I'm republishing my blog post from www.loseroftheyear.com about it because hopefully it explains some background and why I'm going.... Check the live feed at http://m3.implex.net/ and you may just catch me drumming over the weekend!

In a triathlon, athletes test the limits of their physical abilities by running a full marathon, biking 112 miles, and swimming 2.4 miles.  This weekend, musician Mark Mallman ( http://www.mallman.com/ ) will undertake the musical equivalent of such a challenge by performing a 78-hour rock epic entitled “Marathon 3”.

That’s actually not a fair analogy, because while thousands of athletes can say they have completed a triathlete, I am unaware of any musician who has rocked for 78 hours nonstop.

It is an artist’s nature to want to push things to extremes.  After all, the dangerous qualities of rock and roll are part of its allure. We pride ourselves on playing for hours on end; we wear the scars and scabs resulting from onstage antics like badges of honor.  We cram ourselves into vans, drive dozens of hours, play seven shows in four days, and drive another twenty hours straight back home, making barely enough money to cover our expenses- Not something most adults would elect to do with their time- yet we love every second of it.

But Mark Mallman takes his dedication to music a step further.  The prolific songwriter and performer, also known as the Mad Man, pushes the boundaries of modern music and his own creativity far beyond limits that the rest of us dare not approach.  Having previously completed 26-hour and 52-hour versions of the marathon, he knows what he’s getting into, and he leaps enthusiastically into the rabbit hole with reckless abandon.

Can you imagine what might come out of one’s mind after hours and hours of continuous musical expression? What magical corridors of the brain might be unlocked by days of sleep deprivation? For an artist to not only choose to do this, but to do it publicly and invite the world, is a bold move which I respect profoundly.

When I first heard about Mark Mallman’s marathons, I thought it sounded like a cool way to rally the troops, gather scores of musicians and stay up all night rocking. It reminded me of the childhood delight of a lock-in or slumber party, where we would defy sleep and partake in all of our favorite activities until we dropped. However, further investigation revealed to me that this is no joke, not a gimmick for press attention, an attempt to break a record, nor a charity fundraising event. This is all about art.

The Marathon 3 involved much more prep work than just finding a venue that will allow such a lengthy performance.  Mallman is armed with hundreds of pages of lyrics and an overarching theme for each of three 26.2-hour segments of the event.  He has scheduled a continuous rotation of musicians who will follow him through the twists and turns the lengthy performance will surely take.  I should have known all along the man nicknamed Mr. Serious would not take something like this lightly! Of course, it is rock and roll, and therefore guaranteed to include the fun and entertainment that a show normally includes: elements crucial to defying the gravity of such an enormous creative undertaking.

So, this weekend I will make the pilgrimage to the twin cities to experience the Marathon 3 for myself, not only to support an artist I highly respect, but to seek out some inspiration of my own.  I will not just observe what is happening in the temple of rock known as the Turf Club in St. Paul, but like everyone there, I will become part of a unique scene; a grand vortex of music, lyrics, and creative chaos.  Although but a fraction of what Mallman will be doing, I will also challenge myself to perform for hours on end, and hopefully come out of it with a fresh and new perspective. I will enthusiastically follow this obsessed pied piper of rock as he hammers out his catchy tune on the piano. And with any luck, I will survive the journey with a new outlook on musical performance itself.

With one tweet I'll restart this site

With one tweet it will reignite

I have found encouragement

With the one tweet I just sent

I've been doing some more research, practicing a lot, and working on tons of other things which I should be sharing with you.  So, I will do so this year.

Best wishes to you with all of your goals and resolutions!

Granted, I'm not up to the recommended tempo in the book just yet, but compared to my initial attempt last night's improvement was staggering.  This is encouraging and makes me even more excited to practice tonight.

I'm still unsure of what I'll do over the Thanksgiving holiday, since I'll be short on time and won't necessarily have access to a drum set every day.  I'll bring the practice pad and continue doing hand exercises, for sure, but I may have to substitute something else (reading, research, etc.) for the kit exercises.

I stuck to my plan last week and practiced each day for 45-60 minutes.  I spent most of my time continuing to work on sticking and full set warm-ups.  After seven solid days of much repetition, I am now very comfortable with the warm-up exercises and I have them almost completely memorized.

With twelve total warm-ups, I realize that I'm going to have to restrict myself to a minute or two per warm-up.  Otherwise I will continue to live in warm-up land forever, and I'm very eager to move on to the "fun stuff"!  The warm-ups do serve an important purpose, though, and even over the short course of seven days, I already notice a marked improvement in my consistency.

Last night I tackled the first official Exercise in the 30-Day Drum Workout.  Each day begins with a sticking-only exercise, followed by a full kit exercise that is based off of the pattern defined in the sticking routine.  I love this approach, as working on the basic stick-only exercise ingrains the pattern in your mind, preparing you for the next step which adds more.

The first exercise followed on the single-stroke roll theme found in the warm-ups, but added some interesting accents to various notes within each measure.  I found the exercise challenging enough (and one can always increase the tempo to add challenge) to keep me engaged, but not so overwhelming as to be daunting.  However, during the drum set portion of the exercise, I discovered a major weakness of mine that definitely needs work: my left foot.  The pattern had a hi-hat foot on each quarter note- which sounds simple, but with the bass drum hitting on different sixteenths of the beat, it's not so easy.  I had to slow the tempo waaaaaaaay down before all of my limbs would cooperate on this one.

I may spend another session on the Day 1 exercise before moving on to Day 2.  Baby steps!  I'm getting into the rhythm (ahhh... another pun... they're everywhere) of practicing every night and I'm really enjoying the extra time behind the kit.

Following the instructions in one of my drum books (and the advice of many), I've been beginning each practice session with some standard hand warm-ups.  These primarily consist of repeating eighth notes on a drum or practice pad many, many times, in a variety of sticking patterns.

The first exercise, for example, instructs to do a single-stroke roll (R-L-R-L-R-L-R-L), beginning at 70 bpm, with full strokes, for three minutes straight.  Then you increase the tempo a little, etc., until you finally reach a tempo at which you can't keep the notes consistent sounding.

Observation:  70 bpm feels very, very, VERY slow when you're playing eighth notes with no accents.  And three minutes of hitting this humdrum pattern feels like forever.  At first, I found myself wondering, "Is it really necessary to begin at this tediously slow tempo?", however after forging through the exercises and cycling through tempo from slow to fast, I began to appreciate its value.  When playing through the range of tempos from min to max, the middle tempos are very easy to keep consistent.  However both the slow end and the fast end present challenges.  So, although it is boring at the time, it's good to force oneself to go through the full three minutes at 70 bpm to kick things off.

Added bonus: After about 30 seconds, my mind effortlessly wandered into a "zone", wherein I stopped thinking about the notes, but still noticed and adjusted things if any of them stood out.  It was almost a meditative state- Perhaps not ideal for my improvement as a drummer, but kind of nice for my general well-being.  :)

While playing at the slow, slow tempo I also paid very careful attention to my full strokes (particularly during the first go-through of this exercise).  The book I'm working from emphasizes to "play off the drum, not into the drum", encouraging the drummer to "drop" the stick and let it naturally rebound- not to use any effort to raise the stick back up.  During the dozens of iterations of tediously repeating full stroke after full stroke, I noticed that this technique comes quite natural with my right hand, but is not natural at all with my left hand.  In fact, I find it quite difficult, even when I'm really focusing on it.  I don't know if this is because right is my dominant hand, or if it's the result of years of throwing my left stick at the snare and purposely keeping it from rebounding so it doesn't interfere with my hi-hat or right hand/stick.  It's definitely something for me to work on.

The subsequent warm-ups were variations on a theme of single-stroke and double-stroke rolls, again at increasing tempo.  Unfortunately, I only got through three of them in the course of an hour, probably because of my severe/neurotic attention to acute detail for everything that was going on during the warm-ups.  I might be reading too much into what I'm doing, but I think it's okay until I get really comfortable with these exercises.  In the future I'd like to spend about 10-15 minutes warming up and then proceed to work on other things, hehe.  All in good time (pun intended)!

But, no sense in dwelling on the past.  Let's get back to the present.  How can I make sure I stay on track?

That's where you get to participate!  If you don't see any updates or progress, I want you to keep me in check.  Send a message, leave a comment, just (kindly) let me know I'm a slacker!  You've been very nice about encouraging me to do this and sending me tips, links, etc., and I appreciate it... But I also need to be held accountable when I don't do what I say I'm going to do.

I'll be getting back on the wagon this afternoon, doing some of the exercises I discussed before, and updating my practice log.  There, I said it!  And if I don't report back with results, you have the right to be upset.

On that note, I'll leave you with a little peek at what Sunspot's been up to.  Here's a song from our Halloween show at the Annex:

Just kidding.  :)  I don't give up quite that easily!

Although the past few weeks have been extremely busy (see one of the things I've been busy with here), fear not, for I haven't forgotten my mission of improvement!

I've decided to undertake the "30 Day Drum Workout", a drum exercise book I purchased a while ago but until now have only paged through.

The book is very well organized and structured in a manner that I think will fit nicely my style of learning.  It begins with a series of warm-up exercises to perform each day, at a progressively faster tempo, followed by a unique exercise for that day both on a single drum and on a drum set.

To help track my progress, I made a special Practice Log, inspired by these Weight Training Workout Trackers (props to Corrie Haffly for the awesome designs!).  Voila:

I think it will be fun to see how much I can improve and progress in the next 30-60 days.

On a different topic, I'd like to quickly thank everyone who has commented and emailed me through this web site!  Initially I wasn't getting alerted of the replies to my posts, so I didn't get some of the feedback until a while after it had been left.  But I do greatly appreciate each and every comment and email and hope to see more of them!

Me and drummer Greg HipskindThe lineup for Caroline's Spine was slightly different this time around. It was a total surprise too see a drummer who looked very familiar and turned out to be Greg Hipskind, who also plays with Wicked Liz and the Bellyswirls, a band with whom we played at Chicks Rockfest in Cincinnati a few years ago.  Greg put on a strong performance with Caroline's Spine, and he also kindly shared his drum kit with me.  His setup is slightly different from what I'm used to, with the higher toms further off to the left and the ride cymbal in between the rack toms and the floor tom, so that posed a little challenge, but overall it was fun to play and sounded great.

Pearl WinglocGreg clued me in to an extremely cool piece of hardware which I hadn't tried before: the Pearl WL200 Wingloc.  I've seen a lot of "quick release" wingnuts over the years, but these were by far the handiest.  They enable you to securely lock your cymbal on the stand very quickly, without having to thread the wingnut all the way to the cymbal.  This is extremely efficient and particularly useful in situations such as Saturday night, when we traded out cymbals during a quick set changeover.  They cost significantly more than traditional wingnuts, but I think it is worth it for the savings of time and the annoyance of flying wingnuts (if you've ever put a cymbal on a stand, you know exactly what I'm talking about!).  I love seeing traditional drum set and hardware evolve with these cleverly engineered solutions.

We performed a 90-minute multimedia set, which included videos and backing tracks on some songs, so I was playing with a metronome for a portion of the show. It worked really well this time around, but I still need to find some headphones that are comfortable and don't fall off while I'm performing.

This proved to be useful in observing some things while playing at rehearsal this week.  For one, my balance shifts fairly significantly when I sing. It's clear that I'm leaning more than I should be into the microphone.  So for tonight's show I'm going to try setting up the mic stand in a way that is more conducive to good posture.

Additionally, although this is an obvious aspect of drumming, I became even more aware of the core muscles used in staying balanced on the throne while all four limbs are a-flailing. I'm glad my new workout regimen has a lot of challenging core/balance exercises; it will be interesting to see how this affects my drumming.

I'm currently in the van on my way to La Crosse, where Sunspot will be opening for Caroline's Spine, a band I really enjoy listening to and seeing live. So going into the show with the anticipation of seeing them makes me even more excited to play.  I'm not sure if I'll be using my drum kit or not (last time their drummer - who by the way did an exceptional job of playing - shared his), so that could be a challenge. I'm sure it will be a blast either way, though!