Learning Outcome 2

An Introduction To Drumming

I have decided to do a workshop on drumming aimed at people who have never played the drums, or even any music at all before. I wish to show them how fun drumming is, and how it is very energetic and satisfying, but also not as easy as it looks. I have commonly heard things such as "All you do is hit it, it's not hard", and so on. I want to show people that drumming is a challenge - but a fun one, challenging concentration and coordination abilities.

Plan

1. Meet the people who have decided to come, get to know them a bit and introduce them to one another.
2. Give them all a pair of sticks and a percussion instrument, and welcome them to the workshop.
3. Mention some of the things I am aiming to get them doing by the end of the workshop.
4. Start by showing them how to hold a stick correctly.
5. Show them how to count and keep a set beat (1, 2, 3 ,4)
6. Start playing this beat and try some dynamics (Playing loudly, going down to softly etc) and experiment with tempo)
7. Try more complex rhythms.
8. Give them different parts to one another and get some cross rhythms going.
9. Once they have the groove going solidly, give each person a chance to do a solo (Improvised)
10. Jam for a while

The Final Thing

Here is the final community drum workshop that I decided to do. I originally asked 5 people to come, but unfortunately 2 of them couldn't make it, leaving me with three. The workshop was about 20 minutes long in total. I have made a cut down version for YouTube. I also asked each person to provide feedback which is at the end of the video.

Overall, I think that the workshop went reasonably well. As this was my first experience of teaching the drums, it enabled me to get an understanding of what a person who has never played drums before is capable of doing. I ended up sticking to simpler rhythms than I had originally planned, as everything took a little longer than expected. This meant that I didn't get round to getting them to play solos. However, everyone seemed to have a good time, and at some points it was a good laugh as well such as when it went terribly wrong! The feedback I got was really positive too, and they all suggested that I should run more of these workshops.