My son, Tyler Fortin, is 16, artis­tic, and ambi­tious. I’m so proud of him, and here’s why.

As a drum­mer for 30 years (I started when I was 11–12), I fol­lowed in the foot­steps of two of my uncles who were drum­mers. I played in high-​​school and garage bands.

But at the time, I didn’t own a drum­set and played mostly on other people’s drumk­its. (I bought my first real kit in my mid-​​20s.) So I learned very s-​​l-​​o-​​o-​​o-​​w-​​w-​​w-​​l-​​l-​​l-​​y-​​y-​​y.

Last Christ­mas and on a whim, I bought my son an elec­tronic drum­set. I thought he might like it, but didn’t expect much. Plus, with an elec­tronic kit he can play on them with head­phones so as to not dis­turb the rest of the household.

Tyler wants to be like his dad. How that makes me feel is indescribable.

I play in a rock band. Granted, my son’s style of music is a lot heav­ier than mine. But the other day, I let him play on my kit and he took advan­tage of it to record this video (this is only after a few months learn­ing the drums, all on his own, which blew me away!)…

When it comes to double-​​bass — play­ing with both feet — he’s def­i­nitely kick­ing my butt. Tyler’s pretty good at pro­duc­ing videos, too! He even uses dif­fer­ent cam­era angles. Watch the whole thing to see what I mean. It’s only about three minutes.

(Tyler, I love you so much, Son. You make your Dad so proud of you.)

Bought myself a new cam­corder (JVC Eve­rio) and com­pres­sion soft­ware to record some “white­board dis­cus­sions” with my wife Sylvie for Suc​cess​Chef​.com content.

I wanted to test the soft­ware. So I decided to place the cam­era in front of my drum set (the light­ing was bad and my fault), and played along with “When We Were Young” by The Killers. (One of my favorite bands!)

This was recorded on the first and only take — I never played this song before, but I wanted to try out the cam­era and the com­pres­sion soft­ware. (If you ever won­dered if I can really play drums, you can judge for yourself.)

Don’t laugh, but here I am play­ing “drum karaoke” to the Killers. What do you think?

I have a new love in my life. And it’s a killer! (Actu­ally, it’s the band “The Killers.”)

I love their music. I just recently pur­chased their CDs “Hot Fuss” and “Sam’s Town.” And I think I’ve played them, oh, about 20–30 times now. These two CDs are rock­ing! Great music, great lyrics, and yes, great drum­ming, too.

(Ron­nie Van­nucci, Jr. is a pretty solid drum­mer in my books. I’ve always been fas­ci­nated by drum­mers who can whip up a storm on such small kits. Buddy Rich is one of them. Ron­nie is def­i­nitely another.)

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