As a small child, I flapped my hands. I still do it, but in private to save myself from embarrassment. It’s probably a stim – a repetitive movement to regulate my emotions or senses.

When I was a younger adult, my mother told me she had worried about my hand-flapping when I was little. Discovering I was a drummer had reassured her. For her, my hand-flapping was an expression of some unheard rhythm I was playing.

My relationship with drums has included years of playing, years away, and a return to making music. That journey led me to Transient.Archive, where I now document my practice and recording work.

The Beginning

I started playing drums in grade school.

My parents gave me my first Remo practice pad and a pair of sticks, though I don’t remember how old I was. I practiced on the pad at home and played a snare drum at school, where we had a small collection of chrome over steel snare drums and one large marching bass drum. My class practiced simple arrangements with percussion and wind instruments. After a season of practice, we would perform a fall or spring concert for our parents to enjoy.

Drums became exciting when I sat behind a drum kit.

My best friend’s sister had a drum kit in her bedroom. I think it had a butcher block finish. It may have been a Ludwig, Rogers, or Slingerland kit from the 1970s.

She had a huge influence on us, musically. She introduced us to hard rock and metal and provided me with a brief drum kit tutorial. With her guidance, I tried to play a basic version of Rage Against the Machine’s “People of the Sun”. Coordinating my arms and legs in time with Brad Wilk’s playing seemed impossible at first. It became easier with time.

The principal of my grade school was a drummer, and I took part in a short series of lessons he offered to students interested in drumming. He bought a used Slingerland kit with a chrome wrap for school. It was in rough shape but had what we needed. I remember trying to play Soul Coughing’s “Super Bon Bon”. It was beyond my skill then.

Pursuing Rock n’ Roll

When we were 12 or 13, my two closest friends and I started a band: I played drums, and they played guitar and bass. We wrote a basic song with a melody heavily inspired by Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train”. We performed it at a talent show hosted by our grade school.

I was always terrified to play drums in front of other people.

The talent show was my first live performance. My second was at a grade school dance when I was 14. By then, our band had added a vocalist, and we covered a collection of Rage Against the Machine songs. We also covered the song “Chewbacca” from the 1994 Clerks soundtrack. I used the school’s Slingerland kit, but there was no drum rug underneath it. With each stroke, the bass drum slid across the wood floor of the gymnasium stage. Whenever the kick drum pedal got out of reach, I remember pulling the bass drum back toward me.

My parents bought me a drum kit soon after. It was a 1994 Ludwig Rocker in a white wrap. It was manufactured in Taiwan, and the shells were probably poplar wood. The kit lived at home in our basement on two pieces of plywood my father clamped together. I often played along with albums by Rage Against the Machine, Primus, Led Zeppelin, and Stone Temple Pilots. I played simplified versions of the drum tracks I heard on the albums. This was my only form of solitary practice for years.

The band I played with improved as we learned to play our instruments.

We kicked out the vocalist and became a pop-punk trio, with our bassist also singing. We called ourselves The Christmas Light Conspiracy and played original material and cover songs. My favorite cover was The Dead Kennedy’s “Moon over Marin”. As young teens, we played several shows at local high schools and a small music venue called The Kave. Only later did I realize that The Kave also hosted a lot of hardcore bands, including Biohazard and Agnostic Front. I never went to those shows: I wasn’t aware of them at the time, and I’m not sure my parents would have allowed it.

We recorded an EP at my friend’s house, with the drums in his sister’s bedroom. I remember having one overhead microphone for the entire kit. I think we hung blankets up to control the sound a bit. I’m not sure we were happy with the sound, but we burned the tracks to CD and handed them out to friends at school. A student got in a car accident one night. When he later recounted what had happened, he declared that our EP had been playing on his car stereo. Knowing someone had been listening to our music felt like a badge of honor for us.

Eventually our pop punk trio fizzled out. Our bassist became more interested in other styles like jazz and funk and began playing with other students who were aligned with those styles. My friend and I formed a new group with another bassist who also sang. We played original material, mainly hard rock and blues. We called ourselves The Virtuosos and played some local shows.

I began to play with other teen musicians, too. I remember practicing with a local ska band and performing with them at The Kave. I didn’t have all the songs committed to memory and I made plenty of mistakes, but it was a blast.

A Long Detour

Eventually, I stopped playing the drums.

I’m not sure why I stopped. I lost interest in practicing at home, and the band I played with stopped rehearsing and playing shows. By the time I graduated from high school, I rarely played drums. When I left to pursue my bachelor’s degree at the University of Maine, my drum kit stayed behind in the basement at home.

I sold my kit to help me afford a move to Wilmington, NC for graduate school.

Music had become something I listened to while commuting or studying, rather than something I created. I was deep into sociology and wanted to become a professor, teaching social theory and sociological methods. While completing my master’s degree at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, I met my wife. She moved with me to Fairfax, VA, where I pursued my doctorate of sociology at George Mason University. I had stopped creating music. Musical creativity was no longer a part of my life.

I earned my doctorate in 2018. By then, I had given up on becoming a professor. The academic job market looked awful to me: deteriorating working conditions, stagnant wages, and openings that were mostly adjunct. The rare tenure-track opportunities were extremely competitive. A good friend helped me find a consulting job as an applied social scientist. That new career path gave me financial security. After I had proved myself through quality work and self-management, it eventually became a full-time work-from-home arrangement.

Returning to Rock n’ Roll

In 2019, my wife and I returned to Wilmington, NC, where we still live. We bought a house, and having space and financial security made it possible for me to return to drums. In 2022, I bought a used Tama Superstar Hyperdrive on eBay. It is a fantastic kit, punchy as hell—perfect for playing hard rock and metal in the style of Abe Cunningham or David Silveria. Its birch shells have one interior ply of basswood. The rack toms measure 10”x6.5” and 12”x7”, and the floor tom measures 16”x14”. I later added a 14”x12” floor tom.

It took time to knock the rust off and become a relatively competent drummer again.

I began playing along with albums again, this time focusing on John Bonham’s playing. The first song I attempted to play well was “Immigrant Song” on Led Zeppelin III, followed by “When the Levee Breaks” on Led Zeppelin IV. My Tama kit lived in my home office. I paired it with inexpensive Sabian SR2 cymbals: two 14” crash cymbals I used as hi-hats and a 20” medium ride. I also bought an 18” Meinl Pure Alloy Custom Medium Thin crash cymbal.

I became relatively obsessed with studying Bonham’s style. I wanted the big, thunderous sound of his drums, and my Tama kit began to feel limited. The Superstar Hyperdrive series was built to cut through hard rock guitars, with relatively shallow tom-toms producing punchy, fast transients—the initial attacks of each note—and an ultra-deep kick drum. Bonham often played a 14” rack tom, 16” and 18” floor toms, and a 26” bass drum. In his solos, those drums would bloom into a massive wall of sound. I couldn’t recreate that sound with my Superstar kit.

In 2023 I bought a used Tama Starclassic Performer from Facebook Marketplace.

The Tama Starclassic Performer was in rough shape when I bought it. Its red sparkle fade lacquer had lots of dings, and the bearing edges were chewed up. Manufactured in Japan, probably in 2006, it is a special “Neo Retro” edition with birch shells: a 13”x9” rack tom, a 16”x16” floor tom, and a 26”x16” bass drum. I had it professionally restored by Brownie Drum Company in Raleigh, NC. The proprietor, Cameron Brown, did an amazing job. The kit now has a beautiful black sparkle epoxy finish that looks like the night sky.

I slowly collected Paiste Giant Beat and 2oo2 cymbals – the same sizes played by Bonham throughout his career with Led Zeppelin. With bigger drums and Paiste B8 bronze, I felt better equipped to study Bonham’s style and the sounds he produced.

I learned Bonham’s technique by watching his live performances, reviewing online lessons from Brian Tichy, and following George Fludas’ Bonhamology YouTube channel. Fludas’ tutorial videos have been especially useful. I read C. M. Kushin’s Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin, an excellent biography of Bonham. I also bought Margotin and Guesdon’s Led Zeppelin All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track and Welch and Nicholl’s John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums. These books are excellent references for Bonham’s approach to drumming and the history of Led Zeppelin’s albums.

The Current State

I formed a band earlier this year (2026).

I posted on the Wilmington subreddit looking for a guitarist interested in hard rock and heavy blues in the style of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Harrison, a local guitarist, responded, and we arranged to meet and play to see where things would go. We first met in February at Play it Forward in Wilmington, NC. I played the house kit, and Harrison played his Gibson Flying V through an Orange amp. Playing together felt easy and natural, so we decided to look for a bassist. Harrison posted on Reddit and Craigslist. After auditions with three different bassists, we asked Rob to join us. During his audition, he played an Ampeg Dan Armstrong Lucite bass through a Sunn amp. His playing fit perfectly with the sound Harrison and I had found, and we were happy to have him join us. Our band is called Minor Planet. We have written eight original songs and plan to play local gigs and record an LP.

I created Transient.Archive this year in July.

I wanted to establish structure and goals for my drum practice. Transient.Archive serves that purpose. Through it, I study drum technique in the style of hard rock. John Bonham’s playing still serves as the foundation of my studies, with Bill Ward, Brad Wilk, and Matt Cameron adding to that foundation.

Through Transient.Archive, I also study sound engineering, working toward classic hard rock drum sounds that are punchy, gritty, aggressive, heavy, and saturated. In my home office, I record audio of drums-only covers of hard rock songs I love, using my Tama Starclassic and four microphones arranged in the famous Glyn Johns configuration. The microphones feed a Behringer Uphoria USB audio interface with Midas preamps, which sends the audio to my computer. I record in Reaper, a digital audio workstation, and mix with plugins from Analog Obsession and Universal Audio. Those plugins let me practice shaping the sound I’m after.

I post video and mastered audio of drums-only covers on my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@Transient.Archive

This website will serve as a journal of my progress with Transient.Archive. For the hard rock songs I cover, I’ll explore the song’s history, the drummer who wrote and performed it, and how the original was recorded and mixed, when that information is available to me. Alongside that research, I’ll document how I recorded, mixed, and mastered my own drums-only cover.

After years when music was something I only listened to, I’m playing, recording, and learning again. I’m excited to share that continuing journey through Transient.Archive. Thanks for joining me.