Hi everyone,

With the transition to ZOOM video lessons, I am no longer able to write down notes and musical material in the students’ books/binders. Instead, I have created PDF documents for each of you and dropped them into a Google Drive folder. The link to your documents is listed in the What to practice heading under your name below. You should be able to access the documents simply by clicking on the link. Here are your practice assignments for this week:

Damian

Recommended minutes to practice: 5-10 minutes per day

What to practice: Practice playing #4-6 from the “Rock & Funk” page and keep working on playing drum fills: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jaROP8emrq7yGkV13Mt_Js4NVtEz-sCl?usp=sharing

How to practice it most effectively: With the new drum beats, practice playing them slowly at first to make sure that you are playing the correct rhythm on the bass drum. Once these beats start to feel comfortable, try playing them a bit faster. Accuracy and consistency are always more important than speed. Also, keep working on the drum fills I sent you last week and try coming up with some of your own.

Koel

Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes per day

What to practice: Practice beats #13-20 from the page of ghost note beats: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SCS8WVjfR1OZVlYmt8a1r2LTxo2NJOpN?usp=sharing

How to practice it most effectively: These beats are already sounding a lot better! Keep working through the rhythms slowly and aim for accuracy and consistency. Remember what we discussed about feeling the pulse on the numbers (1, 2, 3, 4) while you play the beat. This will help with accenting the snare notes on beats 2 and 4 while keeping the syncopated ghost notes softer. Ultimately, you want to feel a sense of groove when you play these beats.

Jonathan

Recommended minutes to practice: 20-30 minutes per day

What to practice: Practice playing different triplet-based accent patterns from the new page and also work on playing longer phrases with the accent patterns by combining two or more together: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GxopIaGPN0UhwG3zk4gQWTnEaDDL7TWP?usp=sharing 

How to practice it most effectively: First focus on the patterns that we worked on in your lesson, #45-48. Pay close attention to which accents are played with the right hand and which ones are played with the left. Try to come up with your own unique ways of moving these accents around the drums. You should also look at some of the other accent patterns from this page. Put them together in different combinations to create longer phrases. Always play them in alternation with the jazz ride pattern.