| There’s a comment in the preface that I think is important. Starer says, “The student with previous experience will find his place in the book when he encounters his first difficulty”. Given the work that I did in Chapter One prior to starting with the book this time, I’m guessing that you and I will be starting in different place. And that’s fine!
I’m going to spend time on Internal Pulse during my first session and Rhythmic Identification during the second session.
Internal Pulse (IP)
Tonight when I worked through Chapter One, I decided to limit myself to as many exercises as I could complete in 10 minutes. I like to “tap” the exercises. I do about four bars of the “rhythm” line (tapping with my left hand on my leg to get the strong beat / weak beat pattern established). Then I tap through the specific rhythmic pattern with my right hand on my leg after the left hand is on autopilot.
When I move on to the next exercise I change the “rhythm” line to my right hand. Starer says, “It is strongly recommended that the methods of execution be changed frequently, so that none becomes an exclusive habit”.
I managed to tap through exercises 4 through 11 tonight. I had several exercises that I had to begin again because my rhythm hand stopped, or because I made a mistake on the notated part. I remember getting through exercise 15 without any errors in about 10 minutes when I was doing this regularly. I have some work to do. This is my starting place. I remember taking these exercises EXTREMELY slowly when I first started to make them perfect. Go at your own pace and focus on the strong beat / weak beat and make it literally go on autopilot. Don’t accept anything less!
Rhythmic Identification (RI)
Next I spent time with the metronome, about 5-6 minutes. I started with Chapter 3 with the metronome at about 80. I managed to work through 27, 28, and 29. I sang the notated rhythms and conducted the patterns to add some movement to these. I found these to be challenging. Subdividing the triplets, especially in the 3rd line of 27, gave me difficulty. I felt like I was guessing on the third triplet after the ties. I’m sure with practice, the subdivision will be stronger in my head when doing these.
My plan is to spend a month with Chapter One for IP and a month in Chapter Three for RI. When I find my sticking points in each of these chapters, I’ll spend more time working out the challenges.
Patrick and Greg,
This is about as close as I'm going to get to playing drums. Point well taken though! I've heard that learning to play all of the various percussion instruments will teach you to really be stylistically correct when playing in Salsa bands. That makes sense to me! Given the groups that I play with, I think what I'm doing makes the most sense.
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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona |