Joshua Van Tassel

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the audio)

I love the tambourine, a whole lot. In the right hands of course. It’s a complicated instrument, one of the most audible instruments on the stage even in competition with a bunch of screaming guitar amps and screaming drunk people, yet it also has a lot of beautiful and subtle sounds that  you can only really get when you’re not beating it on your hand/thigh. I spent some time with one of mine this morning and made a really mellowing 2 minutes of tambourine music. I just wanted to do something with it that you generally don’t, let it breathe a bit and not be responsible for keeping time, you know?

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I’m trying to do more of this kind of thing, been playing a lot of drums which is great, but writing some really dreadful music in my opinion, hence the lack of stuff up on here. I need to get re-focused and doing these little imagination/sound exercises help get things flowing again. Sometimes you need to do like the gambler and know when to fold ‘em, just walk away from it for a while and do something else that’ll flip some different switches in your mind. Like reading this completely awesome book

Or listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.