Max's Blog. :D

I knew for sure what I wanted to do for my in-depth project this year, but I just wasn’t sure if I could do it or not. When I was in the Gifted program last year, I had to do a project similar to the In-depth, but not as in-depth (hur hur hur see what I did there?) Anyways… I picked drums, my idea was the same one I have this year, get a drum-set, learn how to play well, and perform it. Unfortunately, my old Gifted teacher, Ms. James, wasn’t satisfied with my proposal, and demanded that I do some sort of knowledge gaining/teaching/something educational other than just banging stuff with sticks. Well, at that time we didn’t have nearly enough time to set up a formal contract and look for mentors and all that fun stuff, so I just decided to do a powerpoint on the parts of drums, a LOT less interesting than my original plan. At that time I’ve played drums for my school band for about a year and I haven’t really learned anything except for what my band teacher taught me, which… No offense Mr. Burton, but I learned more by myself watching YouTube videos and hitting my fingers and knuckles on desks. (ouch)

Anyways. Back to the future, which is now… It’s the future because I was talking about the past… Never mind! For In-depth this year I’m going to buy an electronic drumset (easier to record and less noise so I don’t annoy the heck out of my neighbours ^^) and learn how to play! Obvious I know, not like I can do anything else with a drumset. For our assessment of our In-depth, we’re supposed to have a blog post every two weeks (I believe…) and have a performance or learning center at the end of the year. I was thinking for the blog posts to just record myself doing a cover for a song and do an overview of my learning process of the song, why I chose that song, etc. As for the end of the year performance, I want to find my favorite drum cover and perform it live. I don’t know if I’m going to bring in my drumset or borrow one from Mr. Trovato, or even if I can.

The drum set I picked out is the Alesis DM 6. I haven’t received it yet as it’s being shipped in from Toronto, but once I get it I don’t think I’ll be able to get off it for the first few days. WOOHOO ADDICTION!

What I want to be able to do by the end of the 5 months is to be able to cover most rock songs that can be played on a standard kit without much difficulty. I have a person who’s style I really like on YouTube (His name is Cobus. Which sounds really awesome), but there’s no way that I can get him to be my mentor. But just for show, this is what my ultimate dream is to become by the end of my drumming career. (Or I don’t end it at all and just keep playing for the rest of my life)

Anyways… (I say that a lot…) That above song is one that I really want to learn how to do by the end of year, unfortunately it requires a double kick, (which is two kick pedals on the giant bass drum under everything else) which is another $100+ in addition to the drum set. Oh well, maybe next year I’ll beg for one on my birthday. But I hope to do at least one cover in his style by the end of the school year.

As for mentors…. Well that’s a slight problem. I want a mentor who could teach me on stuff I need to work on based on what I’m working on at the moment. An ideal mentor would be someone who teaches me the basics of a song, and then watch me stumble through it a few times, and work with me on the parts that I’m lacking in. Based on my previous experiences with drum teachers though, they want to teach me how to do everything properly and have “perfect form” and all that. That’s another problem, I’ve had 2 drum teachers so far and they’ve taught me completely different forms and styles, which got real confusing real fast. Form doesn’t really matter to me as long as I can play, that may be a bad thing that I should fix but until that affects my playing substantially, it doesn’t matter to me all that much. I guess I could ask Mr. Trovato if he has any suggestions, if not then Ms. Mulder has someone in mind that I can ask. YAY helpful teachers! If that fails, I’ll try posting online to look for a mentor. Worst comes to worst I could just self teach myself, it worked before so it should work now. The thing is though, the project requires a mentor, so I really hope it doesn’t come to that.

This is the end of the first blog post! I’m looking forward to the months to come when I actually do some drumming! YEAH!