Tag: Drum lessons

  • How to learn. Part 4

    In this series we have approached the different ways of retaining knowledge. More or less, so far it involves hashing it out again and again with repetitions or reviews until the material sticks to your brain. Is there another way, though, to accumulate knowledge? This blog shall examine one of them, a powerful medicine, the…

  • Challenges of learning a new instrument

    One of the obvious challenge of learning any new instrument is discipline. A typical scenario goes like this: We watch a marvelous drummer or piano player on the screen. We are in awe at the mastery of the player. We mull that bit for awhile inside the soft mechanisms of our head. Gently, the determination…

  • How to learn. Part 3.

    So far, on the topic of how to accumulate knowledge, we have covered an important step: applying a method for learning. We have seen that, although the process is honorable, it needs to be accompanied by reviews, lots an lots of reviews. This time, as we move on, we are going to talk about repetition.…

  • How to learn. Part 2.

    One of the most common way to learn an instrument is to seek a teacher. If the teacher is worth his asking price he will have a method. He might advise to study heavily technique for example. Or he might emphasize interpretation and have a whole bunch of exercises on the subject. A really good…

  • How to learn. Part 1.

    Learning in music is not negotiable. If you want to perform, you need to prepare and practice. Extracting the right sound from an instrument is an art that wants time, even if you’re gifted. A French comedian joked that it takes fives minutes of training to make a bad actor, versus five years of hard…

  • Is it important to work on technique?

    Recently I had a brand new student that wanted to study Jazz. He was preparing for an audition and, although he was already a solid player in classical music, his skills in Jazz needed improvement. We talked for awhile about the difference between the old world of Classical music versus the newer one of Jazz.…

  • Let me introduce to you.

    This young lady has been studying the drums with me for 3 years, I believe. She’s started as a beginner and has grown to what you see here on the video. I didn’t assign this particular song. Instead I ask that she plays a song of her choice. She found the sheet music herself. How…

  • The joys of being a beginner.

    Being a beginner on an instrument is first and foremost to dream. That’s how we all started. We saw a band, heard a track, attended a concert and the drummer or the piano player inspired us. Was it the dexterity? The technique? The flow? I think that in almost every case the charism, the charm,…

  • How to chase the blues away.

    The holidays can bring sadness and despair more than joy, leaving behind, as the new year begins, a trail of negative feelings that can endure for quite awhile. I am not a victim of that experience this year, but I can’t claim to have been spared from it before. Having your heart submerged in the…

  • Internal alchemy

    When I practice, I go through different stages. The first one is joy or enthusiasm which is also blended with fear since I have little idea how the exercise or the song I’ve been practicing for days will come out at first. The second stage is frustration generated by the fact that I can’t spit…