Josh

We continue working through the pre chorus section into the chorus section, and this time around we work towards playing with the music, with me on the xylophone playing the melody. I would like Josh to start establishing connections with how the different patterns link to different sections of the song, especially when the phrase starts on a pick up beat the bar before. Focus on trying to get the Chorus 2 bars pattern familiarised, and play it 4 times in repeat.

Aleksander

Aleksander is now familiar with all the patterns, so what we did this past class was trying to remember how many repetitions each pattern is played for each section. Just a small tip about executing the chorus pattern, is that the beat 3 is similar to a paradiddle, and should be phrase towards the end. That helps with any unevenness in the two consecutive kick drum hits. As for the bridge section (notated under occurs @2:37), the first bar is a little more spaced out, and the hihat crash should sync with the “hey” chant in the vocal part. We will try to play through the song next week.

Zico

Zico is now not only playing all the notes, but also executing at a very musical fashion. He is starting to understand where the climax of a phrase or a fill is, and how to build towards it. Next challenge for him is the stamina part, with the song being relatively long and the score being fairly dense and fast. I would like him to try going at full speed, and see if there are any sections he is feeling impossible to play. We will workout a strategy with preserving energy next class.

Noah

We worked on the Routine handout again, this time with a focus on the rolls and the flams. Both are not foreign concepts for Noah, but we worked on how to do it efficiently. Noah is starting to understand how to do a crescendo over a roll and giving it a solid downbeat. We also emphasised on the importance of keeping the secondary hand low when executing a flam, and trying out different variations of the flam exercise (flam tap, flamacue). Then for Smooth Criminal, we worked through page 2 and Noah is becoming more and more natural with the four way coordination required for this piece. He can start working towards the third page by his own, where he will find similar patterns, but slightly varied.

Koel

Koel impressed me with a full run through of the song under tempo. He has seen great improvement executing the samba accent pattern in the middle of the song. Also with the shuffle feel, it is now a lot smoothen up, but I do have one small comment for him to work through. The second beat of the pattern sometimes is not swung, probably because of muscle memory of the common rock pattern, which I have advised him to try slowing it down and making sure he fixes that slow. Also when playing the shuffle beat, I want him to place more emphasis on the beat 1 and 3, and ghost more of the notes in between, That saves energy, but also pairs better with the light hearted feel to the song.