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.

Two Bits

I had a dream three nights ago that it has taken until now to process.

   It was a dream filled with amorphous anxiety - numerous details escape me but two fine points of the night remain - one moment I remember: I'm swept out to sea from the deck of a ship.  I'm in a fur coat, for some reason (apparently I have hoes to choke in my dreams).  I sink below the water, the coat welling up above me, and I watch the sky disappear in a blobs of brick red fox pelt and aquamarine murk.
   Another dream: same night, same anxiet - Apparently I am able to cast magic spells?  Thanks to Alden for planting the seed of Sorcery in my subconscious, because it makes good dream fuel.  That's a topic for an other entry because, unfortunately, in this part of the dream I had no choice in which spell I cast.  I felt the power in my fingers, but I needed to conjure water to put out a fire and all I could manage was a fruit jam of some kind.  I attempted again and again different strengths and purpose of spell but to no avail.

   For the next two days, stress dandruff rained from my scalp, stress pimples broke out on my forehead, and stress bears roamed the streets of Brooklyn in search of honey.  These are all known symptoms of extended Cotler stress bubbling under the surface.  Except for the bears.  They just roam freely here.

   Feeling out of control, powerless, stressed, angry, and frustrated, I had to do something.  So, Chetta shaved my head:

Before

After

Knight to Rookie's six.

   My first time playing music with Hash Brown was about forty minutes long, in an apartment, I on a snare drum and slip-sliding Bass drum.  It went well enough, so we played again.  The second jam was shut down by an irate super in an apartment surrounded (almost) exclusively by fellow musicians.

   Finally we wised up and rented a practice space in Prospect Heights, at Complete Music Studios Inc.  It was a fantastic space, with plent of room and a full back line - very classy.

   The jam went very well.  Grabbed a few snippets for possible future tunes.  At least I got to stretch my limbs and rock for the first time in about a month and a half - I hadn't realized how antsy and irritable I get without some sort of workout, musical or otherwise.  Hash's advice was "play what you feel."

   Lessons are going very well.  The challenge posed by transcribing music is similar to the challenge posed by getting back on a skateboard after years of bipedal movement.  The flags on my eighth notes are a little wonky and the quarter rests seem big to me, but otherwise points seem to be getting across.  

   Concepts of muscle memory are hard for me to put in to words - in my mind, at least, the point of practicing music is to attain mastery without thought so performance comes as through the performer, as movement happening through a body.  A body creating movement takes so much energy - the force required to start a body moving is greater than the force required to keep a body in motion moving.  

   Steve Sweet's Breukelen Jest Comedy Night was a freakin' smash.  Shout out to all the comics who entertained - hilarity ensued, even when rim shots were not forthcoming.  Wine flowed freely and the back space of Breukelen Coffee House converted beautifully into an open space for a stage, PA, and lighting:  

   Possible prospects, as always, are on the horizon.  Keep eyes and ears open for booking possibilities in the area.  If you, your friends, your local coffeeperson or bartender is looking to play out solo or with a band, I may have a space available in the near future.  Loose lips make blips - spread the word and keep your feelers out.  We'll talk soon.

"It's astounding that given some of life's luxuries, you can put up with a lack of its necessities."

Update:
   Following a period of mourning from leaving Kill The Huxter  for over a year, I have thrown myself back into music.  Conrad Sanguinetti, Rocco Malozzi and Nate Morgan were awesome dudes to make music with, and only reinforced my notion that in the East I find the nicest, most welcoming friends I could imagine.
 
   But, it's time to utilize the hibernational properties of wintertime to gather my energies together to grow my palette of musical tools, in theory to be unleashed when Spring arrives.
   Practice continues on pillows and pads, at least once a day - Either along with Pandora Radio or a metronome .  The giving of lessons has begun - a little extra cash on the side and a great new way to hone my own skills.  This coming Monday I am planning on being part of the house band for Steve "Sweets" Carr's first Breukelen Jest Comedy Show at Breukelen Coffee House along with Max Rose, multi-talented illustrator/ivory tickler.

   I have barely started to play music with some incredibly talented and driven folks from the neighborhood, and I am incredibly excited for the soon-tapped wealth of talent within a two block radius of my apartment.  More and more I find one rarely has to leave one's microneighborhood if one were so inclined.
 
   Between the above projects, practice, and blogging in an attempt to cast a sizable mark during my brief passing through this point in time.  Extra-strength deep, man.

   It is the last night of Channukah, and though I don't necessarily consider myself Jewish (and neither do the Jews, I'm told), but I am Jew-ish with the worry and the guilt and the glayven.  I'm approaching the one year anniversary of my father's passing, and I'm using the legend of the burning oil as an analogue for the fire that burns in everybody, and that it can burn longer and brighter than I would ever imagine, and faith is its fuel.

   We don't have much disposable income at the moment - After three of four jobs evaporated from under our feet, we find ourselves surprisingly able to make ends meet and any extra money is reinvested in our respective arts.  As you can see on the always honest Candice Chetta's corner of the internet, selling paintings , prints  and Vintage eye wear on Etsy is allowing us a bit of extra funds, but mostly we reinvest directly into our respective arts.  Candice is out of canvas and I am afraid she might start painting on the cats as they slink by.  It is a real fear.

I guess what I'm trying to say is

Stay tuned for the further adventures of Broccoli and Chetta.  My blog is linked to Facebook to Twitter to Reverbnation to Linkdin to the Skynet Mainframe.  Look forward to hearing lots more from me as I assault the internet cloud.  Pray for rain.

Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow

Many positive things are starting to happen in the area of music.  As the snow is starting to fall, prospects are once again heating up.

As you would see in the *new* Calendar section, I have my first drum lesson coming up TOMORROW, to a nice lady in Brooklyn.  I'm very excited to start a path of using my talent to give back.

As you might notice, I also have a gig planned, as the house band (with Damien Moore with the cool coos and Max Rose on ivories) for my good friend Steve "Sweets" Carr's comedy night, Breukelen Jest at the Breukelen Coffee House.

Come see one of the neighborhoods comedic masterminds "hone his act" (that's comedy lingo, BTW) with a handful of the rich talent from Crown Heights and beyond!  This will be the first Breukelen Jest ever - come have a drink and wonder where this life has been all your life.

Further details and awesomeness to follow - stay tuned!

Thanks for all the fish

    I figured Thanksgiving 2010 was as good a time as any to send up some smoke signals from this little corner of the intarnets.  I'm sitting on a purple loveseat with my astounding Candice Chetta.  We're enjoying each other's company listening to Dialated Peoples from our humble stereo setup.
   I'm so thankful for the young woman who has helped me realize a life I had only dreamed about, and without whom I would be lost.
   I'm thankful for my incredible health.  Nothing's promised, especially with these delicate Earthly forms and I've seen enough death to know I should never assume "it can't happen to me" because "it" can happen to anybody at any time.
   I'm thankful for my family.  I can barely comprehend how lucky I am to have been brought up by a warm, loving and supportive group of people.  Nothing was ever missing from my family life, a pretty damn rare experience.
   By the way, this is my job:

   

   So pretty much I have the most dope job I could ever ask for.  It's not filling my bank account right away, but I walk downstairs to my job of making extremely good coffee for a diverse, intelligent, talented and inspiring people.  I'm challenged and growing and discovering new aspects of my self and my relationship with the world every day.  

   I've always been told to reach for whatever it is I love to do, and I am thankful to have the mental and emotional capacity to believe in myself and that I can live a heaven on this Earth.

"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.