Hi everyone,
Here are your practice assignments for this week:
Will
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes per day
What to practice: The drum roll and the paradiddle and the chorus from “Arabella” by the Arctic Monkeys.
How to practice it most effectively: With the snare drum roll, practice it first at a variety of different volumes: soft, medium, and loud. Remember that when playing softly, the speed of your roll should be slow and when you’re playing loudly, the speed of your roll should be fast. Then try starting the roll as soft as you can and gradually increase the volume until you’re playing pretty loudly, hold the volume there for a moment, and then gradually decrease until you get back to where you started.
Elliot
Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes per day
What to practice: The paradiddle and the two new drum beats that I wrote down in your book.
How to practice it most effectively: With the paradiddle, remember to be very precise with your arm movements. When one hand is playing the double stroke, the other hand should begin raising the stick to prepare the accent. If you practice this consistently for a few minutes each day it will begin to feel more natural and then it will be easy to do it faster. With the beats, remember to count them in your head before you start to play.
Alexy
Recommended minutes to practice: 20-30 minutes per day
What to practice: The chorus and bridge from “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple.
How to practice it most effectively: In the chorus, practice playing it slowly first and do it several times in a row. Then, try it faster and focus on maintaining a consistent pulse. Once you feel secure doing this, then try practicing it with the recording. In the bridge, focussing on keeping all the non-accented notes relatively soft and playing the rhythm as steady as possible.
Oscar
Recommended minutes to practice: 20-30 minutes per day
What to practice: The beat from “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock.
How to practice it most effectively: Read and count carefully the music that I wrote down in your binder. Practice is slowly just like we were in your lesson. Once you feel really secure with the rhythms, then try to speed it up. It is really important with this kind of music to be able to feel the pulse or the groove the whole time regardless of the syncopation of the rhythm.
Nate M.
Recommended minutes to practice: 20-30 minutes per day
What to practice: “Tom Sawyer” by Rush.
How to practice it most effectively: Your biggest issue with playing this song right now is fatigue, particularly in your right forearm. Practice the “up-down” technique I showed you that helps with coordination between the elbow and the wrist. If you can incorporate this technique into the song, it will be a whole lot easier to play. Also, when practicing at home, don’t always start the song right at the beginning. The beginning is already very good, but the end presents some problems. By starting in the middle, you can tackle the problems at the end without tiring yourself out as much.
Nate O.
Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes per day
What to practice: The beat I wrote down in your book from the song “Dior.”
How to practice it most effectively: Read and count carefully the beat that I wrote down for you. Pay close attention to the rhythm on the hi-hat, particularly the triplet rhythm on beat 2. Identify where the bass drum and snare drum notes connect with the hi-hat rhythm and then practice it slowly. Trying to play it quickly before you really understand the rhythm isn’t going to be helpful. Your brain needs time to really internalize the rhythm and the beat as a whole.