Monthly Roundup #27 - May '20

Welcome to May’s instalment of my monthly blog! Needless to say, it’s been another fairly strange month, although probably like most folks, I’ve actually started to get quite used to the new ways of doing things… I’ve been spending most of my working day split between giving online/remote lessons to some of my students, revising/editing some of my teaching material, and getting in some practice time of my own. Obviously I’m looking forward to getting back out and about, but I have actually been quite enjoying the work I’ve been able to do from home for the time being!

The online teaching has been going well… so far, I’ve seen just over half my usual student base for some online lessons, and most of those have continued to have regular, weekly lessons. Everyone is getting into the swing of things with it now, and while there have been some things which are a little harder to do remotely, I’ve been really pleased with how many things have been working out pretty well! It’s been great to see my students playing in their own home, from their own kits, and playing independently without me sat next to them! Probably one of the main, recurring themes I’ve noticed throughout this process was that where some of the less experienced students struggled to follow music independently at first, they’re now doing brilliantly with it, and from what I’ve seen that’s given some of them a boost to crack on with reading things for themselves between lessons. Also, it’s been really nice to do the lessons with the student’s parents sitting in as it’s given them a good insight as to what we get up to in lessons, and for some of the younger ones, it’s meant the parents are better equipped to help support them in their practice too. I’m sure I could go on, but those are a couple of the highlights I’ve found through doing the online lessons so far!

The online teaching setup has been serving me well!

As mentioned, I’ve also been using some of the down-time to revise my own teaching material. It’s one of those jobs I like to do from time to time as the way I approach things changes, and I find better ways to explain things etc, so this has been the perfect opportunity! The material I use most often didn’t really need much changing, but it was a great change to write out some new sheets that I’ve been thinking about for a little while, as well as putting them together in a logical order in my folders, with which I follow the progression through the graded syllabus I tend to teach from. It’s been great to get that stuff better organised, and I’m excited to start applying some of the new material to my lessons!

Some of my teaching material in it’s nicely organised new folders!

In my own practice time, there have been a few things I’ve been enjoying working on… One new thing was that I set up my BeatNik pad as a permanent fixture in my practice space. I’ve had it for a little while, but thought that in order to get the most out of it, it needed to be used regularly! So, I’ve been doing about a 10 minute warmup playing crotchets, quavers, triplets and semiquavers slowly with a click before analysing the timing of each subdivision. It can be a pretty brutal piece of kit when it gives you your accuracy percentage, but I’ve been pleased to see steady progress in the time I’ve been using it, so I reckon it’s here to stay - definitely worth checking out! I’ve also been enjoying working from Mark Guiliana’s book (“Exploring Your Creativity On The Drumset”), as well as cracking on with plenty of ongoing things from my regular lessons with Andrew Small, who I’ve now been studying with for the past 4 years.

The BeatNik - a great bit of kit that’s been kicking my timing into shape over the last month or so!

Over the last few weeks of lockdown a friend of mine, Russ Gleason, has been organising some “Zoom Drum Hangs”. They’ve been taking place alongside UK drumming great Neal Wilkinson, but have also started to introduce some additional guests. One of those in May was with the brilliant Nate Smith, coming to us live from his New York apartment! It was a really cool chance to have some insight and Q&A with these two wonderful drummers, making the most of the new remote ways of doing things that we’ve all found ourselves embracing. Russ has more of the events set over the coming weeks with some more brilliant guests, but the next one I’m booked in for is with the legendary Vinnie Colaiuta - which Russ really pulled one out the bag to organise! To say I’m excited about that one would be a huge understatement!

Zoom hang with the Great Nate Smith!

As always, we’ve had some of our own (virtual!) drum hangs going on too, with a mix of relaxed social calls and some that have been a little more structured. For our "more structured” one this time around, we gave one another a virtual tour of our home drum spaces, whatever that looked like for each of us. It’s been great to be able to carry on with our drum hangs remotely, making the most of some of the topics we can better discuss from our own homes, but needless to say I look forward to meeting with the gang once again when things return to normal!

One of our virtual drum hangs this month!

Well that’s a wrap for my drumming activities in May! Thanks as always for checking in, and I shall look forward to catching you next time! Take care and all the best, Ed.