Master Your Mind

15 Mastering Passion and Excellence

If you’ve never had a chance to watch Ray Cooper perform, do yourself a favor and put this book down and make that happen before you continue reading. A quick YouTube search will net you a bunch of results. Take 10–15 minutes and truly appreciate what a showman and performer Mr. Cooper truly is.

For those of you not willing to put the book down, here’s a snippet from his Wikipedia page:

Raymond “Ray” Cooper (born 19 September 1947) is an English virtuoso percussionist. He is a session and road-tour percussionist, and occasional actor, who has worked with several musically diverse bands and artists including George Harrison, Billy Joel, Rick Wakeman, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd and Elton John. Cooper absorbed the influence of rock drummers from the 1960s and 1970s such as Ginger Baker, Carmine Appice, and John Bonham. Incorporation of unusual instruments (for rock drummers of the time) such as cowbells, glockenspiel, and tubular bells, along with several standard kit elements, helped create a highly varied setup. Continually modified to this day, Cooper’s percussion set offers an enormous array of percussion instruments for sonic diversity such as the tambourine, congas, crash cymbals, cowbells, roto toms, tubular bells, the gong, snare and timpani. For two decades Cooper honed his technique; In the 1990s, he reinvented his style. He is known for the 7-minute percussion and drum solos he performed during the years 1990–1991 for Eric Clapton ...