I’ve always believed music lessons are more than just playing an instrument, they’re also a life education. I teach students all the essentials required for music and drumming; the basics of reading music, the math of music, understanding rhythm, beat and musical feel, proper posture, song theory, musician concentration, performance concepts, and when opportunity allows I’ll connect these fundamental musical ideas to everyday life as well. The idea is to understand that playing an instrument is much more than just plucking strings, blowing horns, or banging the drum.
Area of teaching focus include:
Reading Music – using a standard method book often used in schools, along with simple math fractions to help the student understand the basics of counting music, rhythm, tempo, and feel.
Basic Drum Patterns – playing on a full drum kit I help the student understand how to take reading music basics and apply those to a drum set. We start by using one of the most iconic and most used drum beat patterns – the basic “back beat”. This is the drum pattern that became the foundation for rock and pop music, it’s the beat that Elvis used to revolutionize rock and roll, and it’s the beat the Beatles used to create Beatlemania and become the worlds most recognized band in history, and the “back beat” is still used to this day.
Music Life Education – teach students to become well rounded players by understanding the connections that being a good player have to life in general. Connections that they may end up using later in life and in school.
Rock Music theory – we’ve all heard great songs, but very few understand how they became great songs. I teach the concepts and theory in understand rock and pop song construction, why song parts are how they are.
Performance – ideas for a higher understanding of what it means to play an instrument. The foundation of these ideas are to draw the distinctions between practice and live performance, whether it be at home, in band class, or on stage in front of a live audience. These ideas and concepts are often not found in book studies; concentration, focus, attitude, dynamics, and approach.