The following are some comments I made in a contentious online conversation about snare drum training and drum set training— or playing— and the differences between the two, that I think stand on their own— edited […]
Category: teaching
You should get drum lessons from me
Making my periodic public observance that I don’t get enough drum students through this site. I know everybody doesn’t instantly get everything I post on here. And I know people are overloaded with information about […]
16th note reading boot camp
Plotting out an intensive couple of lessons with a younger student, who has been doing extremely well with his playing the past year, but who is deficient reading 16th note rhythms. It’s not unexpected that […]
How to stop – 01
Kind of a mundane item here— a multi-parter, believe it or not— mainly for teachers, about handling ordinary materials in a more real-life musical way, including how to stop in the conversation. Younger students and […]
Teaching in Washington
The drive home— the wilds of central Washington. I was out for a couple of days teaching some kids in the tri-cities area in central Washington state. The people who run the Portland Youth Jazz […]
Garrison soldier / combat soldier
There were four platoons in the company, and of them all, Second Platoon was considered the best-trained and in some ways the worst-disciplined. The platoon had a reputation for producing terrible garrison soldiers— men who […]
Sidebar: mind what you say
Teachers, speaking to students: I know everyone thinks we’re not being heard, but a lot of them are more engaged than we think they are, and a lot of things we say to them, particularly […]
Natural music
Some open ended musing here. Lately I’m getting a lot of accidental music from younger drum students. Like with that “worst drummer ever” video from a few months ago, they naturally do some things that we […]
Very occasional quote of the day: a thousand answers
“Teaching requires just as much time and effort as playing. There are a thousand ways to ask one question and a thousand ways to answer it. You’ve got to have the time to understand your […]
On Stanley Spector
In the spirit of that recent quasi-paranoid rant, here’s something I wrote some years ago and never posted. Any time I think I’m getting too dogmatic in my writing, I look up the following personality. […]