B.Ed. Music (York U)
B.A. (University of Guelph)
Rob is a drummer and composer, specializing in jazz, free music, R&B, funk and folk music. He has composed for and recorded with the likes of Bolete, Emily & the Mainlanders, Vulpis Vulpis, Sam Keshen and the Vybe Tribe. He is currently completing York University’s Bachelor of Education program, after which he will be a certified high school music teacher.
Rob’s approach to teaching uses the interests of his students as media for learning musical concepts and techniques. Together, he and his students extract lessons from a list of songs and genres that the student puts together. Rob develops his students’ “ear” for aural learning as well as their ability learn from written notation. Composition and improvisation are ongoing focuses of his teaching.
Get to know a TEACHER…Beyond the Bio!
Hobbies: exercising, reading
Musical influences: ?Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, River Tiber, Miles Davis, John Mayer, D’Angelo
Favourite food: ?Chinese
Least favourite food: ?Sardines!
Favourite music: ?R&B
Favourite song: ?Dreams by Fleetwood Mac
Favourite movie: ? Zoolander
Favourite movie music: The Garden State soundtrack is top notch.
Favourite musical theatre/opera: I have yet to find one I like!
Best quote from your teacher: “Thinking is for practicing, not performing.”
Favourite quote: ?”Only the Sith deal in absolutes.” – Obi Wan
Favourite book: ?The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Latest Homework from Robert
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August 24 – 31
Jonathan
Goal: Play all the gospel beats with confidence. You can click on each beat to hear it played by Larnell Lewis:
Southern Gospel, Waltz, Funk Shuffle, Shout, Ballad, Caribbean-American, Contemporary
Will
Please update Zoom on your phone so you can access the “Use Original Sound” function. This will allow me to hear your drums much more clearly. Once updated, follow these steps:
- Sign in to the Zoom mobile app.
- Tap
Settings. - Tap Meetings.
- Tap the toggle to enable Use Original Sound.
Settings.Goal: Feel comfortable improvising (making up on the spot) the hand part only in this fill. Then, play 3 bars of a drum beat of your choosing followed by 1 bar of fill (just like in our lesson).
Aidan
Goal: Feel comfortable playing Transition (option #1). Feel comfortable playing the chorus cymbal part only (with metronome at 110, cut-time feel). Start slow with the chorus bit and work your way up to speed.
August 17-24
Hi! Sorry this is so late.
Will
Practise these fills one at a time. You can hear how they sound in this video. Loop the fill (by itself) over and over again until you feel confident playing it. Then play three bars of any drum beat you’d like followed by one bar of the fill. Again, that’s three bars of a random drum beat, one bar of the fill. Loop this pattern until you feel confident playing it. Do this for each fill on the sheet (or as many as you’d like).
Jonathan
Same as last week: keep chipping away at the gospel drum beats. I recommend starting with the beats we didn’t cover in our lesson (#4-7) before reviewing the others. Other than the Waltz, try playing them along to some songs you like.
April
Clap/drum just the rhythm (ignore the pitches) to this song and try to figure out which famous nursery rhyme it is.
August 10 – 17
Aidan
Here‘s the sheet music for Spanish Joint. Learn as much or as little as you’d like. Try playing along to as much of the recording as you can.
I haven’t notated every part of the song because a lot of it is heavily improvised (e.g., at the end of choruses). We can learn how to improvise in these sections in a future lesson.
You’ll notice that for the chorus beat, the ride cymbal isn’t playing every eighth note. After giving the song another listen, I realized that Questlove is largely improvising his ride pattern. The ride pattern I’ve included in the sheet music compliments the bass drum and snare drum parts nicely, and it doesn’t require you to build hand speed beforehand to play it.
August 3 – 10
Will
Hey Will. We talked about doing a lot of things today but I think it would be good to focus on just one for practising this week. This sheet contains drum patterns that require you to play single strokes on the hi-hat (mostly). Practising single strokes with a metronome will make you a faster drummer and get you closer to being able to play those fast fills we were talking about. Practise as many of the patterns as you’d like, but at the very least, work on the first one. Set your metronome to a slow tempo (ex. 40 bpm) and once you can play the pattern a few times in a row without making a mistake, increase the speed by 5 or 10 bpm (beats per minute). Repeat this process until you can play it really fast (ex. 140 bpm).
Jonathan
Learn as many of these gospel beats as you’d like. Here is a video where you can hear an explanation and demonstration of each one. Performed by Toronto’s own Larnell Lewis.
April
Scattered throughout this page are some good 16th-note exercises with audio examples. If you feel up to it, count 16th notes out loud while you clap/play the written ones.
July 27 – August 3
Jonathan
- Full-kit paradiddles (#1-6). If you want, you can practise each pattern like this:
- Play along to a metronome at a slow tempo (ex. 50 bpm).
- Once you feel comfortable with the tempo, increase it (ex. raise it 10 bpm).
- Keep doing this until you get to a fast tempo (ex. 150 bpm).
- By coincidence, this video popped up on my YouTube! It attempts to explain why many black gospel musicians are so skilled. The ending bit focuses on drummers in particular. Check it out if you’re interested.
Will
- Verse’s main beat (bar 3) and chorus’s main beat (bar 5). If you want, you can practise them like this:
- Play the verse’s main beat with a metronome at a slow tempo (ex. 40 bpm).
- Once you feel comfortable with the tempo, increase it (ex. raise it 5 bpm).
- Keep doing this until you get to the tempo of the recording (92 bpm).
- Play through the entire recording using only the verse’s main beat OR only play during the verses and drop out for the choruses.
- Repeat the whole process with the chorus’s main beat.
- “Say-and-play”: Improvise (make up on the spot) a solo while saying what you’re playing using gibberish words/sounds. If you want, you can practise it like this: start by only using one drum, then do it with two drums, three drums, etc.
April
- Clap/play this and this. If you want, you can practise each rhythm like this:
- Play all the rhythms with a metronome at a slow tempo (ex. 50 bpm).
- Once you’ve played all the rhythms and feel comfortable with the tempo, increase it (ex. raise it 10 bpm).
- Keep doing this until you get to a fast tempo (ex. 125 bpm).
Aidan
- Learn D’Angelo’s Spanish Joint (or at least the main/verse beat) with this annoyingly 14-part tutorial. The instructor tends to play something in one video and explain it in the next.
- If you want, check out the whole D’Angelo album, Voodoo. It’s a very, very important album insofar as it influenced many prominent musicians today in the world of black music (R&B, hip-hop, soul, funk, jazz fusion, gospel, etc.).
JULY 14-20, 2021
JONATHAN
AUX cable
Practise the first bar (that has drums…)
WILL
Practise the third bar on the first line and the second bar on the second line.
AIDAN
Practise the third bar on the first line and the second bar on the second line.
APRIL
Work your way through these rhythms however you’d like (drum, clapping, tap dancing, etc.). Count out loud as you play. Once you’ve got ’em, challenge yourself by playing with a metronome (each click = 1 beat). You can challenge yourself further by making the metronome faster and faster.
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