The New Gigging Drummer

No matter what length of time you've been playing the drums, there comes a point when to get the most from this instrument you really have to join a band, or at least jam with a few like-minded friends. Drumming alone at home is great fun, but not a patch on the excitement of playing along with other musicians and really driving a band. If you are just starting out on this path, I hope you will find this article useful.. I've drawn on my many years of experience as a performer, and hope to help you get the most from your music.

Firstly, you do not need to be a brilliant player to benefit from playing in a band... If you look hard enough there are always opportunities to play along with others... maybe a jam session at the local pub, a church music group, or a small band with a few old friends, all of these are a great way to expose you to playing live.

Perhaps you've been having regular drum lessons, have got a good sense of rhythm and know enough beats and fills to be able to play along with backing tracks of some of your favourite songs.... well now's the time ditch the backing tracks and find some real musicians. Check out the notice board in your local music shop for musicians wanted adverts, or check the local paper or even the internet (there are now several websites dedicated to bands/musicians wanted). As already mentioned, local Jam nights are a great starting point..you can go along and if you feel confident enough get up and perform one or two songs with the house band in a relaxed atmosphere. This should give you the boost you need and these places are often packed with other musicians looking for bands.. who knows who you could meet??

How Much Should You Practice, As a Beginner?

As a beginner, you might be asking yourself many questions; one of those questions is certainly how much you should practice when first learning how to play the piano. This is an age-old question and there is no particular answer. However, there are a few things you should know when you practice the piano in order to decide how often and for how long you should be sitting at the piano in a given week.

First of all, the key when learning anything new - musical or not - is consistency. Your brain needs to be subjected to that new thing you are learning on a consistent basis in order to truly assimilate the information. This is a mistake that many piano beginners make, unfortunately. They'll either go to their lessons once a week and think that this is all you need to learn how to play the piano, or they'll sit down for a few hours one day and practice without ever coming back to the instrument for the rest of the week.

Think about it: if you were learning a new language, you'd have to practice it and have frequent conversations with a native speaker in order to keep it up and learn new words. If you were learning how to solve mathematics equation, you'd have to work on it frequently before you can really say that you 'know' how to solve this equation. The same goes with playing music. Regardless of what instrument you play, you'll have to practice if you want to improve and become better. There is no fast tracking and there is no way one day of practice a week will help you. So, what you need is to make sure that you practice the piano at least 5 days a week. Everyday is better, if you can pull it off, but not everyone's lives allow them to do so.

Movie Review of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I have a confession: Tom Cruise is my own personal enigma. Time and time again, I cannot explain how I manage to find this man to be mindblowingly arrogant and quite frankly, a general weirdo, and yet I have LOVED just about every movie I have ever seen him in. It's like a twisted form of admiration that even I don't quite understand, because I am serious when I say this: I REALLY don't like him. And yet true to form, by the end of MI-4, I was under that spell again.

THE GOOD: Blamed for the recent bombing of the Kremlin, the IMF is shut down and all members are disavowed, which leaves Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his fellow agents on their own to clear the agency's name and prevent another attack-this one designed to be on a more frightening scale. Joined by agents Benji, the tech nerd (Simon Pegg), the beautiful Jane(Paula Patton), and desk jockey analyst Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Ethan is in a race to stop Hendricks (played by Michael Nyqvist), a lone terrorist who has managed to steal Russian nuclear codes. As in every previous Mission film, there is no shortage of action and intrigue, but this one seemed to have exceeded them all, thanks in no small part to the much advertised scene of Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa in Dubai-the world's tallest skyscraper. There's been a lot of talk about the fact that a stunt man was NOT used in this scene, implying obviously that Tom did it all on his own. I haven't been able to independently dispute or confirm this, but may I just say that if it IS true, I have gained an entirely new level of admiration for this man. I still don't like him, but you have to have some healthy respect for someone who is willing to do a stunt like that. I think it also cements the fact that there's something not quite right in his head too, but there's no need to get into that here.

The Magic That Is Harry Potter

The story of Harry Potter is found in a popular series of seven fantasy books written by the British author JK Rowling. The hero in these stories is the character of Harry Potter. The fantasy in these books revolves around magic. Harry is born a wizard and therefore has the power to perform magic. He realizes that there are many other magic people on earth who are witches and wizards and who live unknown amongst the 'Muggles', or normal people who have no magic powers. When Harry is eleven years old a letter is sent to him that invites him to attend Hogwarts, a boarding school for young wizards and witches. Each of the seven books in the series tells the reader about a year of Harry's life at his school, the people he meets at the school, what he learns, as well as his adventures.

There have been over 450 million copies of the book series that have been sold as of mid 2011, and the books have been translated into sixty-seven languages. The idea for the character and the books came to the author's mind while waiting on a train that was delayed on the way to London in 1990. Her first book was completed in 1995 and the publishers asked her to use a more gender neutral name in case boys would be put off reading an exciting novel written by a woman. Harry's birthday is on July 31st, which happens to be the author's birthday as well.

Sister Dorothy and the Fate of the Amazon Rainforest

What a powerful, visceral movie! They Killed Sister Dorothy was amazing! I could not finish it because I was too upset, but my friend told me the end. Having spent a good deal of time myself in Brazil, I can relate deeply to the attitudes represented in this documentary. Both that if the ranchers, the workers and the PDS participants.

There are several groups of actors in this movie. The ranch and sawmill workers that want to make a living cutting trees and tending to cattle that will become dinner on the plates of middle and upper class Brazilians. There are the ranch owners like "Taradao" ("Sleazy" in English) that care most about maximizing their profit at the expense of the trees and soil of the Amazon (the lungs of the world, second only in carbon sequestration to the deep ocean).

Next we have Americo Leal, literally, Americo (taken from America) Loyal. Americo is the lawyer defending the man that killed sister Dorothy. He claims that Dorothy was not a nun. She was an agent of the U.S. government sent to the Amazon in disguise as a nun to start an uprising in the Amazon so that we North Americans could ultimately take over the Amazon and enjoy the wealth of its resources. This man makes me ashamed of the human race.

And then there is Sister Dorothy and her landless followers that want to live sustainably...or so they claim. One of Dorothy's opponents says that her plan for the PDS (Sustainable Development Project) is not "sustainable." What he means is that the small-scale agroforestry style plan put forth by sister Dorothy will not create new logging and ranching jobs for people like him. Ah, the ever sacred claim of new jobs. This sounds very familiar. It is a claim not infrequently made by American politicians when they are trying to get elected. But exactly what kind of jobs is he talking about?