Juggling practice is difficult when you play three instruments.
1. Piano practice is required for my job as a piano teacher. 2. Drumming is required because brass band music is difficult, and I want to keep the chair in the band. Furthermore, endurance takes time to build and repetition to maintain. To improve my skills, I take a weekly lesson and lesson preparation requires daily attention. 3. Mallets. I love playing the malletkat and xylophone. And it is a required skill, on occasion, in the brass band. How do I do it? 1. Piano practice maintains my skills to the level required to serve my students well. I'm not preparing for concerts or gigs anymore. Therefore, endurance is not required. 2. Drumming. I have a ritual I've been following for a few months. It starts with 20 minutes on hand warmups and chops building. I follow-up by reviewing a lesson from a drum kit book for 10 minutes. Then I tackle Brass band music. However, I only practice the tricky bits as there is no time for fooling around. With this I've covered chops, endurance, skill development, and being ready to contribute to the band. 3. I do a few minutes in the evening working out of a lesson book and slowly chip away. David
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1. You will have more opportunities to play. If you can read the score, chances are you can play the music.
2. You don't have to try to remember everything. In my experience, ear players forget, over time, the nuances of the music they are recreating. For example, I used to play in a hobby classic rock band. Me and the bass player scored out our parts. For better or worse, we sounded the same every week. However, others in the band were always forgetting parts and therefore wasted our time sorting out what they should have known. 3. You will learn the music much faster. 4. You will have a deeper understanding of music than non-readers. It doesn't mean that you can't be a skillful player, but you will have to work harder. The geniuses who played great and didn't read, were geniuses. Perhaps you too are a genius, but I doubt it. 5. Readers can play with less stress because they don't have to rely on their memory so much. This year I've taken on two new projects: a Saturday morning rehearsal big band, and a serious, you'd better practice or you are out, brass band. The big band is strictly sight reading among friends. The other group is friendly but gives public concerts that make the stakes higher. After three weeks of practicing two hours a day I've drawn some conclusions.
1. The tone of the drums has improved. 2. I can play the parts. 3. My confidence is greater. 4. Folks are pleased to see me. 5. My groove has improved because I've been deep listening to Count Basie, and English Brass bands. This has refreshed my understanding of the idioms. Two challenges remain. 1. Feeling comfortable with horns that drag without sounding like I'm rushing. 2. Keeping up the practice regime with my other responsibilities. 3. Sometimes the toms are too loud in the big band and too soft in the brass bands. David Concert #1 is done. That was exciting. Here is a shot of yours truly rockin' out playing, "Attack of the killer trombones." This is a great band with professional rehearsal standards and a history of performance excellence.
I started teaching in 1982. I can still remember the first pop song I taught: "Wake Me Up Before You GoGo." In 2023 the job still has some wonder in it. Perhaps, not as much as when I started, but enough. What have I learned about students that can be shared?
Realistic goals are difficult to set if you don't know the field. For example, a year ago I began part-time online studies at Athabasca University. Before I signed up, I dreamt about which courses I might take, which area to focus on, how it might benefit my students and my interactions with the world. Then I took the first course, then the second, and I'm now on the third. Reality check. My goals failed to consider the enormous amount of work involved. Furthermore, my previous ideas on the subject matter were, at best, uninformed, at worst, mistaken. Am I sticking with it? You bet. Is it exciting? Yes, because it is the most exciting thing I've done since I earned my ARCT at age 47 and just as difficult. David PS I've completed an English writing course (A) and an ancient philosophy course (A-). I'm now deeply involved in an ethics course. True story from this week. Each month, my friends and I play at a recording studio in Etobicoke: guitar, bass, drums. I bring a new tune. It is a shuffle I had written for a student. Now the set up.
Twenty-five years ago, I was playing jazz piano with a poet in a Queen Street club, we opened for a blues band. Our hippy dippy poetry set went well. During the blues set the band invited me up to sit in. I am thrilled. They yell piano solo! I wail through and finish triumphantly. I look to the band leader for affirmation of my brilliance. He says, 'nice jazz solo buddy." I am crushed. So, I went home and learned to play the blues. Fast forward to this week. I did it again with the drum set. Too much jazz in my blues! I was comping on the snare drum instead of focusing on the pop of the back beat. My drum coach heard it right away. I immediately heard what he was saying. I was being too clever. So, I now focus on the snare drum, keep the bass drum down, minimize my fills, and no comping like a jazz guy on the snare drum. Next session, my shuffles will be simplified and popping. The moral of the story. When we accompany on the drum kit, keeping disciplined and focused for the entire song is difficult. It is easy to get bored and want to fill: here, there and everywhere. This goes for jazz too. In pop and rock drumming with a singer, this never happens, I can play my part and stay out of the way of the story telling. However, in instrumental music, I must stay on my toes, or I will over play. It is time for the yearly stock taking part 2, the setting of new goals while considering my long-term goals.
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