This Zombie Cowbell Makes Me More Musical – Here’s How

This zombie cowbell makes me more musical. How? Let’s dive in.

All right, strange start, I know, but how cool is this? We’re going to be doing a bit of show and tell today, so if you’re listening to the audio podcast, you will miss out on the amazing visual of this zombie cowbell, as well as a couple of other things I’ll be showing. I’ll try to describe them, but this is definitely one where you might want to tune into the YouTube version of the episode for the full experience.

So I want to ask, what do these three things have in common? A zombie cowbell, my snare drum, and my six year old daughter’s snare drum. Answers in the comments!

If you are thinking these are all percussion instruments, you’re not wrong. But that’s not the answer we’re looking for.

These three things all boost musicality. And that might seem like a weird thing to say, but it’s true.

What I want to talk about today is around motivation. It’s around enjoyment. It’s around enthusiasm, consistency, progress, and a lot of what distinguishes children learning from adults learning.

And really, it’s coming from all of the experience we have at Musical U specializing in adults developing their musicality, developing themselves as musicians. And one thing I think it’s fair to say we are distinctive through at Musical U is our focus on what’s going on inside. You know, in our H4 model, we have the “Heart” component, which is all around what’s going on emotionally and psychologically in the process of learning music.

And don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a therapy session! But just to set the scene, what we’re going to be talking about today is some of that head stuff and heart stuff that can actually be tripping you up and holding you back, whether you realize it or not.

So I’m going to share a little bit about each of these three instruments and see if you can find the common thread as I do.

So, first of all, the incredible zombie cowbell. I forget the manufacturer. LP, I think, is the manufacturer, Latin Percussion.

It is one of my favorite things. It’s still, every time I catch sight of it, it brings me joy. And I think I bought it when I was buying my first acoustic drum set.

I’d been playing an electronic set. I was on Thomann, the european instrument shop online, and I was ordering this Pearl drumkit. And before I hit checkout, I looked around to see if there was anything else that might be worth including in my order, if I was going to pay for shipping was there anything else I needed?

And this stood out clearly, the bright green color amid all of the other stuff on the site. It popped out at me and I was like “what is that?!” And I looked at it. I was like, “ZOMBIE COWBELL”.

And if you don’t know, I’m a huge Halloween fan. Like, anything to do with monsters or spookiness or Halloween, I’m all about. And so a zombie cowbell, it can’t get much better than that.

And, you know, practically speaking, it’s a good cowbell. Like, it’s a well-made instrument. But it also has a zombie on it. And so I got it with my drumkit. I attached it to my drumkit, and like I said, it brings me joy every time I see it or play it. Still, if I’m improvising a solo and I bring in that cowbell, it often makes me literally chuckle as I see that zombie.

So that’s the first one. The second one is my snare drum.

This was my, I think it’s my third drum head on this snare drum. And it’s actually the drum head in particular that I wanted to talk about because this is an Evans Onyx drum head.

It’s unremarkable, except that it’s matte black. And I broke my first drum head, and I felt very embarrassed about it. And I ordered a new one.

But again, as I was ordering it, I was looking around, I was like, will this fit my snare? Is it, like, good quality? Is it going to have to sound the timbre I want? And so on.

And then I saw this one and I was like, oh, that one looks cool. And it ticked all the boxes. But also it gave me that “ooh!” reaction. And honestly, it just felt a bit cooler.

And so I very happily ordered this drum head. I put it on my snare, and it just brought me some joy.

And it works perfectly well. I have broken one since and ordered another, and I went with the same one again because it makes me happy.

And tell me, I wonder if you’re starting to see the common thread here?

Third one is my daughter’s snare drum.

My daughter, who’s six, is learning the drums with me. It’s a lot of fun.

It’s a pink, sparkly snare drum. The whole drumkit matches. Her drumsticks are pink. You may have guessed, her favorite color is… pink.

And again, I was, you know, looking to buy her a drumkit and looking around, making sure it would be a good instrument. And there were various options. And I picked the sparkly pink one.

And every time she plays it, I know she enjoys it a little bit more because it’s sparkly and pink. And every time I’m inviting her to come practice and she has the option of saying “no, I’m not in the mood”, I know it’s a little bit more likely she’ll say yes because it’s pink and sparkly.

And hopefully by now you’re seeing that common thread.

These are three things which could have been much more boring, much less interesting, much less fun. But we chose the fun options.

And it might seem silly, almost trivial, I know. And that’s really the point I wanted to make today, is that if there’s a voice in your head right now being like, “that stuff doesn’t matter”, or “that’s silly to indulge in, you know, the aesthetics of an instrument, that’s not what really matters”, I get it.

But to be clear, like, these are all good instruments, too. I wasn’t going to buy my daughter a pink sparkly toy drumkit. It’s a good instrument, but we chose the one that brings a bit more fun, brings a bit more joy.

And it really comes back to this thing of motivation, because if there’s one thing we’ve really learned over the years about adult music learners, it’s that actually your number one challenge isn’t lack of talent. It’s not being scattered around too many things. It’s not trying to find the right teacher or the right course, or it’s not your fingers are too old or your memory is not good anymore.

The number one challenge is motivation.

And any time you don’t practice for a day or a few days or a week or a month, or you set aside music completely for a few years, that is the biggest obstacle to you becoming the musician you’ve dreamed of being.

And if you’re listening to this right now, being like “oh, that’s not my problem, I’m consistent. I show up every day”, don’t tune out just yet, because there’s actually a secondary point here that might still be affecting you.

So the thing I wanted to suggest to you today is that anything that brings you joy or helps keep you enthusiastically engaged with learning music is valuable, whether it’s a zombie cowbell, a particular snare drum, or, you know, buying a new instrument.

I want to talk a little bit about “Gear Acquisition Syndrome”.

I don’t know if you’ve heard that phrase, but it’s often jokingly used in the guitar world to refer to someone who, you know, spends 90% of their guitar time looking up effects pedals and trying to find the right configuration and getting the new widget or the new gadget or, you know, whatever it might be, getting all of the stuff just right and not actually practicing their guitar very much.

And Gear Acquisition Syndrome can be a problem if it is, you know, out of hand. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

The value in it is that it keeps you excited. And so, for example, if you were that guitar player, someone might look at it and be like, you’re wasting 90% of your practice time fiddling about with those gadgets. But if it means you end up spending ten minutes a day practicing, it might not be 60 – but if you spend that ten minutes day practicing enthusiastically, you’re much better off than the person who, you know, thinks they’re better than all that. And, you know, “you shouldn’t be wasting time with all the gear and gadgets”… and then loses interest and gets bored and frustrated and actually gives up for a few months.

So, you know, like everything in life, it’s a balance. But just to say, don’t assume that it being trivial, as it were, or it not being the serious business of learning music means you shouldn’t pay attention to it.

If something will inject new excitement and enthusiasm into your musical life, don’t dismiss it because it doesn’t matter or it “shouldn’t” matter.

And, you know, this isn’t just about “stuff”.

So, you know, coming back to the pink sparkly drumkit, something else I do with my daughter is at the end of our, you know, just five or ten minutes of practice each day, at the end, we do “CHAOS DRUMMING”, which is when we just go nuts on the drumkit.

And, you know, it’s silly, it’s unnecessary, it isn’t, you know, “learning”, as it were.

But actually, do you know what? Her “chaos drumming” is getting more and more musical over time. And again, I know that it’s increasing the odds of her being enthusiastic about doing practice that day just a little bit, if she knows she’s going to do that fun chaos drumming at the end.

So this isn’t just about stuff, you know, this is also… We had a really good discussion on a recent coach’s corner session, actually, that… we’ll be releasing that episode soonish.

We were talking about this thing of doing the musical activity you really enjoy, either at the start of your practice session or at the end of your practice session, but using that as motivation and not putting it aside because it’s not what you “need” to work on right now, or it’s not what you “should” be focused on, but, like, valuing that joy and using it to propel you forwards so that you’re also spending the time on the stuff that does matter.

The bottom line here is that your enjoyment and your enthusiasm matters.

And hopefully, you’re listening to this and being like, “Of course it does! Of course it does! I love music! Music’s about having fun, and enjoying it”, and blah, blah, blah.

But I suspect a lot of people hearing this or watching this are actually the camp most of us are, which is, as adults, we tend to be very serious about learning. And even if it’s a hobby, we’ve got this voice in our head saying, “you should work harder, you should be more disciplined. You should show up for practice. You should do just the stuff you’re meant to”.

And, you know, we’re not saying, ignore that voice, but don’t let that voice keep you from the stuff that lights you up.

There are two principles we come back to here at Musical U, or rather a principal and kind of a motto.

One of our Pillar Beliefs is “Enjoying the journey”. And that’s not because we don’t aim high at Musical U. It’s not because we don’t believe in attainment or hard work or setting your goals really ambitiously.

We believe firmly in all of those things. But it is clear-cut that unless you’re enjoying yourself along the way, you’re never going to get there.

And, you know, this was put really well in the Dave Smith interview we had this week.

He was talking about fun, and he was saying, you can’t let yourself get into that rigid, uptight, self-judgment place when it comes to learning, because learning only happens when you’re in that relaxed, open, exploratory fun state of mind.

And that’s really why we believe so much in Enjoying the Journey. Yes, there’s this big picture thing of motivation and keeping up along the way, but it’s also that if you want to learn as fast as possible, even if that’s the ONLY thing that matters to you, the best way to make it happen is to let yourself enjoy it and find the ways to enjoy it.

So that’s a really core principle for us. And the motto, as it were, the saying I like is that “fun is not the opposite of learning”.

Fun is not the opposite of learning.

And society, culture, I think, teaches us that it’s okay for kids to have fun, but adults should be more serious. And, you know, we might look at the case of the sparkly pink drumkit and be like, “well, that’s fine, they’re a kid. They need motivation. They need that carrot, they need that, you know, shiny thing to keep them enthusiastic about doing the hard work… But I’m an adult. I don’t need that stuff. I shouldn’t need that stuff. I’m just going to have discipline and I’m going to get myself to do it because I’m an adult”.

And I’m sorry, the reality is, like… I’m a very disciplined person, but the reality is, why not make it easy on yourself? Why not indulge in the little things that bring you joy and light you up and get you into that fun, open, exploratory place and give yourself every advantage as an adult learner?

You know, whatever you believe, philosophically or spiritually, I think it’s fair to say that psychologically, there’s always a part of us that is that five year old version of ourself or that twelve year old version or that 18 year old version, they’re in there somewhere.

And if you can give them something that makes them happy – you know, that zombie cowbell really makes the 13 year old me happy! – and that means it makes the 40 year old me happy. And that puts the 40 year old me in a much— I’m not quite 40! I feel obliged to say not quite 40!—That makes me in a much better place to actually do the learning that the adult me cares about.

So that’s what I wanted to share with you today, my zombie cowbell, which is a lot of fun, my matte black snare drum head and my daughter’s pink sparkly snare drum.

All of which could very well be replaced by functionally equivalent instruments that didn’t have these funny, silly aesthetics to them. But I guarantee myself and my daughter are more musical today because we chose the fun option and we allowed ourselves to enjoy that, and bring that joy into our music making and our music learning.

So I encourage you, the next time you see your equivalent of a zombie cowbell, as it were, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to go for it. You might be surprised what it ends up doing for your own musicality.

I will be back tomorrow with a sneak peek into a chapter from the Missing Manual, the book may or may not end up being called that, but the Missing Manual, a chapter on playing expressively.

There was a really big shift as we were writing this chapter, and I want to share that with you. It’ll be interesting, I think, and useful to hear how we approach playing expressively and learning musical expression. And for any of you waiting on that book, it’ll be a fun sneak peek of what’s in store for you in that chapter.

Then on Friday, I have meet the team with our Community Conductor, Stewart Hilton, a lot of you know him as GuitarStu777 on the membership site. That’s going to be a lot of fun.

And on Saturday, back with Coaches Corner, episode three.

So that’s all in store for you this week. Thank you to everyone who’s been joining me live. Please do keep showing up! And to all of you on the YouTube channel and the audio podcast, you are very much appreciated too.

I’ll be back tomorrow. See you on the next one. Cheers!

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