Welcome to the Ideal Time drum blog, a place where I share some items on drumming, drummers, and drumming cultures. My hope will be to feature a lot of Canadian drummers and percussionists, alternative forms of drumming pedagogy, and interviews with innovative musicians and educators. Coming up in the next couple of weeks is my interview with ELM Initiative superhero and drum phenom, Thom Bennett: the first of what will be a series of features on Western Canadian drummers.

One wintery evening in 2013, I randomly emailed Petter Berndalen, who is arguably Sweden's most famous 'folk' drummer/food blogger. I said I wanted to write an article about him for The Drummer's Journal (it was submitted, but never published). At this point, I was already a huge Berndalen fan and was profoundly influenced by his drumming and creative musical projects. In retrospect, the article was a convenient vehicle for me to reach out to the only drumming idol I've ever