[drumming diary] Rehearsal and the creative process

Rehearsal with Lindsie last night, and I got there early enough to work out for a while beforehand. Mostly to just play, as I've been remiss in getting down to the practice space regularly since we moved in last month. After some freeform grooving and soloing, I blasted through most of Marvin "Smitty" Smith's rudimental warmup, with the added bonus of making it through one or two of the stickier spots. I messed around with single/double combinations between hands and feet, and some weird metric modulations with paradiddles, when the band arrived.

Mostly, we worked on a couple of new songs, one (as yet unnamed) of which is largely fleshed out, musically, and one ("Starlogic") that isn't. At least not by the entire band, as Lindsie has been working on it with Larry outside of rehearsal. Unfortunately, Larry couldn't make it, so we couldn't tackle it full-on. Same goes for "I Don't Know," which needs some work under the hood before our next show. Or at least enough work that we don't have to revert to the old version. Same goes for "Mouse," which actually started coming along. The bridge still feels largely air-dropped into the middle of the song, so we'll have to work on transitions.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going on "Starlogic" yet. Last night, it seemed like a good idea to lay really far back. Just simple kick/snare (with the snares off) in the verses, with no ride pattern at all, and a slight pick up into the chorus. Of course, this got me back to one of those peculiar dilemmas where I've got my foot keeping time on the downbeat in the verse and the upbeat in the chorus. That never, ever sounds right to me, so I'll have to play with it a bit. We didn't get far enough into the song for me to see if anyone was digging it, but we'll try again Sunday.