Gergely Szabo

Josh

We continued working on Numb today. We continued revising on the main groove. We should try not to tunnel vision on the last two beats of the groove. It is important to get it right, but also Josh should practise the bigger picture. Practise the two beats, then play it in the context of the second bar, then two bars together, later repeat the groove. Even if that means there is more rooms for error, seeing those errors will give us a better idea for what else to work on. Then we moved on to the hi hat section. Practise the sticking on a drum pad first, then practise it on their designated instruments. If the bass drum pattern is making it tricky, take it away first, then add it in once you are comfortable with the hands part. Remember to practise both licks equal amount.

Aleksander

When I Come Around is coming nicely. We tried playing with the song today several times. Aleksander has no issue playing all the grooves, but fitting it into the song seemed tricky. Bar 22 and 23 are two easy bars to play by itself, but Aleks struggled to play it with the recording. The band slightly speeds up during that section, hence it is important to be able to be flexible in that section, and anchor to the big beats and get to know the different melody lines layered (guitar and vocal). We will move on to another song next week. Great work!

Zico

We continued on Fly as Me. We played with the song up till the Outro Chorus section. Zico did great, but was finding some of the fills from few weeks back slightly tricky to play now. I reminded him to just dedicate like 5 minutes each practise session to revise these tricky fills, that way it is still in his system, and that he can consistently play it when we eventually play the song altogether. Zico did a great job working on Middle 8 section this week. We worked on Outro Chorus together this week. I would like for Zico to get familiar with the rhythm that is written in bar 60-63 and next class try improvising in that style to create an extended solo section.

Noah

The Good In Everyone by Sloan. We worked on the Intro Drum Solo together and tried to work it closer up to tempo and playing it with the track. In order to play it with the track, anchor to beat 2 and 4 in bar one and beat 2 and 3 in bar two. It is ok to ghost some notes when playing it fast. Please learn also the other fills notated on the handout.

Finn

We revisited Damascus. It seemed like Finn slightly forgot how to play the pattern so we took some time to work on the second groove. Focus on getting a good clean sound out of the open and close hihat. It is crucial to finding a good coordination between when you close the hihat and when the stick hits the hihat. Experiment a bit to find a good sound. Practise that groove and bring it up to speed.

Henry

Instead of continuing on Enter Sandman, I wanted to visit the idea of playing fills between repetition of a drum groove. I gave Henry two new grooves to learn, and a fill to play in between as transition. We will jam a bit next week!

Jared

Jared is making good progress learning Master of Puppets. I encourage him to practise more consistently so he is more familiar with the material. We worked into the section that is marked 104 bpm. Don’t speed through those licks as they are slower than you think.

Koel

We started today with a play through of Master of Puppets. Great job and I just wanted to point out a few things. The bass drum kicks sometimes become uneven when playing fast, so I suggested Koel to come up with a plan to counter act that. My suggestion is to play the second hit intentional louder when practising, so eventually when playing it faster, it evens up. I also noticed some of the eighth note centric bars tend to be rushed. I encouraged Koel to try to sing the rhythm in his brain more, so his brain doesn’t freak out and go into panic mode when playing these slower bars in a whole section of fast drumming. We moved on to playing Fool in the Rain. The pattern is hard to learn, and I want Koel to especially pay attention to the shuffle feel. Get that feel right before adding on top all the embellishments (ghost note and the open close hihat). Try to play through the first two lines and if Koel manages to get through that, learn the entire page.