Fundamentals Week 8

This week is 12/8 (and other compound time signatures) and flams. The assignment is shorter than in recent weeks and more improvisational, though the etude is a little tricky. This week shouldn't be quite as stressful as other recent weeks.

Only four weeks left after this week.
Week 9, Afro-Cuban 6/8: Afro Blue
Week 10, Jazz Shuffle: Things Ain’t What they used to be
Week 11, Swinging: April in Paris
Week 12, Cha Cha: Naima

None of these are styles that I am familiar with and I suspect I will be frustrated from here on out.

I was thinking this weekend that it may not be in the cards for me to be a certain kind of drummer...and that maybe I ought to focus on improving what I CAN do and what I could potentially be good at. Something I think that might be a really good idea is just nailing down my sense of time. I've realized that I used to think that I keep good time...but I don't. I don't have a strong internal pulse. Working with a metronome more would probably be a really good thing...in particular...starting an exercise or song by playing with the click...then turning the click off maybe with a foot...and trying to keep the pulse...then turn the click back on and see if I stayed with it. It's such a simple thing...but really a great skill to have.

I've also been playing along with some Pixies tunes and would like to nail down being able to play those songs. They aren't hard but there are challenging things in them that I'd like to master. Trompe le Monde is a song that really challenges me and I think truly learning to play it would be an attainable and useful exercise.

Anyway...I'd just like to get back to enjoying playing rather than having it make me feel bad. After this class is over I was to think about where to go next and maybe trying to get back to playing for fun and just getting better at what I already can do. It would be nice, for instance, to gain confidence playing The Drain songs.