LESSONS
One to One lessons are available in person at my studio in London or online via Zoom/Skype.
Our Drumdrill sessions are a great way to ask yourself questions about your drumming.
Between how you normally hear, move and think there is a lot to consider in order to get to what you want.
However, with direct guidance, I can help you identify the habits you need to start changing to see significant and meaningful improvements in your playing.
If you’re interested in booking a lesson or would like a chat, please get in touch and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
A GLIMPSE INTO MY APPROACH
My teaching, like my playing, has evolved over the years.
Discovering, understanding and accepting ones deep habits is key to be able to implement real and meaningful changes in our ability to learn and improve any skill.
The goal oriented approach of learning – omnipresent in our western society, tends to make us value ‘trying to be correct’, ‘succeed’, and ‘being right or wrong’.
If you only keep looking at what you want you are probably not going to do what you need.
Letting go of the desire to achieve the result and instead identifying the habit that you must change in order to set you on the right path.
Once the habit identified, the mindset shifts to experiment with a task to develop a skill rather than having it memorised and stored hoping for results.
Taking a few lessons to pass your driving test isn’t quite like learning how to actually drive right?
So I focus my efforts on addressing the:
HEAD, so that the
EARS can take centre stage and help the
HANDS getting comfortable at executing.
Your ideas don’t come from your hands!
To borrow from F.M Alexander’s principles: What feels Normal isn’t necessarily Natural.
Musically
It means that I focus on feeling comfortable Hearing rhythms. Working through permutations, syncopation, subdivisions, groupings etc…are all great ways to challenge how to stay relaxed and rooted to the Pulse. If you can sing/count it out loud comfortably, then playing & interpreting it will take you no time.
Physically
It means that without a focused intention on what body part you want to use and how, your body will simply react to what you’re trying to play. It will go to what it ‘knows’ and you’ll likely waste many hours of hard work without understanding why you’re not making the expected progress. You’re getting in the way, and it likely starts with your approach not your ability.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT PERMANENT
AS AN EXPERIMENT TRY THIS:
Start playing a single stroke roll RLRLRLRL etc, no need for click or even sticks.
Keep going and simply observe.
Can you comfortably hear a pulse?
Can you hear the rhythms played by each hand individually?
The resulting 16th note?
You just assumed these were 16th right?
Without changing the motion or the speed of your hands and without adding any accents, can you hear this single stroke roll as triplets, 8th, quintuplets?
Or can you swap the leading hand, mentally?
2. How do you get in the way physically?
From the neck down, left to right, try to get a feel for all the muscles involved.
Can you get rid of a few?
Which one ‘should’ you isolate for an optimum, frictionless motion.
What if you change dynamics or subdivision? How does your body react?
What if you keep the same rhythm (say 16th) but now you change the sticking?
How is your body ‘fighting back’, how is your notion of time and rhythm being affected?
The quality of your sound and dynamics?
This is ‘just’ a single stroke roll, right?
…and we’re only playing on a practice pad! Move around the kit, with different sounds and pitches and all of these perceptions will be even more challenged.
Basic is powerful, very.
With a bit of curiosity and creativity it can go from ‘Simple‘ to ‘What The Hell !?‘ in no time.
More importantly it is useful, applicable and a guaranteed way to connect deep into the music.
