For as long as I can remember, I have loved music and ever since I was about ten years old, I have considered myself a drummer, moreover, a percussionist. My best friend, who is absolutely amazing on the guitar, and I have been playing music together since we were about fifteen. We have known each other since we were five. Whenever we play together, which is at least once a week, something just clicks.
We have no prior idea of what we’re about to play when we get together. Some might call it a jam session. I just give him two measures of a beat and he picks up his guitar and just starts playing. And the absolute best part of it is that we know each other so well and we know each other’s musical abilities and styles so well that I can feel when his music is about to change and I play accordingly. To an outsider, it would sound like these songs were rehearsed, but we often have never heard them ourselves before the very moment that we play them into existence. It is quite possibly one of the greatest feelings I can experience, to do something I love with someone who is very close to me and very important to me, playing in such wonderful synch that we can just feel when the other person is going play a different riff or fill or whatever. I would not trade this for the world.
I wish that everyone could have someone with which they are so close they just know what the other person is going to do. Not necessarily musically, but in whatever area that bonds two people together the most. I am very fortunate that my best friend and I love music so much and have such a strong musical friendship as well as emotional friendship. It makes our music better and the music makes us better friends. There is something that goes beyond a level of comfort with each other, it goes beyond two friends or two musicians. It is music. It is what we love. Anyone who hears us can tell.
There is me, the drummer, and there is him, the guitarist. And there is my rhythm and his melody, but more importantly, there is our music.
