Francisco

We did a play through of Smooth Criminal and I must say I am beyond proud of Zico for his effort learning this song. There were so many advanced concepts and challenging licks on this tune and Zico mastered them through very discipline practising. Though we did a play through, I would still encourage Zico to spend a bit of time smoothen up some of the transitions and pay attention to the feel of time. I mentioned to him that there is a tendency to rush when the music is sparse (e.g. material predominantly laying out eighth notes) and when things become dense, he tends to drag. With the rushing tendency, I suggest that he try to feel the big beats more and with the dragging, also try to group the 16th notes to the main beats. This applies to any song we learn in the future. Next class we will start a new song. At the moment I suggest Zico to try Fly as Me by Silk Sonic, but I welcome any new ideas if he has any songs he would like to play.

Noah

We continued working on Bulls on Parade. First of all, Noah is fast to pick up the song, but always play things slow when we are just going through the details of a pattern, so we don’t miss anything and end up practising the wrong things. First bar of line 4 at first poses a challenge for Noah, with things sounding little uneven. We tackled that by firstly practising the stroke of bouncing directly from snare to the cymbal and back (so Noah is not late to play each instrument) and secondly grouping to the big beat (for the fourth beat). Though the pattern does sound like it should be group to the eighth note, over doing it will lead to unevenness, and its better to play it grouped to the big beat and let the bass drum spell out the small grouping. Another thing I would like Noah to pay attention to is the first bar in the last line of page one. Feel it like a boomerang. The next big challenge is the 32nd notes lick on line 5 of page 2. Try to decipher it at home and we will see if we can play through big sections together in person next week.

Finn

We worked on DARE by Gorillaz together and Finn did a great job focusing through the online lesson. We played his version of the beat but also tried tackling the original version. Note the original version is actually less note to play, but requires Finn to relax and feel the groove. All it is, is that the original version plays hi hat on 1 34 of the 16th note grid, and Finn’s version includes all. He was able to play the original version, but reverts to his own version whenever he tenses up. Whenever that happens during practise, remind him to take a break and listen to the song for the best tips. We also worked on the lick that starts the song. If he has trouble remembering, it is snare/hihat(same time) follow by kick and repeat that pattern 8 times before we enter the main groove. Also we talked about Oasis during class and would be fun to expose him to a bit of Brit-pop history at home. Can also start exploring what he is interested for a next song.

Koel

Koel is a talented drummer and has pretty good coordination between the limbs, but I will like to go back to some basics with hands dexterity. We played through Bulls on Parade together, which the 32nd note lick seems to be the only thing that posed somewhat of a challenge. Note that this lick can be dissected into three parts. First beat, two hits on the crash with a pick up on the last 16th note that kick starts the 32nd lick. As for the next three beats, the 32nd notes should be all grouped to the right hand, with every off beat (the n) played on the ride/crash. For the last beat, can slight crescendo toward the end, and build towards the crash hit on the next bar. The trick to these 32nd note, is an exercise I showed him, that is now available on his drive (see Stick control p.10). Practise firstly RLRL RRRR, then line 1 of that page. The next step is play one bar of the first and line 1 in the next bar back to back, and ideally this should be played with a metronome, and always phrase toward every two beats. Before the first R of the four consecutive R, throw the wrist to generate the power. This exercise will help grounding to the big beat when playing something fast like the 32nd lick. When in doubt, just think you are throwing those notes. Afterwards we looked at Killing in the Name of together, for this song, there are many quick changes between 16th note grid and triplet grid, so I wanted Koel to work on Stick control p.14, which is to build that muscle memory of what that switch feels like. For both of these pages of exercise, Koel is encouraged to work on all the other lines, especially the ones leading with left hand. As most of us have right hand as our dominant hand, leading with left hand will be harder to play, but building a stronger left hand dexterity will also improve your control when leading with right hand as well. Have fun stick controlling! We will continue with Killing in the Name of for next week’s lesson.