Next!

Last night we auditioned a new drummer. It was the cute young girl that played drums with my friend a while back at his open mic night.

Looks like our old drummer is fired... well, if my friend gets the balls to do it. He wants to but can't get his act together and just say "Sorry dude, we can't have you turning up when you want, we want to play regularly"

The new drummer is pretty cool though. She's only been playing for a little over a year and last night she nailed every song my mate threw at her.

I suggested to him before hand that we only play covers because everyone has at least heard the songs on the radio or something. However at the end of the night, he pulled out an original.

He played it once to show her how it goes. We played it the second time while she sat there thinking about stuff and just lightly tapping her drums. Then the third time we played it all together and she nailed it!

I told my mate afterwards, she nailed it after 15 minutes. Our old drummer still hasn't got it after 12 months. He's a good drummer, but he's not a musician.

She knew where to stop playing, where to start playing. She knew where to hit the cymbals, where to do a roll. She was listening, she was getting it all happening.

I'm really really surprised. Not because I doubted her ability, but because she just got it all immediately and she's only been playing for a year. I was happy to have her around.

Now I just hope that she wants to jam with us because she is a younger girl, who also studies. I'd imagine nothing should get in the way of her university studies and realistically, I'm sure she's got friends who go out Friday and Saturday night, and I'd say she'd much rather do that then hang out with a couple of old farts trying to rock out on a Friday night in a rehearsal studio.

It'll be good if she can do it. She seemed like she wants to. However, much like most of the youth of today, she shows little expression so it was hard to tell from her body language if she enjoyed it too or not. I told my mate, give her a week to stew on it and then ask her.

Now, the only bad points to all this was that she's distractingly cute. I told my wife last night, "It's really difficult to play bass and watch boobs bouncing up and down". Hahaha.

Hmm, other than that, the other concern for me was that there was no immediate connection between her drumming and my bass playing. While it all worked really well, normally with a really good drummer, when I'm playing bass, it's almost like we lock into this mental link where we both know exactly what's happening and what's about to happen.

I didn't have that with her, but that could be because she's still green at this herself, she might have been nervous, despite doing a great job of not showing it. Or it's just her way.

Either way, while that wasn't there, her playing ability and her improvisation skills that worked so well with original music she's never heard before were there. She is a natural drummer, a good performer and a great musician. At least I think so with the way she performed last night. Good on her. I hope to jam with her again.