A few weeks ago, I completed a major home repair: A new roof on the back of my house! Keep in mind, I'm using the term "completed" liberally. The new roof is perfectly functional now, but there a few a details that are still awaiting completion. There is an old addition on the back of my house that has a very low-slope roof, that was leaking and in serious need of replacement.
The old roof. Note the high tech blue tarp.
Roofs with low slopes are more prone to leak, because water does not run off of them as easily, and any seams in the roofing material are more vulnerable to any wind-driven rain. Because of this, you can't really use shingles, like you normally see on a roof; you need to use larger roofing material, referred to as "roll roofing". When researching and planning, I decided to not only replace the roofing material, but the actual wood structure, the "sheathing", of the roof itself. Now that it's done, I'm glad I did this, but the process of replacing the sheathing was extremely difficult and labor intensive. The first, and most difficult step, was tearing up the old roof. The old rolled tar roofing material came up without too much trouble, but tearing up the old sheathing was tough. My sister Jordana and I demolished and replaced sections of the roof at a time, so that would still have some roof surface to work on.
Jordana tearing up old roof/being a beast
Our process was as follows: tear up 4 foot wide sections of roof (which includes the old tar stuff, the old sheathing, and all the nails), add plastic "baffles" to improve airflow above the fiberglass insulation, nail down a new piece of sheathing. As the roof became crowded with junk, we would carry down bags of demolished roof to the backyard, and every piece of new sheathing was carried and hoisted up from the rear deck onto the roof. Our bodies were very sore after the first day...I felt old. For the new roof sheathing, I chose to use a product called "zip sheathing", which is a typical sheet of OSB (a sort of "particle board" common in new home construction) that has an extra water resistant layer on the top.
ready for sheathing
If you read my first blog post about the construction of my drum shed, you might remember that I felt very disturbed when my partially completed shed was rained on repeatedly. I feel that this past trauma influenced my decision to purchase this water resistant building material. Before I continue, I feel that I should mention that, for this project, I bought a framing nail gun. I was a little hesitant at first because it wasn't cheap (even though I bought it used on eBay), but once work began, I was quickly reassured. It is amazing. It makes work go ten times faster. It looks cool. It makes a loud sound. What more could you ask for?
fully sheathed roof
Once all the sheathing was nailed down, my sister and I (basically all my sis on this one) taped over the seams of each sheet with special super amazing ultra sticky special magic sealing tape. Seriously, the stuff had extreme properties of adhesion. After the sheathing, it was time for the new roll roofing-I used a product that had 3 layers, called Flintlastic. The first layer is rolled out onto the roof, and simply nailed down with small roofing nails. The (optional) middle layer is rolled out, but then stuck down, like a big sticker, to the first layer, and the final top layer, the cap sheet, is laid out the same way. It doesn't sound very complex, but it was definitely a pain in the ass. There were a lot of small things to get
first layer nailed down
right: all the rolls had to be overlapped properly, and the ends of any roll can't be within 3 feet of each other from layer to layer. Also, the cap sheet required a significant amount of roofing cement for the overlaps, which I discovered is a horribly smelly and sticky (essentially impossible to remove from skin. I had am experienced friend recommend dousing the affected areas with GASOLINE) substance. My very clever and resourceful girlfriend Nicole devised a solution of warm water, coconut oil, and dish soap which helped me get the material off, while retaining most of my skin. I'm very glad it's done now, and I'm immensely satisfied to know that I have a roof that should last at least another decade and a half! Although, as with most projects I've done in this house, I end up discovering more problems. In this case, as the structure of the roof was exposed during demolition, I became aware that there were definitely some structural problems the old addition. It appeared that the original (possibly undersized) rafters of the roof had been pulling away from the main structure of the house for sometime, and that someone had tried to correct it at a later date by doubling up, or "sistering" new rafters onto the old ones, with varying degrees of success. Well, whatever. Can't deal with everything at once. THROW THAT FEELING OF DREAD RIGHT INTO THE TRASH CAN.
the cap sheet done!
During the demolition of the old roof, I threw some pieces of wood off the side of the house, and they smashed the exterior light outside the door of my basement apartment. I don't normally do any electrical stuff (scary), but I did manage to successfully (it turns on! what could possibly be wrong) replace the old light with a new heavy duty one that is significantly more awesome.
an awesome light
cleaned, sanded and sealed deck
The deck on the back of my house was looking very bad, and if left as it was, probably only had another year or two left in it before replacement became necessary. I cleaned a lot of junk off the deck, including huge piles of leaves.
If you'd like your deck to rot, I suggest you let piles of leaves sit on it for years. After clearing off the deck, I bought a deck cleaning product, and sprayed the deck with it, using a regular garden sprayer. After the deck dried off, I did a lot of sanding with a hand held orbital sander, over a few days. After replacing two rotted boards with new pressure treated 2x6s, I painted on a semi-transparent waterproofing stain. The deck looks and feels much better now, and will be weather protected for a several more years. I feel pretty good about it. More drum related stuff next time! I'm thinking exercises and techniques for playing uptempo (300+bpm) jazz time. Yes? Stay tuned!
A few weeks ago, I was in California, taking a vacation with my girlfriend Nicole, and also visiting my grandparents. During this trip, I put together and wrote my first and previous blog post, about the construction of my drum practice shed. While out in California, I obviously had no set of drums to practice on, only my trusty pad. So, while in the process of publishing my first post, I stumbled upon an idea for my next post: pad/hand stuff! Woo! The drum that I'm playing on in the videos below is a cool old WFL snare I fixed up. If the badge dates on this page are accurate, then my snare was made between 1948 and 1952.
I got this snare for super cheap at a thrift store when I was in high school, and forgot about until sometime last year, when I decided to make it playable again. The snare had been painted with some sort of flat house paint, and my first task was to strip that stuff off. To my surprise, as I was peeling and scraping to old paint off, I discovered the awesome white pearl finish underneath! Unfortunately, It was too damaged to keep, and I peeled and scraped that off as well, down to the bare wood. I ordered a new wrap, the closest thing I could find to the original, which was this beautiful white pearl finish from Jammin' Sam drum wraps. The original hoops were in poor shape and out of round, so I ordered some stock Gibraltar triple flange hoops, and some new 12 strand Puresound snare wires. When I bought the snare, it had no throw off, so I searched and successfully found a period appropriate, 1950s nickel throw off, with WFL engraved on it. I polished the remaining original hardware, put a fiberskyn on top, and it sounds and looks great!
I don't have a vast array of pad exercises that I work on, it's basically the same few things repeated ad nauseam. My basic warm up routine, that I begin most of my practice sessions with, is as follows.
1) Free strokes. I set my metronome around 55-60 bpm, and play through the first column of page 5 of "Stick Control", so that the 8th note=55-60. The physical mechanism behind this motion is explained well by Jojo Mayer in his DVD (in the chapter titled "Gladstone-Freestroke Technique", and also demonstrated masterfully by John Riley in this youtube video:
2) "Push-Pull/Throw-Catch" motion. I've seen this technique referred to by several different names, but it's all the same idea. I use this technique all the time when I play: I use it to execute double strokes, and also when playing the jazz ride cymbal pattern. Once it becomes subconscious and part of your muscle memory, this technique, for me at least, tends to just happen naturally when playing. I start very slow, and speed up through a few subdivisions. I also practice this motion with my hands unison, and separately. As you can see in the video, I can eke out 32nd notes (with the metronome at quarter=60) with my right hand, but not really with my left.
3) Fingers technique. This is really the only time I turn my hands fully into French grip when playing on the snare; I find that this positioning of the hand/wrist makes it easier to manipulate the fingers. I play 16th note triplets with my hands unison, and then I split it up into 32nd note triplets. I go back to the unison 16th note triplets so that I can switch which hand I lead the 32nd note triplets with.
4) Freaking out. After going through my routine, I like to just play for a minute or two, without thinking too much. I try to just let my hands "go", hopefully putting some of the previous techniques into spontaneous use. Important: Shake out your hands before the "spaz" portion of practice. Here's a video of me demonstrating all the elements of this pad warm-up. This is very condensed, when I do this in practice I usually take about 30 minutes-I typically watch something online as I do it to entertain myself.
In addition to this routine, there are two other things I periodically will add to my hand/pad practice. First, I like to occasionally read through something from the classic snare drum book, "Modern Rudimental Swing Solos" by Charley Wilcoxon. Many great jazz drummers have practiced material from this book, and it's full of hip rudimental stuff that can be adapted to the drum set. During my ten days in California, I worked on a solo called "Swinging the 26". I'm not sure what the number "26" has to do with anything...perhaps the Rhombicuboctahedron was Mr. Wilcoxon's favorite Archimedean solid. Perhaps he liked to run marathons. No one will ever know. There are some interesting and fairly challenging phrases in this solo, and here is a video of me attempting it:
The other thing I occasionally add to my hand practice is a cool "Moeller" exercise that was shown to me by master drummer Steve Fidyk. This exercise uses page 5 of "Stick Control". It's a bit difficult to explain in writing, but I'll try to make it clear with this explanation, and a brief video. Each written sticking becomes 3 notes, so that a "R", as in "right hand", would become RRR, using a whipping "Moeller" motion. So, this:
Becomes this:
Now, you can go through all of page 5 of Stick Control this way, using a whipping Moeller motion, and you can try different accent placements, for each different partial of the triplet (first, middle, or last). To make the exercise a little more interesting, and challenging, you can "fill in the spaces" with your left hand, so that you get 16th note triplets. For this exercise, you'll want leave out the last 16th note triplet, so that this:
Becomes this:
However, when you have the same hand in a row, as in double strokes, you do not omit that last 16th note triplet, creating a continuous flow of 16th note triplets. Here's what double strokes (line 3, on page 5 of Stick Control) would look like, interpreted this way.
Like with the simpler version, you can practice this with the Moeller accent placed on the first, middle, or last triplet partial. It sounds complicated, but when once you try it, this exercise starts to make intuitive sense pretty quickly. The most important thing to remember when trying this exercise, is that you are executing the whipping Moeller motion correctly, as opposed to simply playing it as fast as possible. Hopefully this video will help to make sense of the exercise as well.
So, that's it. Stay tuned for my next post! Hint: it's me replacing my roof.
