Rock & Roll 101

April 23rd, 2025

We started with reviewing We Will Rock You and Great Things, and then added "Legends Never Die." It has a few surprise crashes that we went over... the rest on beat 1 can throw you off, but Landon had it down by the end of the lesson.

This week work on Great Things and Legends Never Die - if you want to boost your mark on We Will Rock You, fix that spot after the snare sixteenths fill.

April 16th, 2025

We started with "I Don't Think I Like Her," good job, Landon! I gave him a 9/10
Then we looked at Great Things. This is pretty hard! The timing is uneven still, which will need to be fixed up so the other kids can play along with him in church. I gave him a couple of ideas for how to improve his tempo, but he said it's hard to do those things because he doesn't have a stand for the ipad to rest on.

Maybe you can help him with that?

We then did some reviewing of Rolling In The Deep. This is maybe a little too hard for Landon still, so we paused it for now... we added "We Will Rock You"

April 9th, 2025

We started with Rolling in the Deep. Landon is doing pretty good on this one! Only a few little issues here and there.

After that we reviewed Moana, Great Things, I Don't Think I Like Her.

Good job!

April 2nd, 2025

We went through I Don't Think That I Like Her to start. Getting good! Keep it up!

Then we reviewed Great Things. It's closer every week, see if you can add a bit more from the video to fill out the part. Be careful not to speed up on the fast snares.

Then we reviewed Rolling in the Deep. The kick / hat / kick / hat back-and-forth part was wrong, so work on that this week.

March 26th, 2025

Landon is not coming tonight because of a scheduling conflict.

March 19th, 2025

We started with reviewing all three songs from last time, Great Things, Blinding Lights, I don't Think.

Work on Great Things more - get it perfect if you can. I Don't Think - work on it a bit to get even better if you want.
Rolling in the Deep: that's the new one, see how it goes.

March 12th, 2025

We reviewed Great Things, and I gave him some strategies for working through it by leaving out fills etc.

We then went over Blinding Lights. Try to get it up to 85% this week.

We then added I Don't Think I Like Her Anymore by Charlie Puth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUREJMy4eSI

March 5th, 2025

Great job tonight! You're doing well!

Phil Wickham, Great Things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlQTwZkX-_s

The Weeknd, Blinding Lights
https://youtu.be/UW4KNcfFQ2o

February 19th, 2025

We reviewed Another One Bites the Dust, Dance the Night and Eye of the Tiger. I increased his mark on Dance the Night - it was even better than last week. Good job!

We added Get Lucky by Daft Punk. It's got some fills that will need work in order to get a good mark this week.

February 12th, 2025

Landon is doing really well on Dance the Night. After going through it a few times, I suggested we added Queen, Another One Bites the Dust.
We did it twice, and then reviewed Levitating.

February 5th, 2025

We started with reviewing Eye of the Tiger. Landon got turned around a few times in it, so I suggested we take a bit of a break from it and come back to it later.

We added a new one by Dua Lipa called Danced The Night.

January 29th, 2025

Landon said he was discouraged a bit working on this at home, but he didn't want to quit it, and is making improvements. He sometimes gets turned around, getting the snare backwards (on the opposite beat). I think it happens after a crash or open hat.

I suggested leaving those out for now until he isn't getting backwards, and then adding them in bit by bit.

January 22nd, 2025

Landon is doing very well. I gave him a 9 on Levitating. We moved on to Eye of the Tiger today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpYDVEsuXio

January 15th, 2025

Great job today, you're really coming along well!

We added a new song, Levitating. See you next time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvWTOEVOeno

January 8th, 2025

We looked at the intermediate reading video, which Landon couldn't find to practise. Here it is again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0DqJVwYQg

We then went over last Christmas, and the video at the bottom of this email is different than the one he practised, which is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAyuZnTLRjI

We added a new song, Perfect by Ed Sheeran. The video should be in the song list below.

December 18th, 2024

We went through the intermediate level exercise today, good job! We added the next page of the level.

We then reviewed How Far I'll Go, and it was very good! 9/10!

We then added Wham, Last Christmas, and the link to that is below.

Good job!

December 11th, 2024

Landon is doing well. We reviewed Circles and Dance Monkey, then added Moana, How Far I'll Go (the link is below).

We then went through the first page of the intermediate reading exercise.

December 4th, 2024

Landon is doing very well. We played through Dance Monkey, Thriller, and Circles, and did the beginner exercise.

I suggested he try to do the intermediate exercise if he wants to.
https://youtu.be/HF0DqJVwYQg

Also keep working on the songs.

November 27th, 2024

We went over the reading exercises. Getting closer!

We then reviewed Can't Feel My Face and Circles, and added Dance Monkey.

Good job! Don't speed up!

November 20th, 2024

We did the drum exercises to start, and Landon is getting much better at them. I reminded him to work on the p and f (soft and loud) sections.

https://youtu.be/HF0DqJVwYQg

We then did Circles by Post Malone, which he hadn't looked at since the beginning when it ended up being a little hard for him. He was actually able to do it fairly well, so that's great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P69ooyukIKs

Then Can't Feel My Face twice- the fills were a little fast, so I asked him to slow them down, and watch that he's not starting them too late.

November 13th, 2024

We reviewed the exercises, and Landon did very well, getting a nearly perfect score on all of them! I asked him to observe the "p" and "f" notes for soft and strong for this week.

We then went over Thriller and Can't Feel My Face. On the last one, we worked out the drum fills and played through them.

November 6th, 2024

October 30th, 2024

Landon did well tonight. We went over the reading exercises and then did Can't Feel My Face and Thriller. I encouraged him to push himself to add high hat on these songs. I sat at the piano, and gave him a good amount of time playing together, to work on the hats.

We then tried to apply that to Thriller.

October 23rd, 2024

We started with a review of the reading exercise. Landon said he hadn't practised it. Please remind him to practise all the things we work on in the lesson. It will all help to get him to the place where he's able to play more complicated songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ssC7VfkQWE

After that, we reviewed Can't Feel My Face. He's coming along on it! A few more weeks of looking at this one too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aieFH9ODJGU

We then added Thriller by Michael Jackson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPAd-4dzFu0

October 16th, 2024

We started with level 3 of the drum reading exercise,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ssC7VfkQWE

And after going through that, we took a break to try a song again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aieFH9ODJGU

He struggles a bit with falling behind and I think the high hat is the reason... I suggested he leave the hat out until he gets the hang of playing the kick, snare, and crash parts and not losing time.

October 9th, 2024

We started by trying to review Circles, but Landon wasn't able to keep up with it, and struggled to keep the beat in time.
We changed gears and returned to the reading of the exercises.

He said he hadn't been practicing them because he couldn't find them. Perhaps you could help him set up a bookmark or some other way so he can get to the videos he's learning and working on.

Here's the exercise:
https://youtu.be/HF0DqJVwYQg

October 2nd, 2024

So we played reviews of everything we did up to date, and then looked at a song for next week.

This is Circles:

https://youtu.be/P69ooyukIKs

September 25th, 2024

Landon isn't coming tonight.

September 18th, 2024

Landon is doing well. We started with him showing me the best we learned last week, the quarter note beat with fills.

After that I showed him the basics of reading simple drum notation and played through the beginning of this video tutorial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ssC7VfkQWE

He should practise this at home and try to get as far as he can, even to the end if possible.

September 11th, 2024

Today we learned the basic quarter note beat. We played through it with a crash on one, and a tom on 8.