Tag: piano instructor

Once you have covered the basics of drumming and you’re playing in a band, you quickly realize it’s not easy to put your own signature to a song . First, you might say, it depends on the material. Then you might follow that argument by stating that a simple rock song calls for a simple…

Survival is not for the faint of heart. We are all experiencing its very meaning at some level right now. Now, of course, I could tell you that it is important to keep hoping no matter what, to never give up. And, in some ways this blog will be about that. It is true that…

When I came out of Berklee College of Music and started to teach in Chicago I wrote a lot of exercises to prepare my lessons. It was, a the time, done by hand and I had to make copies at the local copy store. It was long, cumbersome and expensive. But, like most of us…

This has been a very trying time for the music world. I have seen Paul Simon singing against a white wall by himself with his guitar, with no accompanying musicians. I have seen the streets of my city empty from the festivals and block parties that we used to have during the summers in Chicago.…

You have this exercise your teacher has just given you. You understand what it’s about, the concept is clear in your head, only the body doesn’t want to do it. You hesitate, you skip, you trip, you stumble. Bad vibes all over! You can feel your shoulders tightening, your neurons crowding each other, your heart…

We are about to deconfine. Yet, in Chicago it’s still cold and wet, the weather is welcoming 1 day, the other 10 it’s not. You look at the sky through the windows and you get a runny nose. Because we still are in the flu season.  Oh, I know. For the ones who are already…

Our society is geared from the outside in. What I mean by that is that we are all supposed to draw our happiness from exterior stimulus. “Buy this product, you deserve it!” “Drink this to feel better!”, “Eat this and you’ll be happy!”. With those slogan they shovel pictures of happy people. Big smiles! Clear…

You are interested in learning the drums. You got yourself a pair of sticks. You have ruined a couple of furniture expressing that boiling desire to become a drummer, but there are only so much exercises you can dream up on your own. So, you go online and find some videos on the subject. But,…

Take a rock rhythm on the drum set, a simple 4/4 beat. What do you start it with? The bass drum! That’s right. The order is almost always bass/snare-bass/snare. Millions of people have boogied with that simple and efficient combo. Are you looking for a new style, something unusual to do? Then reverse the order.…

I always recommend to my students to explore the instrument they’re interested in. By that, in the simplest terms, I mean this: mess around. Every time I give this advice, though, I imagine the player on his drums pouring speed from his wrists while pouring sweat out of his forehead and producing an incredible mess…