Welcome to: The Happy Drummer Studio and  Learning Center

I am Richmond James Platz, aka ... The Happy Drummer,  Owner/Instructor/Performer. My location is in beautiful, Eugene Oregon, heart of Willamette Valley, Northwestern United States, (The Jazz Station) 68 W. Broadway.  It is a moist, green, and healthy atmosphere for learning the musical rhythms of life.  I have been impassioned with  myriad rhythms surrounding us since my  early teen years, when at night I would lie in bed for hours listening to our family's many antique clocks simultaneously ticking away!  The different tempos overlaying on each other, one catching up on the other, only to be overcome by yet another in a few seconds time.  You see, no two rhythms really stayed aligned that long, and this revealed to me the continuing, changing impressions and schemes we experience in life, constantly.  I brought this personal experience into the music classes I enrolled in at my High School in Voorheesville NY. I primarily took up drumming!  This was so fascinating for me.  The biggest challenge at first, was to harness time and rhythm, become disciplined with it because it could so easily slip away from steadiness. It did not take too long to see that good timing was essential, in fact imperative (and respectful) in regards to sharing  music with other students.  I believe this had become my primary focus, that Good Steady Time, no matter what tempo or meter was being executed, was the key to well performed music. I went on from H.S. to classes in Symphony at San Francisco State College, Classical Indian Music at the Ali-Akbar Khan Institute (Tabla).  Tutoring from the great jazz drummer Walter Perkins Jr. on the drumset, and John Handy on the saxophone.  Recently, I attended the KOSA Worksops at Castleton State College, Castleton VT.  This is an amazing annual percussion seminar held for five days among some  of the worlds master drummers. Of those, I had the pleassure to learn with  Ed Shaughnessey (Johnny Carson Show).  Other greats there were Horatio "El Negro" Hernandez (Santana), Dom Famalaro and Joe Morello, and so many others.  I studied piano with James Greenwood and John Workman at Lane Community College here in Eugene Oregon.   And so, this is my Mission:    The Happy Drummer will share the fundementals of rhythm in musical form, to point that training toward the student's own self expression, to become Band Capable.  The training will guide the student to become skillfull in the art of improvisation.  Indeed, I will demonstrate improvisation to be the key to self-expression on the drumset! I will instruct the student to understand that a drummer is a key player in holding a band or orchestra together; that the drummer is literally the symbol of The Universal Clock!  That this clock never loses time is imperative to understand.  I declare that I will passionately transmit these principles! This is truly the basis of all the instruction and concepts here at The Happy Drummer Studio and Learning Center.  Richmond James Platz, The Happy Drummer