Lucas
Recommended Practice Time: 15-30mins every day
What to practice: This week Lucas I want you to play the Reading and Hand Exercise section of Lesson 1 on the snare drum with sticks and counting.
How to practice effectively: Great counting and clapping today! Remember to practice each section many times to get the flow smooth and consistent. Now transition to counting and playing on the drum. Remember to keep the sticks in an arrow shape on the drum. Start and stop each stroke about 6 inches off the drum head, making sure to keep each stroke consistent. Right now just alternate your hands and for the Hand Exercises follow the directions for how to practice them and make sure to play those with the correct hand.
It was awesome to see your progress today and learn more about the difference between rests and long notes. See you next week!
Ella
Recommended Practice Time: 30mins every day
What to practice: Get Violent Sun up to tempo and incorporate the fills in the bridge! Here is the transcription and here is the form chart.
How to practice effectively: This song is really getting polished Ella, I love the way you sound on it. Keep it up and work to make the bridge as smooth as the rest of the song. Work it slowly up to tempo with a metronome, remembering to keep your hands relaxed and pumping the arms on the main beat to smooth out the sound and add some musical inflection. Here is a video of me playing the chorus for audio/visual reference and here is a video of the drummer Michael Spearman playing the song.
And here is some fun listening if you’re interested:
Imogen Heap, Speak for Yourself
Muse, Black Holes and Revelations
Keep working Ella, don’t be afraid to jam out to other songs if you start getting bored too!
Jonah
Recommended practice time: 30mins every day
What to practice: Next week Jonah I want you to come prepared to play through Lesson 9
How to practice effectively: Work through the reading as well as you can for next week!
It was fun playing with you today Jonah, never lose your passion!
Samson
Recommended practice time: 30mins every day
What to practice: Next week Samson, I want you to play through the rest of Lesson 6. In the last half of the lesson we’ll continue to work on Uptown Funk.
How to practice effectively: Work through all parts of the lesson keeping in mind for the reading portion the arrow position of the sticks on the snare drum and starting and stopping each stroke 6 inches above the drum. Be sure to count and play the whole thing with solid, steady time. For Uptown Funk, use your ears and keep listening to the song to see what you can pick up! Work through that first entrance and beat a bunch of times.
It was fun looking at a new song today, it was nice meeting Josie as well!
Sylvie
Recommended practice time: 30mins every day
What to practice: This week Sylvie I want you to focus on incorporating the fill at the end of the pre-chorus and working through Beat C for the last chorus. Here are the transcriptions of the beats. And here is a form chart of the song.
How to practice effectively: Remember to count through the fill and if you forget, you can hear it pretty easily on the recording! After that try working on the Chorus towards the end of the song with Beat C
Awesome job!