Monthly Roundup #35 - January '21

Well it wasn’t much of a “happy new year” here in England, was it?! January brought about another strict lockdown for us, which quickly put a stop to any optimistic thoughts that 2021 might be any different… Despite there still being nothing on the gigging side of things, I had managed to return to 2 of my 4 schools before Christmas, and was hoping that January would bring about a return to the 3rd, but on the first day of term the schools were closed to the majority of children once again.

As such, I went back to spending more of my Monday-Friday teaching online! I’ve been doing some online teaching ever since things first shut down back in March last year(!), but this latest lockdown has made all my teaching virtual once again for the time being. Fortunately, this time both I and many of my students now knew the drill in order to get set up with doing online lessons at short notice, so since the first week of term I’ve been teaching online for those students who opted in. It does leave me quite a bit quieter than I would have been if I were able to get into schools to see all my students, so I’ve once again been left with quite a bit of down-time to make the most of…

My trusty home setup, from where I’ve been giving online lessons as well as getting lots of practice time of my own!

Going into this lockdown, I was determined to dedicate more of my enforced down-time to practising, where in the previous lockdowns I’ve used much of that time to generate my teaching materials and churn out some gig footage (like the clips below which I’ve added most recently!), as well as catching up with other long-term to-do’s. While I’ve still set aside a couple of mornings a week to do such things, I’ve really enjoyed shifting my focus to getting more practice time in.

A great night playing with Tom Fitzpatrick in January 2020, seen here performing Frank Sinatra's classic, "Come Fly With Me"

Here's a clip from an Alter Eagles show at Eastbourne Bandstand in October 2019, seen here performing Eagles hit, "One Of These Nights".

On the practice side of things, over the past month I took the time to go back over some more “basics” in terms of timing and technique - which I’ve come to learn is never a bad thing! I had a blast working through some of the more complex groupings etc over the end of last year, and it’s great to now have some more of those ideas in my arsenal, but I now have to make sure in doing so I haven’t neglected the truly important things!

I’ve also dedicated quite a bit more time to playing some bass! I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on here before (or if I have, it’s been a while!), but ever since inheriting a friend’s old bass guitar, I’ve had something of an on/off relationship with it for a few years now! I don’t have any particularly serious aspirations to reach a professional level with it or anything like that (the drums will always be my main study, I’m sure!), but it’s been great fun to develop a hobby which still feeds my overall musicianship. Particularly as a drummer, it’s been incredibly helpful to spend more time focusing on the harmony side of things, which naturally gets left behind if one isn’t careful to keep it up! So again, with this latest lockdown I wanted to commit a few time slots throughout the week to practicing the bass a bit more, and to set myself some realistic goals which I’d love to achieve in order to reach that “next step”, allowing me to enjoy it all the more! I’ve promised myself that if I can dedicate a bit of time to it and see a good improvement, I’ll treat myself to a half-decent bass guitar too!

Finally we had our drum hang - once again via Zoom, of course! This one was a fairly relaxed chance to catch up mostly, but we also used it as a chance to discuss our drumming goals for 2021, and a couple of the members of the call had been involved in a virtual hang with the legend that is Vinnie Colaiuta the night before, so they were keen to share about that, as you’d expect! We ended up discussing all manner of things from posture and ergonomics to our hopes for the new year, and had a blast catching up! Needless to say, I look forward to our next one!

Enjoying another virtual drum hang!

That brings January’s newsletter to a close. Thanks as always for checking in, take care, stay safe, and I shall look forward to catching you next time! All the best, Ed.