UNIT 1 TASK 1

I am going to cover 4 techniques over the next four weeks, in hope that it will benefit my improvisational skills, confidence, timing and my sticking pattern (particularly) my left hand. Here is the chart I made that will guide me through it, covering how it went, and if I achieved the goal:

Week No.	What will I cover?	Did I achieve the task?	Do I see an improvement?
1	Sticking Techniques	Yes	Yes it has made my left hand lightly stronger and I am better at double strokes and 7 stroke rolls.
2	Playing to a click	Yes	My timing skills have improved by a lot and I am able to keep to the metronome.
3	Improving my left hand	Yes	It has made my left hand stronger. I can also see it improving my confidence when I play fills.
4	Improvised fills	Yes	It has improved my improvisation skills and I am more confident.

For the first week, one of the improvements I want to make is getting better at sticking patterns. This is because I have always struggled with paradiddles and buzz rolls on the snare drum etc. The reason I want to improve on this is because it holds me back when it comes to fills and improvising. I struggle to play fills that are more complex because I’m unable to make it sound interesting. Therefore panicking and just making it really simple and boring.

The video that I am going to use to improve my sticking pattern, also helps me strengthen my left hand which is an added bonus. This is an audio clip that was suggested to me by my drum teacher:

The video is quite long so I am only going to cover half of it as some of it I haven’t come across yet in any pieces. Because of that, my drum teacher is going to take me through it over the next few lessons that I have with him. It covers 8th notes, double 16ths, 5, 7 and 9 stroke rolls and double strokes.

If I’m honest, I can already see the improvement. I am hoping that if I practice this at least once a day, it will benefit me in the future when coming across fills and interesting sticking patterns in songs.

I will be practicing this twice a day for the next week so I can see an improvement when I am next in my drum lesson and performing fills. This will hopefully benefit me well in the long run so I can become more confident when playing.

This video I am about to show you is me practicing. I cover Rebound 8, 6, 4, and 2, and also doubles in 16th notes, I then cover 5,7 and 9 stroke rolls. I followed along to the video guide, which is what you can hear in the background (also the video I inserted above). There is a metronome that you play along to and that was at a comfortable speed which made it slightly more relaxing. However I did struggle as currently, I don’t have a proper practice pad, I only have a small one which is strapped around your leg. I am hoping to get anew one at some point but for the time being, this is what I will use. Due to the size, I do accidentally miss the pad a few times but it did not affect my rhythm or cause me to mess up. I could definitely improve my 5 stroke rolls at the end of the video as I don’t really get into it straight away, but I end up being less tense and the 7 and 9 stroke rolls start to flow more naturally which is good. As I said above, I will be practicing this at least twice everyday for the next week so I can get used to it.

Here is the video:

The next video you are about to see, is me just playing a simple beat (adding in some small changes every now and again) for 5 minutes. I will be playing it to a metronome set at 110bpm and will try to stay in time for the 5 minutes. The reason I have set it to 5 minutes, is because that is usually longer then most songs, so it gives me more time to practice and concentrate. I predict that I will probably start to lose the timing around the 3 minute mark but I will insist on trying to stay in time. The video I will show below, is the best video I could capture on my phone, however the sound quality is not great.

Here it is:

This task went a lot better then I anticipated, however I did struggle to stay in time around the 4 minute mark, but I was expecting that to happen. The rhythm was slightly lost every now and again, but that is most likely because I have never played a song for that length before. The hi-hat grooves were sometimes lost as I panicked but I managed to get back into the rhythm of it. I will be practicing this twice a day for the next week, and will also be carrying this on in general as I know it will eventually benefit me when it comes to playing gigs and keeping my stamina up. I enjoyed playing in this video as it let me think of so many different variations to add to the groove when I got comfortable with the time. I will be doing this a lot in the future and each time, I am going to increase the speed of the metronome, so I can get comfortable at all speeds. At the end of the video, I felt pleased with the outcome due to assuming I would mess up whilst playing.

The next technique was to make my left hand stronger. This a very important technique to improve for me because a strong left hand, as well as right hand, is key to being a good drummer. It will improve my sticking, fills and genuine playing. It should help play faster grooves and quicker grooves. I plan to follow a video off YouTube and hopefully be able to perform it, however the sound quality of my video is not great as it was shot my phone.

This is the video I found a video online, which gave me the idea of how to work on my left hand:

Here is my version and how I tried to interpret it:

I found this quite difficult as I still need more practice to build up my strength, however I can definitely see a huge improvement when it comes to playing now. There was no metronome to play against as I was using the video as a reference in my earphones. It was all over the place at first but once I got the gist of what to do, it became a lot easier and I was able to do a variety of random fills that involved the right hand too, but always led with the left hand, which is usually what wouldn’t happen for me. This is definitely going to benefit me as I have always began a fill with my right-hand but now I will be able to change that, giving me more options on creating fills, therefore helping me with my next technique too. I will be practicing this everyday at least twice as because I know the result will be good eventually. The video went better then I expected and I look forward to seeing this improve my skills.

My final technique I wanted to improve on was improvising drum fills. I usually find this quite difficult as I am not that confident when being put on the spot, so my fills tend to be rather boring and basic. I chose this video to play along to as I had never heard it before, meaning it was even more improvisational. I chose a ‘funk’ track as I usually don’t play any songs like that, again showing that I am even going to improvise the groove.

This the video I played along to:

This was the outcome: (I listened to the first 30 seconds to picture what the groove could be and how I’d start the intro, but after the 30 second mark, I stopped listening and then hadn’t heard any of it)

I found this technique useful as it has opened up my options to different fills. In this video I got more confident throughout and therefore it caused me to be a little more creative with the fills, however they are still not great. I will be practicing a lot more over the week and will also practice in general as I now it can benefit me in the long run. I messed the groove up a few times because I didn’t know the music obviously, but it did help me gain confidence due to the fact I had nothing to guide me along so I was free to make it up. I think I did a reasonable job of keeping in time, although the beat I decided could’ve been more complex, same goes for the fills I managed to produce. If I keep practicing, I recon this could definitely improve my improvisational skills.

Overall once I get these skills sorted and to a good standard, I will have become a much better drummer and improved so much. The reason I chose all these techniques to work on is because they all join together to make me a more confident person and can improve my improvisational skills more. I will be practicing these techniques constantly as I know it will benefit me a lot.