Hi everyone,

Here are your assignments for this week:

Caroline

Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes per day

What to practice: Practice playing “Seven Nation Army” all the way through with the recording of the song.

How to practice it most effectively: Take time to remember the progression of the song. After the first Chorus, it repeats from the beginning. The second time you play the Chorus, you play it four times instead of twice, then repeat from the beginning again. On the last Chorus, you play it twice and then drop the two bars before the final bar. Listen very closely as you play. This will help you to identify and fix any mistakes.

Will

Recommended minutes to practice: 20-30 minutes per day

What to practice: Practice playing the “Chorus” section of “Tom Sawyer” on page 3.

How to practice it most effectively: Take it slow and read all the notes carefully as this section is quite different from the rest of the song. Remember the stickings that we used during your lesson and try to keep them consistent (the order of rights and lefts). Once you can play two bars at a time, then add a third, then a fourth, etc. By building it up a little bit at a time, it will feel more manageable.

Jared

Recommended minutes to practice: 10-15 minutes per day

What to practice: Review beats 1-4 and then practice 5-8 from the sheet that you have. Also, practice the fills that I wrote down for you.

How to practice it most effectively: With all the beats, make sure you can count “1 2 3 4” as you are playing. You can count out loud or in your head, but it’s important to always know where “1” is. This is especially important when practicing your fills. The full-measure fills (#1-3) should always start on beat 1, but the half-measure fill (#4) should start on beat 3. Take it slowly and make sure you can count while playing.

Noah

Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes per day

What to practice: Practice the first line of “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin and the rhythm from this new page: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Dga1ZBRWaN_Ka4O1G009w-74c4VaZCj7?usp=sharing 

How to practice it most effectively: Listen to the opening lines of “Black Dog” and see if you can figure out the timing of when the first notes on the drums enter. Notice that the timing is not exactly the same with the first entrance as it is with the second entrance. One of the difficult parts of this song is figuring out the timing and remembering it so that you always come in at the right time. With the rhythm page, practice playing these rhythms in the same way that you did with the previous page we worked on.

Koel

Recommended minutes to practice: 15-20 minutes per day

What to practice: Review the rhythm page from last week and also use this new page to help you memorize the note names on a xylophone: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SCS8WVjfR1OZVlYmt8a1r2LTxo2NJOpN?usp=share_link

How to practice it most effectively: Practice the rhythms on the snare drum while keeping a steady pulse on the bass drum. Once you have a good handle on that, then try playing quarter notes with your right hand on the cymbal (together with the bass drum) while you play the rhythms with your left hand on the snare drum. With the xylophone note names, remember that “C” is always to the left of a group of 2 notes on the second level and that “F” is always to the left of a group of three notes.