Ella

Recommended Practice Time: 30mins

What to practice: Work through the chorus of the Violent Sun transcription.

How to practice effectively: You had a good handle on the part today so just go through it and engrain it into your hands and make sure to play along to the song while you practice. 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

Awesome job this week Ella, I could tell you were really getting the part so great work!

Jonah

Recommended practice time: 15mins

What to practice: Next week Jonah I want to hear you play the rest of Lesson 7 and I would like to hear you play along to Them Changes.

How to practice effectively: Work through the reading portion so that you know it backwards and forwards and it just flows. Even if its just on one drum try to make some music out of it! For Them Changes, listen to the song and play through it everyday, try to feel the music as much as you can.

Great stuff today Jonah, just make sure that when I need to get us focused, we can get focused quickly again.

Samson

Recommended practice time: 30mins

What to practice: Next week Samson I want you to hear you play through all of Mario Beatbox and the reading for Lesson 6.

How to practice effectively: Try putting in some more time to getting the details in Mario Beatbox better, I know its in your grasp you just need to practice it on your own a little more. Make sure to play it with the song at the same time as well at 75% speed. We might have started Lesson 6 before so just try to play through as much of it as you can.

A lot of things were better this week, don’t be afraid to push yourself!

Sylvie

Recommended practice time: 30mins

What to practice: This week Sylvie I want you to focus on playing Starlight through the first pre-chorus. Here are the transcriptions of the beats. And here is a form chart of the song. If you have some time also take a look at Lesson 8.

How to practice effectively: For Starlight just build up the beat from the bass drum, to the low tom, to the snare drum just like we did today. Then focus on getting comfortable with that beat and playing it at tempo with the song. With Lesson 8 work through the reading and the beats, don’t worry about the hand exercises right now.

Great to see your progress!

Paulina

Missed you today Paulina! I’ll keep the same assignment up for you.

Recommended practice time: 30mins

What to practice: This week I want you keep working on the coordination exercise, aim to get through the whole thing, as well as work through Lesson 1 and Lesson 2.

How to practice effectively: For the coordination exercise, continue isolating the patterns that give you difficulty. Repeat them, memorize them, engrain those patterns so that playing them is second nature. Then string them together and push towards playing the whole thing. For the Lessons I want you to clap and count the reading exercises and then once you feel comfortable with that try them on the drum looking for good strokes that start and stop at the top and good timing. We’re going to be using this book quite a bit so its not a bad idea for a purchase.

Heres an album I really like:

This is My Hand, by My Brightest Diamond