Week 8 2nd - 5th November 2009

Firstly, welcome back after our week off for half term. This term, running up to Christmas (and the Christmas Concert on the 20th of December - more on that later!) promises to be very busy and packed full of new and exciting lessons for you all.

This week we looked at playing Jazz and dropping some 'Be-Bop Bombs' on the snare drum.

Work through the sheets below, as we did in class - but remember with Jazz Drumming LESS IS MORE - you DO need to be able to play them all but NEVER put them all in one bar.

Week 4 : 28th Sept - 1st Oct 2009

Swing is the thing this week!

This week we looked at playing in a swing style - taking a straight groove and applying some basic principles to play it in a more swung, jazzy, blues-ie, funky way.

The first two sheets below cover all that we discussed in class - how you have two options when it comes to changing what you play to make it swing. Option 1 is to 'dot' the first played note, which adds half it's value to itself to make it 'last' longer. Now for us drummers that doesn't mean a great deal but it does mean that the next note that you'll play will be 'pushed' slightly to the right, closer to the next note, which in turn will be dotted an so on. This will give you that 'shuffle' feel that you hear in Jazz and Blues. Option 2 essentially does that same thing but this time you're going to change those straight hi hat beats to triplets with the middle one missing.

Work through the two sheets making sure you're OK with the concept then have a go at the sheet below.