REH - Rehearsals and Technical Difficulty Notes

This year in college I have really been pushing my technical playing ability and I can finally feel that it is starting to come through in my everyday playing. 

The pieces that I have chosen to play for my end of year assignment are as follows - 

High Maintenance - Big Phat Band

What Is Hip - Tower Of Power

Blackbird Special - Stanton Moore 

I feel that through choosing these tracks, apart from them being a complete contrast to what I am used to playing, the drum lines are very thoroughly thought out by the player on the tracks. They are not just playing any old beat, they have actually worked out the patterns that they play and that have mastered that technique of playing, which makes them extremely hard to learn quickly. 

I played the Tower Of Power track for my solo assessment in January and I actually feel that it went very well. Unfortunately over the christmas period I was stuck in work more or less every single day and it was hard to find the time to rehearse the track as much as I would have liked to. This however opened a new door to how I practice. I had less time to practice, so this made me focus on what I really had to get right and work on that alone. Having less time made me really focus my practice time to get the most out of it which I think actually progressed my playing over christmas without me even realising it had happened. 

Even with High Maintenance, which is a high tempo modern Jazz Big Band piece, I can feel it settling nicely into place, the drum solo and parts where the horns move through bars are getting progressively easier to play. 

Another side of this, was learning the songs for the Music For Scotland audition. For this I had to learn the original drum part to play as close to the original as possible. It's so much different than playing a "cover" you are getting payed to replicate that song to people who are used to hearing the recorded and produced version, so you have to be better than the record when you play it live, which is quite an intimidating thought, although it is a great challenge which I really enjoyed. It looks so far like I have been accepted to work with the Music For Scotland agency along with a band of great musicians and singers from college, I am really looking forward to that!

Performance Block - Week Commencing 19th Dec 2011 - 20th Jan 2012

I have really enjoyed this performance block in comparison with the first one, more or less because this time I have done so much more playing and performance in college as opposed to at home. I feel like I have really progressed my playing over the past few weeks and over the christmas break.

The first week of performance saw the Drum workshop with Richard, this was a new experience for most of us as we decided to compose a drum core piece to play at the christmas concert. With only one day to write and rehearse a piece from scratch it put all of us under a lot of pressure and really brought the best out in all of us.

This block, I have played in both the big band and folk ensemble, which I really enjoyed as it is a different setting and style of playing than what I'm used to. In big band, we played Flight of the Foo Birds, You Make Me Feel So Young by Frank Sinatra and also High Maintenance by The Big Phat Band. It was great to get a chance to get to grips with High Maintenance as I plan to play it for my end of year assessment with the Big Band.

Over the Christmas break, I was working a lot, so I struggled to find time to practice for my solo assessment when we came back to college, this actually made me really focus when I was practicing as I didn't have as much time to get to where I needed to be, this started a new outlook on practice for me as I focus a lot more on what I need to practice in a short space of time rather than spending hours and hours practicing not really getting anywhere or pushing myself.

When we came back from the break, I joined one of the Small Jazz Ensemble workshops which was really cool. Scott gave us a lot of really good pointers for playing in a small ensemble, like to really listen to what each person is playing and feed off each other, feeling the tempo as a group rather than individuals etc. through playing in the Big Band, I also got a chance to get involved with Dale Birrell's Creative Music Technology Big Band Piece. This involved him recording parts of the big band, and sampling them using his laptop during a live performance. This was a great experience as it was completely out of the ordinary to have a "laptop" solo during a piece.

Colin's Songwriting workshop was a great help, I always seem to struggle when I'm trying to write anything other than a drum part, it was great to get an insight into Colin's way of thinking and to feed off Ideas from others in the workshop too.

On the last day of the block, I was in the studio with Owen and Ciaran playing some more Folk sets. This was cool as I was playing cajon, so it was a different setting to what i am used to playing in the studio, playing without a click track on some sets makes you realise how you need to work on internalising time, it was great to get a sense of how tight folk ensembles can be, all knowing the structure, repeats and stops for each set.

I really enjoyed this performance block as I did a lot more playing than last time, I felt a lot more involved with different bands and workshops. The only issue I think is that a lot of stuff still clashes, however this would be expected as there is so much going on at any given time.