Pagan Studios & Drum School

Click here to support Mason's medical journey by Tatiana Johnson Hi all, With our latest news I have given in and decided to take many peoples advice and start this fund for some support on our(Masons) medical journey…. ..........Back story........ Mason has had a fairly uneventful first few years of life if we skip past …the reflux from birth requiring ong...

Here's what we (or at least, I) have been up to. Download it for free and then get your kids to show you how to get it to work through the record player.

Colours In Light And Shade, by Triumvirate 10 track album

Here's what we've been up to

Triumvirate - Summer Daze Taken from the album Colours In Light And Shade Triumvirate is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Jesse Page. Bathe in the self indulgent musical w**k...

I woke this morning to find out that the band I have idolised since childhood and who inspired me to play music are doing ads for an Italian suit company. This hasn't sat right with me all day, and since I haven't had an online whinge for a while, I thought this would be a good opportunity to dust off the digital soapbox and p*e into the wind for a while.

Metallica are no strangers to upsetting their fans. People have been accusing them of selling out since their second album, and whether it's because they write the odd partly mellow song or they've slowed down or they've gotten a bluesy country vibe for a while or because Kirk's leads have too much wah or because they got rid of Kirk's leads for an album or because they worked with Lou Reed or because they had a symphony backing, one thing remains certain: a convincing argument can be made that the artistic direction they have chosen has been true to their wishes, and that they have maintained their integrity.

Their extra-musical activities have also caused outrage amongst the fans, be it the short hair and makeup phase or Lars and Kirk making out in public or the band suing Napster. If you care about how a band looks, then feel free to hate away, but as far as I'm concerned, how you dress and who you choose to swap spit with has no impact on your integrity as an artist. Lars came across as a spoiled rich dick during the Napster issue however, again, the case is clear that behind all of his hubris and ignorance was an artist (however rich and spoiled you might think he is) that simply wants to maintain control of who profits from his art.

While many people dislike the band because of this stuff, it's one of the reasons I love them: they don't play it safe. This band takes risks. Filming a documentary that captured the all-too-human trials of the band and brought them down off any pedestal that they might have been placed on, playing in Antarctica, creating a festival tour, making a 3D movie - these were bold moves that, at least to me, seemed like a band who has really achieved everything there is to achieve, using their time and resources to pursue their wildest dreams. I admire artists who make creative decisions without concern for how people might react. That is integrity, and I am inspired by those who have it. Say what you will about Metallica and their integrity up until this point, but I believe at every junction there is enough of a reasonable argument to at least keep the ball in play. However, I believe that line has been crossed today.

This is Metallica - a band who once fought for the rights to their music to ensure it wouldn't wind up on an ad for Pepsi - wh***ng themselves out to the highest bidder. This is Krusty the Clown shilling the Canyonero. This is the kind of thing that Gene Simmons does, and just in case anyone was confused, Gene's got artistic integrity like I've got super powers. I mean, I can run around the house in underpants and a cape all I want, but I’m yet to take flight.

But what REALLY upsets me today? It's not even that my idols have failed to live up to my expectations of them (I'll admit that I wanted to say betrayal here, but these four men owe me absolutely nothing and so it would have been nothing more than a vitriolic statement). What really upsets me is that my concerns will be lost among the usual bandwagon jumping hatefest that meets Metallica at every turn and will never be addressed. The vast majority of negative statements online are simply that wearing suits isn't metal and that they look like they did during the Load / Reload era and how 'I'll never listen to your music again'... You know what? Metallica can don the spandex pants again and start wearing eyeliner and I'd still listen to them. They can get around in mankinis, for all I care. They can take up the lute, release an album of medieval folk tunes and play at LAARP events and I won't complain! Hell, they could even hire a keyboard player if they wanted - none of this affects their integrity. What you do NOT get to do as an artist is sell yourself for advertising - because if your voice is for sale, then everything you say is suspect.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe this is no different to bands selling shirts and doing endorsement deals with guitar companies and the like, but I think there is a difference. A BIG difference.

'Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll call forever - end of story.' Bill Hicks

We have another baby on the way and so I finally went and did it - I got a real job. This means that after nearly three years in business, Pagan Studios & Drum School is closing its doors. To mark the occasion, I'm going to indulge you with one last rambling wall of text.

A little while ago, while attending a play center with Scarlett, I saw a lady wearing a shirt with a slogan that made me smile. Now, there is always the chance that this is some trendy new gumpf designed by a marketing team to shift cheap clothing at an 8,000% markup by printing an uplifting message on it that you sort of hope the Bangladeshi sweatshop workers cannot understand simply to spare them the adding of insult to injury, but I am trying my hardest to be less cynical, so I'm going to assume it's not. In doing so, I'm also trying my best to put aside my condescending opinions of bumper sticker philosophy and "ain't life grand" style cheer. What did the shirt say?

'Less attitude, more gratitude.'

I could not agree more. If there is one thing this world really needs now more than ever, it is for us to spend more time realising how well we actually do have it and how much we can do for those with less, rather than whining because we don't have more. The other reason I raise this is because I want to express some gratitude, as well.

Three years ago, I quit my job and left full time employment for the first time in more than a decade in order to study. I have done some really sucky jobs in my time, and part of me knew that by taking this journey, I'd likely have to return to doing that kind of work. One day, while looking at ads for sucky jobs, I posted an ad online for drum lessons and later that week, opened the doors of Pagan Studios to a few students. Over the next few months, it grew to the point that I was turning students away. I have had children in here who were 5 years old, and I've had grown ups in their 80s and I have been privelidged to share in their experiences of music.

I am truly sad to see the studio close. I've made some really great friends over the years and it has always been a blast, but to be honest with you, I never expected it to actually work. I can only imagine what you must have thought when your GPS told you that you had arrived and realised that we were not a music shop; walking through that door and having your eyes adjust to the darkness to realise that you're actually in somebody's garage (especially before the curtains went up!). I expected at least half of you to turn around and drive away, yet not one of you did and I'm very grateful for that. More than this though, I want to thank every single recording client and student and parent we've had through our doors - past and present. Because of each and every one of you, I was able to work for myself doing something that I enjoy and set my own timetable. Because of you, I have been able to balance the business with my studies and my family life. Were it not for you guys, I would've missed out on so much of the wonderful time I have been able to spend with my little girl and so from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely thank you.

So while there's still a handful of recording jobs to finish off before we're closed for good, tonight will see the last drum lesson taught at Pagan Studios and Drum School. We'll be keeping the page open so feel free to drop us a line and tell us what you've been up to. Thanks again for all of your support!

Much love, Jess.

Happiness is a 12 piece :D

I'm having one of my guru days today, so please take a deep breath, relax and enjoy some wisdom that I promise wasn't written while on the toilet...

James Hetfield might as well have been god to me growing up. In every picture of him and in every piece of footage I ever saw, he just looked in charge. I'm sure there are millions of other kids out there who saw him the same way and to a lot of us, he became a role model - a perfect example of making your own path in life and staying true to yourself regardless of what others think. I'm also sure there are millions of other fans out there who have watched their live vids so many times that they've memorised his stage banter, too (come see me when you've memorised the band commentary track from Some Kind Of Monster!). How much has it really changed? I mean, sure, he drops the F-bomb a lot less these days, but when you see them a few times on the same tour, you realise that he says the same thing at the same time to every crowd every night, which I always put down to him just having played so many shows and wanting to relax a bit in his less-younger years. But then, when I think about it, he's kind of always done that...

What is odd though is that the older I get, the more I notice how wrong my early perceptions of him were. I was on a Youtube journey a while back and spent hours watching live videos of them and it finally dawned on me: he's shy. Like, he's REALLY shy. As soon as the band was playing, he'd be okay, but when it was just him talking to the audience, you could see that he was trying really hard to cover up his shyness. I've seen interviews with a sober Hetfield where he talks about being shy, but being told something and understanding something are two different things. Suddenly, he made much more sense to me and became less of a god and more of a man, at least in the sense of my relatability to him. (I mean, c'mon - it's James freakin' Hetfield! He's still a god!) This all got me thinking - do we really think of celebrities as people?

I really don't pay any attention to those famous-for-the-sake-of-being-famous kinds of people, so I can't really comment on them. Musicians, writers, actors - that's who I care about. I like the artistic and the creative folk! Now, while I can't relate to the Maserati, the mansion and the supermodel, what I can relate to is criticism. Face to face, people are usually pretty gentle with expressing their feelings, however, the internet removes the possibility of being headbutted and so people say some really brutal things about these creative people and their work. Now, if there were millions of people talking about you, you'd want to know what they were saying and it isn't hard to find out these days. Say you've had an artistic vision and you write an album, but between the producer and the label, they've basically warped it until it's something completely different from what you originally wanted to make and you know it sucks. How upset would that make you? Now think about all of those comments we leave on line and imagine someone wrote that about you.

Before you even say it, I know what you're thinking. 'Well, sure! It might suck a bit, but I'd happily put up with that if I was getting paid millions of dollars.' Would you though? How about for one million? How about a quarter of a million? How much would you charge to be okay with people bullying you; to feel depressed and rejected? Sure, plenty of people feel that way without the money, but I'm sure those people are the first to admit that money, while being useful, isn't going to fix how they feel. Money is not the cure for depression and it isn't a shield against being bullied - take a look at Kurt Cobain if you disagree.

Just because you don't like a person doesn't necessarily mean you should be rude and nasty to them simply because you can do so anonymously and far beyond the reach of a headbutt. Next time you're going to say something nasty about a famous person, ask yourself whether you'd say it any differently if they were standing in front of you. It's easy when you're just a face in the crowd and they're separate from you, but when they become a person just like you, you start to understand that what you say might be really hurtful to them because they might not be as invincible as you think they are. And yeah, they probably won't see it or hear it and it probably won't make a difference to them at all anyway, but even if that's the case, why waste your time on being negative? Your life is ticking away one second at a time so why waste ANY of it doing something that might hurt someone else? Just be nice and get on with your day! Now, I know that what I'm proposing would mean that we all have to stop hate-tweeting One Direction, but I think it's only fair - if we stick together and support each other through this, we can find new constructive hobbies that will help fill the void.

Here's an idea - why not learn to play drums!? That's an awesome hobby! It just so happens that we can help you with that, so give us a call to book your lesson today! Other than that, just be nice to each other.

Truth.

No I shouldn't go on The Voice, and Here's Why. Something I hear almost as often as "Can you play Wonderwall?" from my audience members is "You should go on the Voice" or "Australia's Got Talent" or "Australian Idol" or "X-Factor" or whatever th...

I don't know about you, but I love time signatures. As a drummer, getting stuck in to music that weaves in and out of a bunch of different timings makes me feel like a happy little deer running through the forest. Of course, every once in a while, deers get eaten by other stuff and that's how I feel when someone wants to argue time signatures with me. Do deers even live in the forest? I don't spend a lot of time in the bush as you can probably tell, but we're not here to discuss my dependence on the comforts of suburban living, we're here to talk time signatures. Or at least, the language of musicians.

First of all, I'm not going to lecture you about what time signatures mean (I can do that in the comments, if you'd like), but how musicians interpret them. I've been involved in situations where I'll be trying to figure out part of a song and I'll realise that it's in 5. Done. Sorted. I can play along now without any hassles. That is, until someone else pipes up (and it always seems to be keys players for some reason... Seriously, what's wrong with you guys!?) that it's actually in 10/8, not 5/4. Even this doesn't bother me so much as the tone with which it is said, and that makes me apoplectic (which is a fancy way of saying 'really, really angry').

Now, did you notice how my count was only one number? I never said 5/4, I said 5. Why? Well, because I understand the game I play. I've learned after a long time of playing in bands that the more simple something is, the better. I find that while I understand time signatures, many people who aren't drummers don't understand them and there's much less confusion if we stick to only saying one number. If a part is in 5, then we count to 5 in that part. Simple! I can hear the music nerds out there losing their minds at this. I'm not saying there is no difference - there's a massive difference and it is really important if you're trying to work something out that you know the difference, but to the band as a whole, the important thing is that you all play together. Let me put this a different way so that all the music nerd drummers stop freaking out: have you ever based your drum part off the key of a song? Okay then.

Cutting things back and making them more simple for you and your band to understand is like using slang among your friends. So long as everybody within your group understands exactly what is going on, there is no problem. Let me give you an example. Within the walls of almost every jam room I've ever been in, a "bar of music" usually refers to one pass through the guitar riff. So if we're trying to practice the transition from a verse to a chorus, we might play two "bars" of the verse and then go in to the chorus. Now, in reality, one pass through the guitar riff might be 16 bars of actual music (this is where that second number comes in), but by working out amongst ourselves a system that works for us, we've managed to get by without confusing anyone into a coma by saying 'play the last 32 bars of the verse!'.

Now, back to the keyboardist who has their head tilted slightly to the side and the glint of superiority in their eyes. It's only happened to me a few times, but they will lecture the rest of the band after we've stuffed the song up on exactly why it's 10/8 instead of 5/4 - and they'll be right - but we'll still stuff the song up. Why? Because they didn't keep it simple. So that's the message for today! Don't make things harder on yourself than they already need to be! (And appreciate that non-drummers struggle with basic things like timing because, well, they're just not as good as us.)

Of course, once you do understand the complexity of it, it makes it much easier to move between other bands and if someday you do happen to play with a group who already understands it all, you won't feel left out. We can teach you - we have the technology! Give us a call to book your drum lessons today!