This past summer, I read Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton: An Autobiography by Gary Burton as part of BookChattr on DrumChattr.com. It is a good book that I would highly recommend to any musician. This video features the standard, Armando’s Rhumba by Chick Corea. Gary and Chick have performed for the past 40 years as a piano/vibraphone duo and here they perform on one vibraphone.
Over the past couple of months, I have been introducing snare drum rudiments at PercussionEducation.com. For the percussionist, rudiments are like scales. You should be practicing them everyday just like a wind player practices scales. In this video, I would like to introduce my snare drum warm-up that I wrote a year ago. This 12 minute warm-up includes all of the basic strokes to give you a well rounded warm-up. Please download a copy of my snare drum warm-up, get out your practice pad, a metronome and go for it. (more…)
I am a strong believer that we can and should all try to compose music. Composing is a skill that can be learned. Over time you continue to develop this skill with regular practice. (Sound familiar?) There are a lot of great resources on the internet, including The Art of Composing which includes articles, blog posts and a podcast about composing.
So how can you get started? The first place I recommend is to start with the snare drum rudiments. I have used this process with my middle school students as well as my college students in my percussion methods course. Here’s a step-by-step process to help you compose a new piece for snare drum. (more…)
With PASIC being right around the corner, I wanted to share some videos from past conventions to show you some examples of the clinics that are presented. Today’s video features Michael Spiro, one the foremost educators of Afro-Cuban/Afo-Brazilian music in the United States. He currently is on the faculty at Indiana University, has recorded and performed on over 100 albums and has produced educational materials for Warner Bros. Publications. (more…)
Rob Knopper, percussionist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, is in the middle of his 12 Days of Delécluse. If you are not familiar with Jacques Delecluse’s 12 Etudes for Snare Drum, head out to our friends at Steve Weiss Music and buy yourself a copy of this seminal book for snare drum. There are a couple of books every percussionists should own and this should be one of them. (Other standard snare books include Stick Control, Anthony Cirone’s Portraits in Rhythm and Mitchell Peter’s Intermediate Snare Drum Studies to name a few.) (more…)
In this episode of Percussion Education, I want to introduce the concept of Wrist Lifts. I don’t want this to be confused with the Moeller Technique. If you are not familiar with the Moeller Technique or Method, there are a lot of videos and method books that describe this approach to drumming. (more…)
Skype Lessons with Dr. Gerhart