Blog

Greg Bimm Acceptance Speech - State of the Art Lifetime Achievement Award

One of the lessons Greg taught me was about a teacher he had once observed. This teacher told one of his assistants to go “fetch” him coffee. Greg said that he had immediately lost respect for this person. Every morning Greg makes 2 pots of coffee—one for himself and one for the rest of the Marian Catholic Staff. This is just one of many stories that demonstrates how special Greg is.

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March Spotify Drumming Playlist

Last month I released a blog post entitled “What a Metronome Cannot Teach” . In this post I breakdown how I use click tracks with my students to develop feel and the ability to play with other musicians. Check out this month’s new playlist for March. It features a tune that my younger brother Eli Way wrote with Finneas called Papercut. I hope that you enjoy a few of my favorite tracks that I currently have on rotation. If you have a tune you would like to see on a future Matthew Black Media playlist send it via the contact form below!

Happy drumming!

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Practice vs Rehearsal vs Performance

One concept all of my teachers tried to impress upon me was that you should rehearse just like you want to perform. At the time I disagreed but I didn’t know how to articulate why. I understood the point my teachers were trying to make but something about that verbiage didn’t feel complete to me.

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Broken Record Podcast

I’m loving the Broken Record podcast hosted by acclaimed producer Rick Rubin and author Malcolm Gladwell.

Bob Reynolds (sax player for Snarky Puppy) says “The episodes with Norah Jones, Andre 3000, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and producer T-bone Burnett are deep-dives into the creative process and the internal battles artists often go through to create their work. Had me silently nodding "Amen" quite a bit as I listened.”

Check out broken record on Spotify or wherever you consume podcasts!

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