Practice Diary Drums MUED1005

This is what I took out of this weeks reading/class content and what it got me thinking about:  Before this weeks worth of content I've never really thought about racism in the classroom. Then I started thinking can racism be a poor attitude to other musical/cultural experiences in the classroom and a lack of willingness to accept and learn something thats so different to what we are use to. Or is it that in a classroom setting as a student or teacher we are so set in our ways of what we want to learn and what we think is 'normal'.  Why is it students will find a completely new cultural experience to be 'boring' or 'thats wired'. This could be a lack of interest to learn music from another culture. Do we have pre made assumptions in our head that 'world' music and 'foreign' music is this thing that is weird and we won't get, or because it's unconventional to what's normal within our lives and understanding we shrug it off before e...

 In the first week of class the reading of the week was Jake Talbots 'Who you be? Music teacher identity'. This was an exceptional read as it had us thinking on a deep level of why we are here, what led to us being here and how the decisions we make and what we assert and teach comes from from a place of experiences and culture. I started thinking 'who am I?' 'why do I want to teach' 'why am I here'. There is not one straight answer to these profound questions. The answer is in how my parents raised me, the healthy and unhealthy pressures when playing/trying to get better an an instrument, my friendship/family circle around me. So many external factors are the reason I am here today. As aspiring music educators we so often think we are in the classroom due to the fact of our instrument ability/musical interest and we ignore the life we lived and the journey we are on that have gotten us here. As an aspiring music educator I have been so lucky to have had...

 Today blog post is going to talk about drum fills and explaining how I approached my drums fills you will see in the video posted below. In my week 6 blog you will see I focused that week on paradiddles. The main one being RLRR LRLL. That was a really fun paradiddle to play and coordinate. When playing my drum fills I wanted to stick to the paradiddle of RLRR LRLL, so I tried my best to orchestrate that idea around the drum kit. Before I did that I started just doing that pattern on one drum head and then spreading it out over two different drum heads and explored chucking some cymbals in as-well. I found this to be a really cool and creativity way to create unlimited drum fills. There are endless combinations as you have so many different points on the kits to start the fill and so many different combinations to be made with drum heads and cymbals. I was jamming to the trusty back beat and explored syncopated opened hats and kick drum hits. Enjoy the video Exploring Drum fills - ...

 Over this process I have realised majority of my practice and the beats I have been practicing have been in 4/4. Until now. Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley is one of my all time favourite recordings in this whole world and its in the 6/8 time signature.  Strangely enough I didn't find my 6/8 and 12/8 drum practice to be difficult I was able to catch on to it relatively quickly. Within saying that when ever I would practice fills in 6/8 I would often gravitate towards 4/4 so I really enjoyed stripping everything back and taking it slow with 6/8 drum fills. Before playing to this song I took my stock standard 6/8 groove and played it the metronome first just so I could hear how every hit and sound in the beat lined up with the pulse/click. After this jamming to the song it self was so much easier and I felt so much more locked in.  DISCLAIMER : I did not have brushes as the song uses brushes and not drum sticks :( , I tried to play really soft on the drums to m...

 Enjoy this video of me jamming to one of my all time favourite songs by GREEN-DAY. Prior jamming to this I sat down with the recording and really actively listened to the drums to get an idea of what the drums were doing. In the video you will hear a drum fill I learnt off the record along side the main song in the beat. The beat is sort of like a relaxed, groovy, rocky backbeat with added kick hits. I found some of kick drum syncopation particularly difficult to time and they took significant practice to get down. When playing a song like this the hardest thing I find is matching the energy of the song. The drummer on this recording Tre Cool is one of the most energetic drummers ever! He is a machine. To play with such intensity over the duration of a song whilst maintaining the tempo so accurately is very mentally and physically exhausting. Learning and trying to play this song has been a very good mental and physical work out! Enjoy the video. HOLIDAY GREENDAY - CLICK ME

This week I would like to talk about maintaining the tempo and keeping that under wraps! Learning to play the drums has made me realise how much responsibility the drummer has in terms of keeping the pulse as steady as possible! I noticed I have an inkling to speed up when I get excited, play louder or play a drum fill. This would not be ideal when playing with a band as the tempo needs to stay steady/the same the whole time.  Over the week I had a chat with my drummer friends and asked them how they practice maintaining the pulse super accurately. The answer was METRONOME METRONOME METRONOME. But playing games with the metronome. Usually when learning new beats I have the click on all beats of the bar. Thats not cutting it though for working on tempo maintenance. Having the click on just one beat within the bar is where the goods are at. So for example just having the click on either the 1 , 2 , 3 or  4 . Easy enough to say but very difficult to do.  What I did over the ...

This week in class it  was really wonderful and reaffirming to hear what Luke Chapman had to say about informal learning. Informal learning is something I am huge on and utilise in my one on one guitar tutoring/group classes. Hearing about the positive benefits of informal learning and how it can be and is adopted within the classroom makes me even more excited to be a teacher as the students will undertake and learn music with the same learning methods I learnt music with.  I have done some of my best learning in and 'informal' fashion as it has given me the freedom to musically roam and unintentionally discover new musical pathways that can be profound creativity, theoretically and practically. As a jazz improviser there is a-lot to learn 'on the books' but it is amazing what concepts and sounds you can discover just 'mucking' around on a set of chord changes. In the classroom informal learning scenarios give the students the opportunity to make many groundbre...