Rehearsel Evaluation

Here I will be evaluating my rehearsel schedule. This will consist of different techniques and genres of music. these will be in the songs that i performed from my solo repertoire. This rehearsal schedule later prepared me for my 20 minute recital. The recital consisted of 5 songs; Usher - Caught Up, Drake - HYFR, Usher - U Dont Have To Call, Bob Marley - Jammin and Paramore - Turn It Off.

When I practised U Dont Have To Call, I think that this was the best song I performed out of the 5. This is because I enjoyed playing it and was the most comfortable with it. Playing the back beat showed that I have a good foundation and sense of rhythm. This song allowed me to do many fills since the song is quite linear. When it came to the performance, the fills I did where on time but while drumming along to the tracks, I had a small bit of trouble locking back in. This problem occurred during all 5 songs. This is because they were being played out through the speakers, and while drumming it cancelled out a lot of the song coming from the speakers.

To improve on my timing and locking back in, I plan to use a monitor so I can hear the song through headphones and the audience can hear the song through the speakers. When it came to the drum fills, the song allows me to many types of fills that vary in length and patterns E.g. 8 bar fills, para diddle fills (R L R R L R L L), triplet fills. For Usher's songs specifically, I watched his OMG tour of london a several times. So the fills were   inspired by Usher's drummer Aaron Spears. Caught Up is a song heavily associated with Aaron Spears. This means that one of the first drum related subject that comes under this song is Aaron Spears playing/rehearsing this song. I studied his chops and fills constantly when practising to perform this song. This resulted in me executing Aaron Spears like fills when performing Caught Up.

Para diddle

For Jammin by Bob Marley, I practised hi-hat patters and exercises. A lot of these patterns and exercises I learnt were from Gill Sharone's dvd called wicked beats. This taught me about playing genre's like ska, two-tone, burru and different types of reggae patterns like one drop, rockers and steppers. Finally for HYFR, I watched a drum cover on youtube because I wasn't sure how perform a certain hi-hat flick though I had an original idea of how to do it. I watched the video to make sure if my idea was right and it resulted in my idea of the hi-hat flick sounding more accurate to the song rather than the cover's version. After my hi-hat flick was reassured, this allowed me to progress with practising the rest of the song.

 When approaching this song, I decided to stick closely to song with minimal amount of fills. This is because the drum pattern through out the song is quite unique because it a beat that carries the song and also revolves around the lyrics allowing the listener to focus on them while appreciating the drum beat. This beat is a simple but effective patter showing a balance between having a strong foundation and the ability to use flamboyance.