Drum Related

Just to give you a little update as to my progress, or lack there of, on my WFD practice/plans. Basically, due to not really practicing, and not being very well over this past year, I’m not going to be entering any WFD competitions for the foreseeable future. I knew this already, but it turns out it actually has a MUCH bigger impact then you’d think, but cardio (cardiovascular – breathing) ability has a lot to do with the WFD performance. See, as I’ve mentioned before in one of my posts I’ve got bad lungs, and so playing for a minute flat out is actually a lot more difficult for me than most other people (unless you’re an 80yr old who has been smoking all their life in which case we’re probably on an even playing field!). You really need to deliver lots of oxygen to those tiny muscles in the arms to get them to work for the entire minute at full pace, and right now I’m hitting the 30sec mark and simply ceasing up. Breathing is such an important part of putting in a good performance and for these past 9 months or so my lung function has been getting increasingly worse. To this end I’m actually gonna be spending 10days in hospital getting drugged up to the eyeballs and getting lots of rest to try and get them performing a bit better again (until next time!). So this is my OFFICIAL excuse as to why I’m now pretty cr*p at speed drumming! Having said that, you haven’t heard the last of me…. I’ll be back. Just give me a while!

I’ve come to the end of the trilogy! Yesterday I picked up the 3rd and final teaching book in my series! It was very pleasing, though it seems like an age and a day ago that I set out to create them and now it doesn’t seem like the big deal it was when I started. It’s funny how at one point they were all I could think about doing and now it’s like, “oh yeh, 3rd book’s done!”
I’ve gone from strength to strength in this side of my goals so now I just expect these things to come together and things such as the books don’t seem as major.
Having said that I’m still gonna make time to celebrate. See, if you set out to do something that’s probably gonna be pretty demanding and may well take a lot of time and effort, then you achieve it, but don’t take the time to reward yourself, your brain will be less inclined to do the next task in hand. So even though it’s now kinda trivial to me that my 3rd book is done, I’m gonna give myself a pat on the back and reward myself to achieving what I set out to do. This way my subconscious mind will want to achieve the next task I set it as it knows there’s a reward at the end!
When setting goals it’s important to see them through and then appreciate yourself (and others) when they’re complete. If you don’t, you may well end up achieving your goals, but you’ll never enjoy them, and surely that’s why we set goals in the first place!

Career goals: teaching

I recently wrote about how my WFD career goal wasn’t really going well and, although I was busy making strides in other areas, I shouldn’t make excuses. Well I’m gonna tell you about the area I’m doing well in!

My teaching business is going from strength to strength, and although it takes up a lot of my time and effort (which could be used for practice!) I’m really happy with the way it’s going.

As some of you may have read, I’ve taken on a young man by the name of Ian (who wrote some posts a few weeks back) as a full time teacher and I’m set to take on another teacher (Gaz) in September, and at least another one (Jamie) in January. They’ve all come up the ranks of being taught by me from scratch, to progress to such a stage whereby they’re able to teach other people. Even though Ian is already teaching, and doing very well (so I hear!) I’m sure he’d be the first to admit there’s still more he needs to learn. So along with him I’m now starting to train up Gaz ready for September and I’ll shortly be starting with Jamie to get him ready for January.

So even though I’m not using this as an “excuse” as such, I guess it is a “reason” as to why I’m not progressing as much in other areas of my career.

I’d like to hear from other people whether or not they can juggle everything perfectly and it’s just me that seems unable. Or am I indeed not alone on this matter and everyone finds themselves slip in one way if they focus on another. Comments are welcome!

A good while ago now you may have read my “career goal” to be the UK’s fastest drummer and 3rd in the world (hands with sticks). Seeing as it’s been a while since I wrote last on the subject I thought I’d give you an update.

Things aren’t going well!

It turns out that regular practice is a MUST if you wanna be the best, and me, well I practice maybe once a month for about 45mins! To be honest I haven’t actually practiced properly since last September which was 6months ago! This isn’t gonna get me anywhere and I’m rather disappointed with myself on the matter. Having said that I have been dedicating my time to other areas of my goal list and making head way with them, but still, I shouldn’t make excuses really. I’d be lucky to push 1000 now! I really need to get my arse into gear in this area because there’ll be a competition coming up at music live 2008 which is in June this year! That really doesn’t give me much time to practice and I think I’m really gonna have to start eating humble pie about me being fast.
The guy who has the fastest feet in the world says he practices 2hrs a day just to stay on top of the game!! Me…well that’s something that I’ve never been able to do and with my life the way it is right now it’ll be damn near impossible.
But hey, I’m gonna try and get back on top of my game and kick some ass at the next event (fingers crossed!).

Anyway, we started shooting and we were all really getting into it. I was hitting everything on the 1st take too, which was nice. It didn’t get tedious going over and over the same thing. I ad lib-bed the whole thing too so I really had to think on my feet with my English!  Mark, the cameraman, said he’d never known someone to be so professional and get everything right 1st time around! Well hey, what can I say?…. I’m a natural! It was actually really enjoyable and I had a lot of fun. The day passed really quickly and we absolutely dashed through the material. Because of this we actually wrapped up two hours early on the 1st day and all got a tad more rest which was nice. And I can tell you now, the 1st thing I did when I got the door was scrub my face raw to get all that make-up off!

The next morning we all rocked up at 6am again, and again, were all surprisingly awake! We only had a few more things to shoot, and though some of them were rather long takes and pretty tough on me speech wise we actually got the whole lot done by 10am! Happy days! The only thing I’m now dreading is that I’ve forgotten one fundamental thing we should have shot and we’ll have to get all the gear back in there to do one last snippet! That would be a real kick in the crotch!

So shooting over I’m now waiting for it to be taken to the editor where I can go and see it all put together before I receive the final product.

And finally, everyone has been asking me “Is it a “teach yourself” DVD that I can buy?” so let me clear this up before anyone else asks me….. NO! It’s not a “teach yourself” package, it’s meant to be used by my new teachers in lessons to aid teaching. The DVD only covers the concept and explanation of what’s in the book and would be something that an individual wouldn’t get much from unless a teacher was there present guiding and helping you through it. Having said that I will eventually be doing a teach yourself series within the next few years, but for now I’m working on getting DVD’s to accompany my books for teachers to use.

As you may have read, I was busy this week with shooting my DVD to accompany my 1st book which is why my esteemed colleague Ian had to step in and fill my shoes with writing for a while.

It’s not all glitz and glamour you know! There’s quite a bit of hard work that goes into it. So allow me top tell you the story…

For the DVD a fair bit of planning and organisation had to happen for everything to be in place. I had to arrange meetings with the camera man to run through the concept, then submit him a breakdown of all the shots I wanted etc… then I had to co-ordinate him with the recording studio engineer so we could all be in the same place at the same time (not an easy task let me tell you! When you have a cameraman and a studio that are both in demand it’s quite hard getting all parties to agree on a good time!). We finally managed to settle on two LONG days of shooting from 6am-6pm!
(Now, me personally, I like my sleep, and I’m certainly not a morning person! So I was a little apprehensive with the times, but hey, it’s all we could get so I had to be a pro, suck it up and make it happen, right!?)

A bit more prep involved what with thoroughly cleaning and re-skinning my kit, and sorting out borrowing some nice clean cymbals (as mine are all green from where I’ve handled them with sweaty hands!) and I was set for the big two days ahead.

I TRIED to get an early night the night before, but you know what it’s like, you’re kinda excited and restless and also thinking “cr*p, I gotta be up in a few hours…. What’s the point of even going to sleep!?”
However, with a bit of rest inside me I was up at the un-Godly hour of 4:30am to get to the 1st day of shooting……….

On arrival at the studio everyone seemed in high spirits and looking forward to the days ahead which picked me up a bit too. If they were all tired and moaning I probably would have been more so.
Set up would take around 2hrs then we could get cracking, however, not before doing something which goes against everything I believe in…… Make-up!! Any girl who’s ever dated me would testify that I absolutely HATE make-up!! But apparently it was necessary to take away the shine from (and generally hide) my rather ugly face!! Though I hated the experience of being caked in the stuff even I have to admit, I did come out on camera looking half decent! I got to see myself back on a monitor during a break and it was really weird, I looked like an actually proper person from a DVD that I might have watched! I know that sounds kinda stupid, but even though people think or dream about doing this kinda stuff, when you actually get there it still seems a tad surreal.  Come back tomorrow and I’ll well you more.

Well hello again ladies and gents. As my associate Ian has told you, I’ve been off for a while shooting a DVD to go with my 1st book, but I’m back and kicking now, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with my terrible writing again for a while until Ian steps in!

Before I tell you about the shoot, I want to update you with the fact that I’ve just had my 2nd book printed! I got the copies Wednesday of last week and have had good feedback so far from students as to the content and picture of me (for some reason some people thought the picture on the back cover of the 1st book was a bit “posy”!)

I was well chuffed that I’m now two thirds of the way through getting my books done, however I was mildly disappointed to find a rather large, (though insignificant) mistake on one of my pages!! I was gutted in fact as I’d just spend £500 getting a load printed! From this however I learned a valuable lesson, and that lesson is to check, check and check your work BEFORE you get a load of copies printed!! Then once I’VE checked it, get someone else to check too as I’m a bit of a numb nut when it comes to that sorta thing!

Hi Everyone. This is Ian, one of the Teachers at Chris Senior Drum Tuition. I’m filling in for Chris at the moment while he is working on the DVD which will accompany his tuition workbooks. Chris will be able to let you know all about his experiences in front of the camera when he gets back shortly.

In the meantime, I just wanted to talk briefly about one of the challenges I have had since I became a drum teacher. Now, I will be the first person to admit that I always had a closed mind towards types of music other than what I listened to. I liked what I liked and I thought everything else was “rubbish”.

However, since I started to have drum lessons from Chris, I gradually became introduced to many different genres of music and I began to understand that to be a good drummer, you need to be able to play all styles. This has become even more important to me since becoming a teacher as I now want to be able to master every style I can find (except for Jazz – that’s just wrong!).

So my advice is this……no matter what sort of music you are in to, try to explore some different styles. Check out bands or artists that you wouldn’t normally think of listening to and work out what is going on drum-wise. Have a go at playing Dance, Pop, Rock, Funk, Soul, Reggae, Latin, Jazz, Big Band, Shuffle, Blues, HipHop/RnB, Punk, Metal or Indie. I’m sure that you will be amazed at the differences between each style and understanding this will help you to become a better drummer.

The most important lesson that I have learned is that no particular type of music is “rubbish” - it just may not be to your personal taste. Every different type of music is good in it’s own right. So play it all and have fun!

Hi, it’s Ian here again in Chris’ absence. I often get asked by students if being a drum teacher is the “coolest job ever”. Well, I can tell you that it is definitely the best job that I have ever had! Although I had always wanted to play the drums for as long as I can remember, I had never actually thought about becoming a teacher until Chris suggested it to me.

Teaching is very different from any of the jobs I have done in the past. It’s very intense – as soon as one lesson has ended, the next one has started. You also need a very high level of concentration as people will often stop playing and ask you “Is that right?” and you’ve got to know the answer. You need to be able to explain things clearly and be able to demonstrate any of the material in the tuition books. I think I know the material so well now, even down to the page numbers!

The most rewarding part of the job is seeing students improve week to week. It is very encouraging when I can see that students have practised what they were learning in the previous week and then put it to use the next time they play along to a track. It is always a real pleasure to teach enthusiastic pupils, no matter what level they are at.

The days and weeks just fly by as the lessons seem to go so quickly. I even get to work early every day just so I can do some more practice before I start teaching. That’s never happened before!!

Teaching has also opened my mind to many different styles of drumming, but I’ll talk about that a bit more another time…………

Ok, so the last time I wrote a post about this I think I was a bit down about the fact I’d performed so badly in my competition! Since then I haven’t really done any practice, firstly because I focused on other things for a bit and secondly because once you get kicked in the nuts it takes a while to get back up!
But I’m up now and I’m ready for battle again! I’ve started practice again, slowly, but surely. I’m now trying out a new practice regime too. Rather than just trying to get as many hits as I can in 1min, I’m trying to work on my technique. My left hand (despite actually BEING left handed), like most, is pretty poor compared to my right. So I’ve decided to work to the click using individual hands so that I can really asses and work on the accuracy in my left. Once I’ve built my left up to where I want it to be I’ll start back using both.
This is something I’d recommend to anyone. You don’t need a “drumometer” you just need to work to a click. Really put the weakest hand under the microscope and try to mimic the strong hand in all ways. If both your hands are under control then when it comes to playing “hand to hand” or “singles” you’ll have a much better time