Saturday

20 Minutes - See the light. This piece is hard (for me anyway!)

20 Minutes more. Running through the whole piece now.

20 Minutes more seeing the light.

Drums:

20 Minutes.

I Dusted off the practice pad to work on some of Benny Greb's Technique Ideas. I went through the Rhythmic Alphabet playing each 'letter' for four bars at 60 bpm using the following methods:

Singles with accents
Diddles 1
Diddles 2
Single Stroke Doubles
Flams

Flams need to be worked through slower, I'll do the rest quicker next time.

20 Minutes more Benny Greb stuff:

Dynamic Workout @ 40bpm for semiquavers, 60 bpm for triplets (both hands)
Sticking Workout Triplets (Both Hands lead, Both stickings)
Diddles 1 (triplets, both hands lead, voth stickings)

20 Minutes more drums.

Finished off the 'Words' chapter of Benny Greb, including the groove exercises played on a pad (a la David Garibaldi) the is actually a great way to work on drumset stuff as you hear any inconsistencies much easier than you do with the sound of a full kit masking the errors!

Lazy Wednesday

Piano:

15 Minutes scales.

15 Minutes ..see the light.

Tuesday

I've been neglecting the blog a bit recently - must make more of an effort!

Lots of drum time today (thank God for school trips) I'm still working on the John Riley comping exercises along to verious backing tracks.

I've also been having a lot of fun working with David Garibaldi's Tower of Power loops, using them to work on DG's stuff and some of my own ideas. Whatever you play feels pretty good when you're playing along with the rest of TOP. Being able to change the tempos of the loops is great when you're working on challenging new material.

Piano:

15 Minutes reviewing all scales/arpeggios. One run through of each pattern.

15 Minutes getting back into Beginning to See the Light.

15 Minutes running through some old Grade One pieces for fun.

Sunny Sunday

Well I finally won at tennis again today after a short losing streak - hopefully I can continue to occasionally defeat Pattinson!

Not much piano practice recently although I have revisited some of the easier pieces I did last year which has been good fun.

I went to the annual Wylam Tennis Club BBQ yesterday which would have been very nice and Summery if it wasn't for the torrential downpour... Shame it wasn't today.

So much for lazy Wednesday!

Busy week.

Monday = work and then rehearsal.
Tuesday = 90 minutes drum practice (John Riley/Groove Essentials/Garibaldi) Work then private lessons

Today I hit the gym and did some admin work at home. I almost fell off the wagon last night. I'm about halfway through my 'dry' month and really fancied a glass of red last night. Luckily my laziness won as it would have involved a trip to the shops. Sadly I have (yet) another rehearsal tonight.

Piano:
15 minutes - Beginning to see the light.

Sunday

This morning I had a rehearsal with one of the youth ensembles then:

Piano.

15 minutes scales - Grade 4 next section.

20 minutes Beginning to see the light, adding in the next section.

Another 3 hours finishing my new arrangement.

Been using Spotify a ton this week. As a result I've ordered a copy of Horace Silver's The Hardbop Grandpop. It's Mint! Check it out :)

Saturday

30 Minutes Transcribing & then arranging a new tune for Frith St Band.

15 Minutes Scales

30 Minutes more Frith St

15 Minutes Beginning to See the Light

3 more hours transcription/arranging