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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Kristen's rock micro-syllabus

Here I've written up a thing I've been doing verbally with Kristen, one of my 6th grade students, to acquaint with some of the basic moves in rock-style drumming.

Our method has been to run each measure in a section, memorize them, then run them without stopping from memory, then improvise with them. I've written them mostly in 2/4 to isolate each idea; after the exercises are learned and the transitions are smooth, we begin to count them in 4/4. I've found that putting the snare at the beginning of the pattern can help clarify the coordination, so I've written some of the exercises backwards. We don't include those in our memorizing/improvising routine. Once the fill/SD variations exercises are learned, we practice putting them at the end of one or two 4/4 measures of a basic rock beat.


Get the pdf.

By the way, for more of this sort of thing, at the excellent Bang! the Drum School blog there are a couple of pages of good basic rock beats available. If a few more people will start using the "monster mash" style font on our rock materials, we'll have a bona fide tradition going.

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