The iPod accentuates the single over the album. The new James Bond movie flashes action in camera shots that transition seemingly every second. News cycles bounce from story to story, looking for a new fix to hold audiences until the next headline grabber.

Communication avenues change constantly. Want to stay in touch with a friend from home? Just click on his Facebook—you don’t even have to call. Not that you have to call, anyway—talking on the phone became tedious, so now we text. But why text when you can Skype? (The answer is that you’re in class when you text).

Somewhere along the line, culture took a sharp turn, and our way of processing information and entertainment drifted in a new direction. On the whole, the shift tends to put an emphasis on the quick over the time-consuming, the tip over the trenches, the sparkle over the simple.

People who listen to albums fell into the minority. People who watch movies where people talk gradually shifted into a niche, indie crowd after the advent of Star Wars and special effects. People who read newspapers are a dying breed, with many now using the internet.

Record sales started rapidly declining some years back with the introduction of iTunes, movies became popularly defined by rental stores aptly named Blockbuster, and the slow death of the newspaper can be seen in the hard times that have befallen even the New York Times—the onetime invincible newspaper king has seen advertising revenues plummet and has no clear way to pay off its significant debt.

Many newspapers have even started dropping the AP, with CNN reportedly trying to swoop in to take its spot at a cheaper rate. That would be the same, loveable CNN who published an article last week on the epic Guns ‘N Roses/Dr. Pepper battle, commenting on the situation, “No one is LOL.” I agree with Pitchfork’s assessment that it’s hilarious when the esteemed CNN publishes a sentence like that. (After reading it, I was ROFL).

Not Radiohead

But is all of this change a bad thing? Personally, I tend to think no. At the least, we’re not yet living in a brave new world.

While there are drawbacks to some elements of a tech-savvy society, it has undeniable benefits. The internet, when used to its potential, offers the ability to access a vast array of accurate, up-to-date information from around the world. Facebook does allow friends to stay connected in their busy lives, and Skype grants the opportunity for people to visually communicate over vast distances (which, if used for military families especially, can be a great thing). And special effects in movies can add to artistic quality or provide a perhaps needed break of popcorn fun.

Besides, it’s still quite possible to read both the New York Times and the Daily Dish, to send text messages and write eloquent papers, to enjoy Indiana Jones and the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and to listen to a Radiohead album and a Katy Perry single. If you’re feeling a little bit crazy, you can even still read a book and perpetuate the brilliance of written language. Or you could have a meaningful conversation with a person that doesn’t involve the use of electronic devices.

Not Katy Perry

The growth of technology does not worry me. The possibility that it might replace, rather than compliment, what we already have does.

Our society already tilts toward abbreviation. My hope is that the pendulum won’t continue to swing too far in the direction of the fast and the furious; that we’ll have time to think, contemplate, talk to each other, and use technology to enhance our lives, instead of having it dictate them. (But that’s just IMHO).

The celebration of Messiaen’s centennial on BBC 3, he’s the Composer of the Week - a series of shows you can still listen to online: 

Composer of the Week
Olivier Messiaen: Birth

Donald Macleod and biographer Nigel Simeone explore early influences on the composer, including poetry his mother wrote when pregnant with him as well as family life.

The rest (4 more episodes) is found here.

“I think having one’s own sound is the most fundamental kind of identity in music.  But it’s a very touchy thing how one arrives at that. It has to be something that comes from inside, and it’s a long-term process. It’s a product of a total personality.”

- Bill Evans

A drummer’s personal style evolves over the course of his musical lifetime, developing along two separate but interweaving paths.  Growth along one path is purposeful, guided by the image we keep in our head of the player we hope to become.  Along this path we decide who our mentors are, how to hold our sticks, and what musical styles to play.  Growth along the other path is unconscious, guided by impulses deep inside our mind and body.  Along this path our playing acquires its most distinctive qualities, peculiarities that betray our unique artistic identity in any musical situation.

The more we understand and respect each of these paths, the better we are at cultivating our individual artistic voice.

Heroes & Idols

Our first creative personas are almost always borrowed.  Long before we ever sat behind a set of drums, most of us already had a clear idea of the drummer we wanted to become.  In my case, that drummer wore tights, platform boots, and cat make-up.

Like lots of drummers my age, my first major influence was Peter Criss of the legendary cartoon-glam rock band Kiss.  Truth be told, I wanted to BE Peter Criss. I even suggested to my guitarist friend, Joe, that we form a band called Kiss 2.  Joe thought that plan had dicey legal implications, so we settled for enlisting two buddies to join us in a lip sync performance of all four sides of Kiss Alive II, complete with sequined costumes, face paint, a drum set made from foil-covered ice cream containers, and low tech pyro.

My next guiding light was that paragon of prog rock percussing, “The Professor,” Neil Peart.  I was in 6^th grade when Neil entered my life, and soon after I formed my first band, Outrage – a power trio, just like Peart’s band, Rush.  Our three-man set-up was no coincidence; we were all Rush-heads, and we did everything we could to look and sound like the group we loved.  Our bassist played a black Rickenbacker 4001, and our guitarist played a blonde Telecaster, just like Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson did.  Our set-up included a set of Moog Taurus Pedals - an exotic foot-activated synthesizer made popular by its featured role in the Rush hit, “Tom Sawyer.”  Thanks to an early Christmas present of Remo Roto Toms, my kit ballooned to 8 pieces (more than half way to Neil’s 15!), and each drum was fitted with the very same Evans heads my idol used.  I played only Zildjian cymbals, as Neil did.  I crafted a set of chromatic chimes out of copper pipes so Outrage could play “Closer To The Heart” authentically.  And when Neil went electronic in the late 80s, I did too, incorporating a single SDS1 Simmons pad.

Emulation and imitation are how we first find our way around our instrument.  More than that, impersonation is a first draft at defining our own style. Modeling our playing after our heroes is like playing dress-up as a kid – with every new outfit we discover what feels right to us and what doesn’t.  The more players we try on, the more we learn what we want our own playing to sound like.

We can learn all kinds of things by mimicking our heroes, and not only when we’re beginners, but throughout our entire musical lives.  But copying at a distance has his limitations.  At some point, most of us seek out a good teacher who can explain to us one-on-one how to pull off all the crazy things we hear our idols’ playing.

Teachers

A guitarist I once met told me that he would never take formal lessons because he was afraid his teacher would suck all “individuality” from his playing.  It’s a common fear, but it’s unfounded.  The only person who can silence your creative voice is you.  In fact, deciding to take lessons from a good teacher is an important step in developing your personal playing style.

For one thing, a good teacher will make sure that you have a solid grasp of technique.  Tempo, meter, syncopation, dynamics, composition, melody, coordination, endurance - the more skills and understanding you possess, the more creative options you have to express yourself in your own way.

Also, a teacher can help refine your style by educating you about your instrument – about the musical potential of each element of a drum set, about how the material a drum or cymbal is made of influences the instrument’s tone, about how striking drums and cymbals in different ways elicits different sounds.

A drummer’s creative identity can develop a lot with the help of a teacher’s input.  A good teacher understands that technique and knowledge aren’t ends in themselves, but rather exist to serve a player’s individual artistic vision  A good teacher also understands that in order for a drummer to fully realize his personal playing style, there are some things he must figure out all alone.

Going Deep

Teachers help us realize our artistic vision by making sure that we grasp the fundamentals of our art, and by showing us the capabilities of our instrument.  But even great teachers have a hard time seeing what makes a student’s playing truly distinctive.  In part, this is because the very quirks that make a musician’s playing special are frequently diagnosed by teachers as technical shortcomings, and understandably so.  We can easily imagine Keith Moon’s teacher preaching the merits of restraint to the rambunctious young drummer, or B.B. King’s teacher complaining that the blues prodigy spends too much time wailing away on the root note, or Bob Dillon’s vocal coach suggesting straight up, “Bob, perhaps you should stick to the harmonica.”

The most compelling elements of personal style are not learned in a conscious way.  Instead, the qualities that define a musician’s sound emerge as a bi-product of years of rigorous practicing and performing.  Ironically, the longer we strive to become that perfect player we imagine in our heads, the more we become something much more special – a player with personality and soul. Bill Evans, the great jazz pianist, put it this way:

“I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.”

Like Bill Evans, most musicians set out for one creative destination, only to arrive somewhere different, somewhere closer to home.  Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin wanted only to make music that sounded like the black American blues giants they idolized - Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Howlin’ Wolf.  Instead, they revolutionized rock and roll by coming up with a new way of interpreting the blues, a hybrid of American blues and British popular music.

Style is not something you can force.  The distinctive traits that become the hallmark of an artist’s style originate deep down in his subconscious psyche and in his bones.  They develop like pearls, little irritations in the artist’s soul that grow more exquisite the longer they fester.  And like pearls, an artist’s unique qualities are imperfect gems, rugged formations that tell the story about the hidden place from which they came.

Your artistic identity is not something you choose, it’s something you expose to light over the course of a creative lifetime.  Beware - you won’t always recognize your stylistic eccentricities as the gems they are.  Very often, the qualities that make your drumming special are the things that make you cringe when you hear them on playback.  Be careful what you erase from your playing.  It might be your soul.

State Farm Insurance is running this new commercial targeting parents (mainly) of 16- and soon-to-be 16-year-old kids. The focus is on better, safer teen driving and making it to age 17, which is grim to say the least.

After the commercial, an art card pops up telling you that if you liked the song in the commercial, “16 Going on 17″ (which I thought was from the Sound of Music), you can visit whatever the Web site is and download it for FREE!

However, the art card doesn’t tell you the song is by Modern Music, which I thought was strange, mainly because I didn’t know if the song was real, or if it was some State Farm-commissioned song, and the lyrics were going to be about driving safe with your good neighbors, in which case, I would not like the song any longer.

And here’s the State Farm Better Teen Driving site where you can download the song.