Drumaoke, anyone?

Encore! A day after!

On Tuesday afternoon, I had a two-hour session of ‘drumaoke’ (coined by me to mean playing drums to music from a CD or VCD). I played mainly those songs which have interesting drum beats which included a couple from Maroon 5, Better man, Rod Stewart’s First Cut is the deepest, Pavarotti and friends’ Let it Rain with Jon Bon Jovi, and Se bastasse una canzone with Eros Ramazzotti, Santana’s Black Magic Woman and Oye Como Va, and Beyond’s Hoi fut thin hung, to name a few that comes to mind.

Yesterday after lunch, when I got back, the contractor doing renovation for a neighbour and two of his staff came over to ask if I were the one playing drums yesterday. They said, "Carry on, play more Mandarin songs... or anything!"

Just in case anyone thinks I am a good drummer, no, still amateur and yet to get it right with certain parts of most songs. But who cares? There is a big difference between practising to get it right and playing for fun and improving as I go along without pressure. Just compare the live version with recorded version by performers and you will get the drift. I am sure entertainers play according to the audience response. If they feel good, they tend to play better and more naturally instead of sticking to the music piece.

I first got interested in drumming, when my second brother took me to watch Holiday on Ice at the Stadium Negara many years ago, and I noticed a lone drummer playing with the recorded music, which is basically what my version of ‘drumaoke’ is about.

When Dominik was here on his first visit, his tight schedule allowed me to squeeze in only one song and I chose Se bastasse una canzone because he knew the song as he had spent a couple of years in Italy. Was he impressed?