Learning the marimba in college actually made me a better drummer in two different ways, and I think these are relevant lessons to share with you guys even if you’ve never been into classical percussion.

I imagine some of you guys saw that title, though, and were like - “what in the world is a marimba??” In case you’ve never been involved in the percussion world of timpani, xylophone, chimes, marimba, and all the crazy stuff that makes up the percussion section in an orchestra… Here’s what a marimba is (the marimba is on the right, and a xylophone is on the left):

This was the "backstage" additional practice space in our music building. I spent a lot of time back there!

Most folks recognize a xylophone when they see one. Think of the marimba as a “bass xylophone” - basically a xylophone that goes much lower and therefore has much larger wooden bars. These bars are usually made of rosewood, and they’re not cheap....

"Stephen, they need you to play drums Sunday."

My mom’s words smacked me in the face then echoed back and forth in my 15-year-old head. They what?? I laughed to myself. How do they even know that I play drums? No one’s supposed to know that! I just started lessons two months ago! This is crazy.

But somehow word had gotten out and I was getting dragged into the high school student worship band at church. Turns out their regular drummer had graduated high school and the replacement hadn't worked out. Little had I known 5 minutes before this moment that I was about to play my very first gig with just two months of drum lessons under my belt. I didn’t even own a real drumset at the time.

I was totally unprepared, terrified, and looking for a way out of this. I remember laying in bed that night praying about it, saying “God if you want me to go way out of my comfort zone to do this, you have to go with me and somehow enable me to do what...

Some musicians take the “vow of poverty” when they finish high school, and they decide to live in a van and travel with a band. They pride themselves in just scraping by, bouncing from couch to couch and living on the road. It’s all worth it if you’re doing what you love, right? Maybe that’s so, and maybe that life is right for a select group of single 19 year olds out there. But just because you want to be a full time musician doesn’t mean you have to take the vow of poverty and be broke.

All I want to do today is give you some tips for handling money as a full-time musician. This is for any of you young guys who are in high school or college, and this is especially for any of you doing the full-time music thing. It’s so important that we manage our money wisely, otherwise we really could become broke and end up on the street.

I’m your average musician. I play a bunch of gigs, some paying more or less than others, and I...

On a recent gig, something out of the band’s control went terribly wrong and shut the entire show down an hour early. In all of our combined years of gigging, none of us on stage had ever had this happen to us before...

This was a typical Friday-night, 8-12 type of cover gig, and we were approaching the 11pm mark. The club was getting busy, and the dance floor was getting crowded. It was almost time for the final set - the set with all the upbeat top 40 hits everybody loves - to finish off the evening. A few of us in the band were hanging out at the back door to the venue, chatting with one of the bouncers as our set break wound down.

To our surprise, it was pouring down rain outside. Looking out across the parking deck you could see a blinding wall of rain coming down out on the street. “I hope this doesn’t keep folks away tonight,” worried the bouncer. “We’re coming up on what’s usually our busiest time of night.” The wind started to...

Don’t tick off the sound guy.

I recently saw what happened when a band made this fatal error.

I was playing a show with an original band I play with often, and we were opening for another band traveling through from out of town.

The venue asked us to arrive at 2pm for sound check for a 7pm show. This kind of schedule definitely isn’t ideal, but we’d scheduled our day around it and it wasn’t a big deal. We arrived, set up our gear, and we started soundcheck. We have a good relationship with the front-of-house engineer at this particular venue, and he’s always done his job well and gone out of his way to make sure everything’s working well for us. We checked every instrument, got monitor mixes fine-tuned, and we played through a tune. This was a super thorough sound check, and we were glad. Everything sounded and felt great, and we were pumped for the show that night.

Something seemed weird though... Where was the headlining band? Where was...

I made the worst mistake of my music career a few years ago when I was in college. This wasn’t a “musical” mistake or a performance mistake. This was a huge no-no that violated all the rules of Professionalism 101.

I attended a small in-state school, and I was blessed to have lots of scholarship opportunities that paid my way through college. Though small, this school had a fantastic, accredited music program with world-class faculty. We had all the standard ensembles that music schools have, from jazz band to wind ensemble to orchestra, musical theater, marching band, choir...you name it.

Because the school was fairly small and there were only a handful of percussion majors, most of us percussionists were involved in nearly all of the ensembles to some degree. Wind ensemble was the big one, which all scholarship music students had to be a part of. (For those unfamiliar, “wind ensemble” is basically an orchestra without the strings. AKA...

I played a gig a few weeks ago that tested my patience and ability to adapt as a drummer. This was pretty much a logistical nightmare for several reasons. It all started when I rolled into town…

The venue was at a downtown area where there’s a historic city-center square, surrounded by all sorts of hip restaurants, bars, and theaters. As I arrived on the square this Friday night, I was shocked to see a sea of at least 2,000 people on the lawn and flooding the streets. Crosswalks were crawling with folks. Sidewalks were crowded. Parking spaces were filled. Good thing I got here early.

Evidently a big family event was going on downtown, and EVERYONE was there. But the *fun* part was that the venue I was playing at didn’t have any parking (of course). And the valet lots were full. So myself and my bandmates had to take turns unloading each other’s vehicles on the curb in front of the gig location. Somebody would unload then go look for...

I was on a gig recently where I played something completely wrong. This was no small mistake. This was one of those scenarios where the drummer just launches into something else and the band’s left staring and wondering. BUT…there was still a silver lining, which is why this story is worth telling. ;)

This was the second show I’d played with this particular band, and we were covering numerous pop songs and even a hiphop tune or two. One such hiphop track was “Poison.” If you were ever into old-school 90s hiphop you probably remember this one. It’s one of those drum-machine-style tracks where the intro or the turn is a drum loop. Songs like this likely inspired Bruno Mars’ “Finesse,” where the song kicks off with a solo drum beat.

Rarely on gigs like this are there opportunities for drum solos. It really just depends on the band and whether they like to put their drummer on the spot and hope he can throw...

Somebody recently emailed me with the question, How do you develop your style on the drums? This is an excellent question, and replying to his message made me think a lot about this topic.

Many of us have had questions like:

• How can I find my personal style or voice on the drums?
• Should I intentionally try to create a style?
• How do I become truly creative enough to really have a style?
• Does your technical ability influence your style?
• Is this even important to begin with?

I hope to answer some of these questions today, because I believe every great musician has some sort of style. Maybe it’s a certain feel they have where you always know it’s them when they’re playing. Maybe a drummer has certain licks he likes to play. Maybe he has a sort of “signature” groove you always hear from him. I think we can all agree that the best players out there have unique styles. You hear Bonham, you know it’s Bonham. You hear Ringo, you know it’s...

What is your default? What’s the one thing you rely on that you can gravitate toward and lean on in a tough musical situation? In other words - What are you so comfortable doing that you can excel at it while chaos ensues around you? A recent gig made me think about this…

A drummer friend in town asked me to sub for him on a cover gig. I eagerly accepted, mainly because I like the challenge of learning new songs in a less familiar genre. Sometimes I get so into the groove (no pun intended?) on my regular gigs that it’s easy to stop growing as a musician. When the opportunity came to play with people I’d never met at a venue I’d never played at…playing a lot of unfamiliar songs…I jumped at the chance.

My friend sent me a setlist of the tunes they most commonly played at this particular club, so I got to work charting about 30 songs. I enjoy gig prep, and I love being forced to listen to stuff I don’t hear everyday in order...