Músico a Músico (Musician to Musician) is hosting its third Praise and Worship Conference of 2004, for the Hispanic church at Christ Church, Nashville, TN on April 30 and May 1-2.

For the Nashville Congreso, I'll be playing drums for the Friday night concert, teaching four different workshops on Saturday, and playing again for the Sunday afternoon worship session. I was hoping to also be involved with the Argentina Congreso later in May, 2004 ... but my schedule didn't permit me to do so.

The purpose of this conference is to build up the body of Christ by inspiring and equipping Hispanic musicians, worship leaders and pastors, and to instill in them a desire for passionate excellence in their worshiping skills. Worship has become, for most Christians, the spiritual expression of the modern day church. For more information, registration and a complete schedule, please visit www.musicoamusico.org.

Well, I had a great time at Drum World 2005 in Dallas, TX.

I was displaying lots of Aquarian Drumheads, as well as a several drum thrones and guitar chairs by SoundSeat, who by the way just supplied Neal Diamond's entire band with SoundSeat chairs! The Drummer Cafe booth was also showing several demos of my custom correspondence video lessons ... now available through my new educational website, www.DrumSage.com.

SABIAN Cymbals had a booth two doors down. I got a chance to meet Jason Medynski from Sabian who was kind of enough to post a little something about my clinic on the Sabian forum. Here's a photo that Jason took of me during my clinic ... which is the only that I have now because I forgot to push RECORD on the DV Camera. I had planned to video tape my entire clinic from Sunday, but alas, I goofed.

Speaking of my clinic(s), the Saturday afternoon clinic was conducted on an entirely different set-up than shown in this photo. I used my Klong-Yaw like a kick drum (playing it with a DW foot pedal), plus a single-row, headed tambourine mounted on a snare drum stand, and my Cooperman Bendir (frame drum in above photo) which was also mounted on a snare drum stand but hand-held for a portion of my solo. Needless to say that the venue was so loud that my bare hands and the PA system just couldn't compete. So ... for the Sunday clinic, in a last minute decision, I decided to use my FIBES Kick and Snare drum, which I had just brought along for booth demos ... and incorporated the Bendir and a nice selection of Sabian cymbals in my set-up. I had never played my composition with this set-up   , and being that my clinic topic was "Creativity", I was definitely getting a rather abrupt chance to see just how creative I could be! I had only brought my Sabian 14-inch HHX Evolution HiHats, so Jason from Sabian was kind enough to quickly loan me a Sabian 16-inch HHX Evolution Crash and a Sabian 22-inch HH Artisan Ride. The Artisan series was just introduced at NAMM a few months ago ... and my clinic performance was the first time I ever got to play on one! Talk about an incredible sounding cymbal;  you've got to check them out! Thanks Jason!!!  The clinic on Sunday went 100 times better than on Saturday thanks to some last minute decisions/changes to my set-up.

During my clinic I demonstrated several tracks from my upcoming practice loop CD, playing various sticking exercises, grooves and fills with the tracks. The first CD will be finished soon ... so be watching for more about this here at the Drummer Cafe as well as DrumSage.com. The concept of the practice loop CD seemed to go over well, so I'm excited about getting it out to the masses in the next few months!

I had a great time getting to meet a number of you, including a lot of Drummer Cafe lurkers and my good friend Larry Lawless, who drove several hours just to hang for a bit and help with the Drummer Cafe booth. Thanks again Larry!