Abe’s got chops

Since the day the first website was officially put online, people all over the world have used the Internet to reach out into cyberspace. While that very first site taught readers about the World Wide Web and its different purposes, government and world history teacher Kirk Abe took the opportunity to showcase his hobby of drumming.

For the past eight years, Abe has held down a personal website for his hobby. The website was “primitive” as it just had basic features like a calendar of when he played gigs and links to recordings that he played on, but encapsulated his love of drumming, which he still performs at places like Blue Rock Shoot.

The website was also used as a reference for others with recordings to listen to and see if they wanted him to play for a gig.

“If they didn’t know my style or my ability, I may have referred them back to a recording on the website. So if I wanted other people to hear me or if they wanted me to play with them, they had a place to go to,” said Abe.

Even the website domain, www.ineedchops.com, was fit for his hobby. As a technical term, “chops” refers to a muscle in the arm used while drumming. But in drumming terminology, “it means your skills that you have, how fast you can play and whether you are good at rudiments,” said Abe. “I’m always practicing, trying to get better, hence ‘I need chops.'”

However, for the sake of his students and ease of access, Abe has converted the drumming website into his homework and assignment website with class schedules and research links, still keeping the former domain name.

With the recent changes to the school server, using his own personal website is much more convenient in terms of trying to keep up with classes, he said, because updates are easily maintained and accessed.

“The school website, even though it has some good things, I really couldn’t do certain things [like before the change],” said Abe. “I decided to use my own website so that I could have a little bit more freedom in terms of what I used to be able to do [on the old school server],” even if that meant taking down the drumming content.