roll arms

Well, VamoLa's been fun but challenging. I've gotten sucked in more than I expected. It still sort of gives me the spooks to be back there; I don't have good memories of my past in VamoLa, and I hate being reminded of those years. But luckily there aren't many old faces, and I've been changing the old repertoire around anyway. Right now they want quite a large amount of feedback and rearrangement, which is a managerial challenge and good leading practice for me.

I'm exhausted, though - I'm running extra classes and sectionals for them, and teaching or half-teaching most rehearsals; 2 or 3 evenings a week all told; all while running my other 2 classes for UW. Plus Lions every 2nd or 3rd weekend in Portland. Plus getting another little group started in Seattle.

But anyway, it's been challenging me to step up my repique lead skills, which are fairly wobbly since I've hardly ever played lead repique. I've been drilling on rolls and calls all week. Even just simple calls like this:

CRRS CRRS CRRS -R-R
-ZRR R-C- R--- ----

where
C= center hit with stick
R = rimshot with stick
S = slap with other hand

That's the classic short call-out for samba.

So, anyway, that "-ZRR" thing is actually kind of brutal (for me anyway) - a buzz and two rimshots. Getting from buzz to double rimshot that quick is not trivial. I'm always a little late on it. (there's a left hand slap nestled between the buzz and the first rimshot) So I'm trying to get my hands deadly quick for stuff like that. I can do rolls now, pretty well, but I still feel like they are not ready for prime-time. But with this intense practice on it, I feel like I'm pushing to a new level on the rolls.

Roll practice is very fatiguing. More than anything else in drumming, they're a real, physical, muscular workout - trying to improve your arms' absolute maximum speed and power. Drumming is usually about keeping yourself loose, but in fast rolls you have to freeze your upper body to keep it stable enough to brace the roll action. You can feel it: a huge band of muscle tightness locks into place during the roll, locking across both shoulders and down to both elbows. My arms are tired! I'm trying to only do the roll workouts every 3rd day because I know that muscles can't take that kind of heavy-duty workout every day. They need time to rebuild.

Meanwhile, I'm still chugging at pandeiro, and wishing I had time for timbal and tamborim. But I'm desperate for time and have had to table some things. If it weren't for this meddling teaching job....