My custom tabla have been built and delivered. They are beautiful and they sing richly and quickly and sweetly. Bonding with objects is something I'd forgotten about; I used to rub new pens in hopes that we would bond and I wouldn't lose them as quickly. But bonding with tabla is probably a matter of spending thousands of hours practicing...
I found a set of marching drums that I'm contemplating turning into a western-style drum kit. Giant bass drum and several snare drums of assorted sizes. They're ANCIENT and pretty janky, but they harbor serious warmth of tone and phenomenal character. The skins are all, well, real skins and the snares are made out of sinew. Mark Kaylor would go nuts. The problem is the guy wants 9,000 Rupees for the set ($225) which makes them like the most expensive things in all of India. He must have read the excitement on my face. I'm exploring some other channels to see if I can find an actual drum kit, but if not I'm hoping the marching drums are available for rent as the drumming jones are getting serious.
Oh, and we got a flat. It's big so come-on over. And bring a bass drum pedal and some quality chocolate while you're at it.
