was at the end of the season, I was strong, there was no pressure to perform, only to have fun, and it was really warm. So as you can see, I was able to spit out those notes, my hands were really loose which let the heights of the sticks go way up, but I had enough strength to get the ends of the sticks back down on the head to play the music in time. And it was clean.

Just looking at that video now, I feel good that I finally did conquer that freaking cadence after two years of trying, and that it got recorded so I can go back to see it.