The first ever second consecutive Jam Night at Breuekelen Coffee House TOMORROW!

It's that time again, y'all.

   Breukelen Coffee House will again play host to Secondary Sound Jam Night tomorrow, October 18th 9pm!  We've got great musicians, artists, writers, producers, deejays, emcees, and more joining us from Crown Heights and beyond!  All creative or otherwise interested folks are invited to check out amazing music improvised in the moment.  

   Last week we had a blast with Charlie Porter and Freddy Gonzales rocking a mini improv brass section, and we want more!   We look forward to many others joining the voice of Brooklyn, so come lend yours!  Beginners are encouraged to wet their feet in a positive, creative space with amateur and professionals alike.  Remember: there are no wrong notes.

   BYOB and bring your own instruments (though as of now we have a drum kit and an acoustic/electric guitar available) to BCH tomorrow night to see and create the best of what our nucleus of culture has to offer.  You might find exactly what you're looking for..

-Aaron Cotler

--Secondary Sound

P.S. As always, feel free to email if you have any questions, or are interested in donating your time, instruments, money or ideas.

Don't Tell Them It's Hot Outside, Make 'Em Pray for A/C.

   “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.“  -E.L. Doctorow

   I read this at Get Published page at Wordpress - I'm doing some late night pokin' around on the interwebzorz for research. Like, real research and not "research kept open in a background window just in case mom walks in" research. Don't act ignorant.

   I respect music that doesn't scream to make its point heard. I suppose this is why classical music is held in high regards in ivory tower thought-ista barracks - is it not the most subtle genres of music? Soft, lilting oboes are mammoth migrating animals, piccolos a flitting, fleeting birdling and a single drum the inexorable march of some terrible army.  Not heard are trumpets, birdcalls or gunfire - the rest of the scene is filled in by the listener's brain.

   Youthful pop music is dripping with straightforward, linear storytelling, where the listener can easily inject themselves into the "you" or "me" personae scattered throughout the tune.  Not that straightforward simplicity doesn't have its proper time, place and enjoyment, but art is in leaving the right details out...purposeful ambiguity, people!

A dyptich by JM Rizzi (photo Steven P. Harrington)

   Found at Brooklyn Street Art, a killer blog for, you guessed it, Brooklyn street art.  More JM Rizzi stuff may be found at his blog - holler.

   It may be a cliche, but as Lisa Simpson says, you have to appreciate the notes a great musician isn't playing.  

"The Long and Winding Road" or "How I Stopped Worrying and learned to Love Not Knowing What The Hell I am Doing"

I feel like I have too many plans and desires for the future.  Hell, I have too many plans and desires for the present!

   Musically, I want to make a living playing drums at least part of the time.  Whether this means playing on the street 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, finding my way into studio work, club work, band work, pit work, or simply teaching remains to be seen.
   Playing on the street would be the easiest, it seems - pick up a few showmanship tricks and play around New York on my days off either to drumless tracks of classic songs, or with other musicians.  This will push me to get better in every area of percussion until my talent forces the hard-earned money out of tourist's wallets. This sounds ideal - at least part-time it could be a healthy chunk of supplemental change.

Alternatively, to get myself into studio or pit work, I will have to take lessons to get much better than I am now to keep up with the caliber musician with which I would be surrounded.  As I understand, getting a foot in the door is the slippery part - apparently remedied by taking on drum teachers in the NYC area involved in pit or studio work and ingratiating myself to them until a job comes down the line that could possibly be passed on to me.  

A busking or studio gig supplemented by tending bar sounds like a much more viable and satisfying option.  Getting a bar job in New York is, as one may gather, not a piece of cheesecake.  Apparently it helps to have an 'in' to the bars with which I'd like to be in, which involves no end of wheeling, dealing, and verbal canoodling.  Alternatively, I could drink repeatedly at the bars in which I'd like to work, hoping all the aforementioned schmoozing would lead to at least a barback position from which I could work up to bar tender.  This seems like a long and treacherous road, but maybe it won't be, if I'm lucky enough to woo somebody who believes in a long shot.

So I have unconsciously decided to do a little of everything - in bullet form!

• Build a travel-ready drumkit to take to the streets with optional musicians
• Petition connected drummers in the NY area for lessons - I'm looking at you, Tommy Igoe!
• Audition - who else but Blue Man Group would take me?
• Alternatively pay for lessons at a school - Bang!  In Brooklyn or Julliard Evening Classes?  Oh the options..
• Continue informal lessons with neighbors - also useful for bartering.
• Work with new bands and fresh artists for reputation building.
• Involve myself musically and bartendrally with local business .
• Fluff my resume with NYC bar experience - for the craigslist.
• Schmooze and booze at bars where I'd like to work - subject to financial and physiological limitations, inefficient, but fun.
• Start from the bottom again - In keeping with "never move backward, always forward" mantra, convince myself that a potential Barista job in Brooklyn is a step forward from Waiter in Manhattan (which I had to previously convince myself was a step forward from Bartender in San Francisco) and that it can eventually lead to tending bar - It's pretty much an assured natural progression
•  Step 9: Profit.

Yeah, so I don't know if anything I'm doing will ultimately lead to where I want to be, but it can't be any worse than graduating after years of school only to find the economy of your field has withered with the supersaturation of overqualified talent.  And at least my way is exciting sometimes.

Non-Sequitorial

I'm having a glorious time here. 

I'm in one of those lately rare places where I can step outside of everything with which I'm unsatisfied and see that, in the scope of things, I'm having quite an amazing time here.

We made it through our first year, and it was a da-hoozy of a year, which it would have been had we not moved to New York.  But, upon passing this first year mark:  I have taken my drum to the street, my first gigging band played its 6th gig together, my incredible girlfriend, Candice Chetta has embraced and raised up burgeoning artists and has shown her own art in Brooklyn.

Sure, I'm not behind a bar yet.  Sure I don't have my absolute ideal cymbals for the drum kit.  Sure, it's about to get hot, humid, and muggy (probably record-settingly high levels of each).  Sure, there's bombs misfiring, or whatever down the street from my work a massive depression on the horizon.  I sound like my father.


But none of that stuff really matters because it'll all be fixed eventually.  With patience, faith, luck, and foolhardiness, everything will be solved if you keep your compass trained on what it is you want and let it wander when you aren't sure. 

I apparently didn't really pick up my father's pessimism.  And between Coelho's absolute faith in trusting your "Personal Legend," Rilke's assurance that "being an artists does not mean counting in numbers and years, but ripening like a tree, who stands confidently through the storms of winter that spring will come," and Lennon's "there's nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time,"  I'm feeling pretty positive about eventually discovering what I'm meant to be doing here.  Maybe it's just learning how to search.

Tomorrow is my day off.  I am going to sleep like a log baby tonight.  To Brooklyn.

First student, Franklin: Success!

My first student, Frank from the Breukelen Coffee House just left, following a very successful lesson. I started our friend on a basic rock beat last week, and he came back today with everything fleshed out in his mind, and after an hour of working on hand and feet skills, was able to play an eighth note rock pattern to a metronome. It was a beautiful thing. Nice job Frank!

I am now about to leave for band practice, reinvigorated and recharged. I'm antsy to take my little traveler kit, The Alchemist, on the road. I would really like a few upgrades: a bass drum mount for a little crash cymbal, with a little crash cymbal maybe, and a small throne. After those first are acquired I will feel confident enough to take to the streets.

Also on the to-do list is business card production, gigging with the band, writing new tunes, rounding out the unwieldy ones, and staying sane.

I decided today to do it the hard way.

I had a very interesting Easter.

Let this not be mistaken: it had nothing to do with Easter per se, or anything religious at all for that matter. Or maybe it did.

I saw on the subway on the way to work two people - a young boy and an old man. There wasn't anything particularly striking about these two people except that they both reminded me exceptionally of myself. It's probably a normal thing to be searching for oneself at this mid-twenty year point in life, and probably just as normal to look for the self in another person.

Anyway, this boy was an explainer. He was explaining the best way to stand to his father, with respect to the shifting of the subway train at the moment of stopping. I think I solved an equation like that for calculus. I digress - the kid reminded me of me.

The old man walked onto the train, and asked if the train was going to a certain street (which it was), sighed "oh" with a trace of sadness, and shuffled to a seat next to me with the help of a cane. I don't know what it was about this man in particular that struck a chord, but he did.

At work, a tall man who could have been 5 to 10 years older than I sat at a table. I didn't serve him but I got a good look, and if his curly hair, thick-rimmed glasses and facial hair didn't closely match mine, I saw something familiar in his eyes.

Later in the night, as I'm waiting for the last tables to leave, I get into a conversation about drumming with a family as I'm relieving a fellow server of his duty. Immediately after hearing I play drums she exclaims, "Oh! I can't wait to take drum lessons! I have to get myself a little more stabilized and centered and my neighbors probably won't like it..." and so on. I also mention that I'd like to be behind a bar instead of on the floor, to which she says "Oh you shouldn't do that... You seem like so much more of a drummer - you should just do that all the time..play drums all the time"

So, after this strange day of brushing by people who reflect some part of my self to me, I decided to take this strange, drunk lady's advice. I will strike out to the streets of New York and schlep through Brooklyn to play drums. I will write about it and document it.

The most interesting way to do something is to do it the hard way. And if there's one way I'm really good at doing things..