As far as downloads go, my two Jamendo albums haven’t been doing too bad. Here are the totals as of today:

I look at these numbers and always get the surreal feeling that I’m dreaming; that any minute, I’m going to wake up. Isolated as I am, it’s hard for me to imagine my work has been dowloaded 578 times world-wide!

Well, when I look at the reviews, I come back down to Earth quickly

My first album, evolution, received overwhelmingly positive reviews, typically 9’s or 10’s. Not so for my second album. The consensus seems to be that handmade was only a 5 to 7, probably a 6.

It was an experiment. Part of the charm of being independent is being able to leap down conveniently placed elevator shafts of your own free will

The percussion on handmade was all natural — conga drums, cowbells, maracas. But most of the reviews pointed out something important: it’s difficult to innovate in the style in which I was playing.

So what next?

Clear the board and start over.

As I’m at the second stage of my Woodshed project, I think my next step is to develop a concept I’ve been working on here lately. Not drum machines, not pure hand drums, but a new concept for me — hybrid drums. That is, some of the drums produced electronically, and some of them played by hand.

I also need to go back to those bizarre and fantastic rhythms I used on evolution. Many of the songs on that album were in odd time signatures — something I excel at improvising over, but which annihilate many other musicians.

Maybe it’s time I start finding my strengths and focusing on them. I want the third album to be something so personal, so powerful, so unique, that no one can even begin to classify it as anything but mine.