Free drumming help and drum forums

I’m very annoyed today drummers! Do you want to know why?

It seems that many commercial drumming sites and forums who PRETEND to want to help you in fact think you are stupid, and just want to sell you something. To explain better, I’ll tell you the story.

I was recently looking through some drumming forums as I do from time to time, and I came across one where there seemed to be many drummers who really had problems and really needed help — and to make matters worse, there seemed to be nobody on the forum who was really expert enough to help them properly. The forum members all seemed like great people, friendly and helpful to one another as much as possible, but just not really expert enough to give definitive answers.

By the way — I’m not in the habit of dissing others, so I won’t name them. What matters is what happened, not who did it. All you need to know is that the forum is attached to a large and highly commercial chain of drumming sites.

There were some posts in particular which really made me feel for the guys, because they were talking about getting blisters, cramps, pains and other serious injuries as a result of their drumming. Now those of you who know me will know that I’ve been a specialist clinician in hand technique for a long time, and drumming related injury is a pet subject of mine. So I felt uniquely qualified and moved to help these drummers.

So… I joined the forum with the intention of helping these people.

I read the forum rules and regulations — standard stuff. Do not use swear words, do not be nasty to other members, and also some stuff about not spamming the forum — in other words, just posting up links all the time with the intention of increasing traffic to another website. The rules stated that you were not allowed to post links to commercial sites with products or services for sale. OK — fair enough, they want to keep the forum relevant, and not just one big advertising area which is of no help to anyone.

Once my membership was approved (manually in fact, which means that an actual person processed it) I started answering some posts to help those in need.

Why did I do this?

Well simply because I genuinely wanted to help them, and I don’t like to see drummers go down the wrong path and I LOVE to see drummers go down the RIGHT paths. I’m sure my posts reflected this. I gave some very long and detailed answers to some of the questions.

I think I posted about 5 or 6 posts in my first session, and in about three of them — in addition to my lengthy writings — I included a link to one of the articles on this blog which addressed their specific problems. Some of my blog posts are extremely long and detailed and it’s not practical to re-write all this info in a forum posting.

Now… hands up who thinks this is a commercial blog site?

This blog is 100% completely FREE and is there simply for the benefit of the drumming community! Sure, there are links to OTHER websites on the blog which sell drumming products, but the blog itself could in no way be called commercial. You will note that there is a small link to the Stick Technique website at the bottom of most entries (including this one) which sells my book. Does this make these articles commercial, or mean that my blog is selling you something? Well I don’t think so. Certainly the spirit of it is that you get all this stuff for free, and I’m not pushing you to buy anything — in fact you CAN’T buy anything directly from this website.

So had I broken the forum rules? Well as far as I could see — technically NO!

What about morally though? Well it was pretty obvious by my detailed and helpful postings that morally I was in the right spirit of the forum as well. HALF of my postings didn’t have any links at all — just solid information.

Well drumming friends — you have probably guessed where this story is going by now…

That’s right. Within 2 hours — faster than the time it took to approve my membership in the first place — ALL my posts were deleted and my membership deleted as well. No contact or anything, just gone!

“Gosh!” I thought — these guys must have gotten the wrong idea about me and thought I was trying to spam the forum!

So… I wrote them a very polite email explaining the situation, saying how I didn’t think I’d broken any rules and was certainly just trying to help people in the correct spirit of the forum. I explained that I could understand if they didn’t want links to my blog even if it didn’t seem to me to break the rules, and that I would promise to include no links at all in any future posts, or even mention it at all. I explained in short that I just wanted to help their members, and could they maybe please give me my membership back.

That was quite a while back now, and not a single word in reply or change in the situation. Completely rude of them — and they have, with their silence, spoken.

So what’s going on? Are these guys really just trying to protect their forum members from spamming morons and give them the best possible service? Well obviously not, because that’s clearly what I was offering them. In fact the forum itself is part of a giant network of highly commercial sites completely geared towards selling you stuff — THEIR stuff — and the forum is even littered with links back to them.

So back to my original statement: clearly these guys are primarily interested in selling you their stuff, and in fact put that way above actually helping you or any other drummers. They think you are stupid enough to buy their stuff even if you don’t want it, just because it is the only thing right in front of your face.

You guys are SMART! You can work out what drumming products have value to you all by yourself! ;-) If you want their stuff you will buy it, and if you need something they don’t offer I’m sure you will go in search of it rather than just buy something completely different from them.

Or maybe I’m wrong — maybe they figure their forum members are smart enough to realize that there is more to learn on this blog than on the forum, and will gradually find their way to buying my stuff rather than theirs.

Some of you may have purchased my products or those I recommend — some of you might do so in the future — but I’m never going to give you the hard sell or push you to buy. The stuff is there: buy it if you want, don’t if you don’t. It’s completely up to you, and I’ll keep giving you free info, articles and service right here on this website whichever way.

Happy drumming friends!