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Jacob Beckwith
Past Notes
September 27th, 2022
Jacob and I talked about future lessons and what will be good for this year. He played some tom things he was working on, and explained how he adds snare to different beats, or ride on quarters etc., while still playing the toms.
We tried it with Amazing Grace, and at first he wasn't sure what to play, and changed his beat frequently. I suggested that he save the changes (the new ideas to try) on 4 bar chunks, so that it sounds like it's planned, and part of the song.
June 28th, 2022
Jacob is up north with his crew today.
June 21st, 2022
Jacob and I mostly chatted about Sunday's service today. We did talk briefly about harmony theory, specifically no parallel fourths or fifths or octaves, not crossing over melody, and how that ends up playing out when playing chords on a guitar.
June 14th, 2022
We went through the drums of a couple of The Chainsmokers songs, and then talked about chords and how to find sus chords (by raising the middle note of the chord by one fret/halfstep.
June 7th, 2022
Jacob was on guitar mostly today. We went through the chords for the key of G, and reviewed the bar chords and capo chords a bit.
May 31st, 2022
We did a bit of drum technique - holding the sticks with thumbs up and loosely so he can get double beats out of them.
Then we did some guitar and talked about diminished chords, and how there are only three of them because there are four notes and they rotate up the scale - 4 * 3 is 12 and there are 12 notes in the scale.
Here's the drum beat to practice with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQoUfeRawX8&t=26s&ab_channel=LumBeat
See you!
May 24th, 2022
Jacob wanted to go over the video I sent him last week that explained the order of major and minor chords working up a scale.
We also reviewed chords, how to find them using the bass / root / one note of each chord, then matching it with whatever shape uses that string.
May 17th, 2022
Good job today, Jacob, and great drumming on Sunday!
Here's that video I made for Patti, which might help to explain one aspect of this chord neck theory thing.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jD1ODqjMllo
May 10th, 2022
Jacob and I went over the songs for Sunday - great job today!
Keep working on the quarter note beat - don't forget about it, because it's great on slow songs.
May 3rd, 2022
We did fifteen minutes of drums, and tried playing through that other Charlie Puth song, which is quite hard.
We then switched to guitar for 15 minutes, and talked through bar chords a bit, and open chords (major and minors) from A to G.
I sent a chord list diagram I made.
April 26th, 2022
Great job on the drums today, buddy! Lots of fun!
Here's a new song for practicing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_0GxCjRNkw&ab_channel=DRUMMATE
April 19th, 2022
We started off talking a bit about drum tuning and positions, and then moved into guitar. We talked about bar chords, learned the main chords in G (which he already knew)... G, Am, Bm, C, D, and Em.
We learned the B minor that's simple, but he already knew the bar chord.
I showed him how bar chords move up the neck chromatically both the E minor and A minor shapes (and others).
April 12th, 2022
We went through a couple of songs, jammed together a bit, while Jacob played his fills over it, then talked about using Toms in a song (Hope Be My Anthem / Jesus I Need You)
April 5th, 2022
March 29th, 2022
Jacob and I continued with drum fills, and put some of them into context of actual music to help with knowing how to use them in a Sunday situation.
We added a couple more to the repertoire from that video, but I don't remember how far we got.
March 22nd, 2022
We continued with the drum fills, and got to 12 or 13.
March 15th, 2022
We went over the twenty drums fills up to number 10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4cH_arnLDs
I was referring to this video, which seemed kinda hard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70GojVfEyt4&ab_channel=MightyMouseDex
March 8th, 2022
Jacob found this great drum fill resource and we talked through a bit of it and how to read his notation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4cH_arnLDs
We also talked about aiming to the centre of the toms, about precision in hi-hat and subdivisions, just like measuring carefully in carpentry.
We talked about possibly playing through some songs with me on the bass to work on locking in the kick and bass parts.
March 1st, 2022
Jacob cancelled lessons today
February 22nd, 2022
We did some jamming together for the first 10 or 15 minutes, and talked about subdivisions (to avoid speeding up) and so on.'
We then went over Eye of the Tiger and Attention, and talked about looking ahead before we get to a difficult spot and trying to play it in our heads before we get to it.
February 8th, 2022
We spent the beginning of the lesson working through the things Jacob had been doing, and talking through fills, cymbal crashes etc.
We then added two new songs:
Who You Say I Am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbKtjrV-kTs
Survivor, Eye of the Tiger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJmo7g69TOM
February 1st, 2022
We played together, working on fills with stops. We began by stopping on 1 of bar 4, and then later we did some stopping on 3. Don't forget to keep careful time -- count 16ths through the whole thing even if you're playing quarters. Remember that every beat is as important as beat 1 for everyone, but especially a drummer.
January 25th, 2022
Jacob and I did some jamming, and talking through things to do differently as you go from verses to choruses, etc. We also did some stop fills.
January 18th, 2022
Jacob can't make it tonight.
January 11th, 2022
Jacob won't be coming tonight. No charge.
January 4th, 2022
We reviewed Closer, and then Thriller before going on to Green Day - Wake Me Up, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Rnh_yKE3I&ab_channel=DRUMMATE
Fun stuff! You're getting better every week Jacob, not just at playing, but in reading.
December 21st, 2021
We did some chatting about Sunday, and the swing time that was missed for the first half of the song, then self-corrected. Then we jammed a bit, then did Thriller and Closer together with the drum videos.
December 14th, 2021
Jacob didn't practice this week as much as he'd like, but we played through a few songs anyway, and added these two new ones:
When September Ends
https://youtu.be/0FqE5hCdbYI
Dance Monkey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmgEaQ3fCk
I suggested he make a playlist of the songs he is wanting to learn.
December 7th, 2021
Jacob made some big steps these last couple of weeks. We went through the last three songs he's been doing - Closer, Grace is Enough, and Uptown Funk. Very nice!
We then added Thriller by Michael Jackson as another one to add to the practice lineup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPAd-4dzFu0
November 30th, 2021
Jacob won't be coming tonight.
November 23rd, 2021
We continued working on Your Grace is Enough, focusing on the fills that he had felt a bit overwhelmed by. We broke them down into attainable bits and expanded as we learned.
November 16th, 2021
Jacob played through Your Grace Is Enough and Uptown Funk for me - we worked through a few areas that he had difficulty with, and I provided some suggestions.
We then added Closer which he had already been working on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed9mYhaAgss
November 9th, 2021
Jacob can't make it today.
November 2nd, 2021
Jacob is away hunting today.
October 26th, 2021
We worked through the intro and first verse of Your Grace is Enough, focusing on the sixteenths of the highhat, and the kick on quarters, etc.
Great job! Keep it up, brother
October 19th, 2021
Seven Nation Army:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j3qy8H6-5WY
Uptown Funk:
https://youtu.be/SSQg-jrD3yA
Your Grace Is Enough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFbM4BKDOfU
October 12th, 2021
In Jacob's lesson today we reviewed the things he's been working on. We talked about a few other things he can do like kick and highhat down on every quarter, crashes on two, rolls, not moving the sticks so high when playing etc.
It'll start to get easier to do improvements when Jacob works through the videos.
October 5th, 2021
We reviewed the triplet / duplet thing with the fill... and made a couple of videos of it. The idea is that the four beats of the fill are spread evenly over the six beats of the ride.
Visually, it looks like this:
|1-2-3-4-5-6-|
|1--2--3--4--|
Note that beats 1 and the beats 4,3 are played at the same time.
try adding a flam on the snare beat, or 16ths on that snare.
September 28th, 2021
Here's uptown funk:
https://youtu.be/SSQg-jrD3yA
Have fun with it!
September 21st, 2021
We reviewed the fills this week from last week.
We covered some other things we had talked about in the past including flams, rolls (and on the hat), duplets (over 6 8, like triplets over 4 4).
We talked about drum cover videos, like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cco-LmUzsR8
I find them by typing something like the following:
"here the sound" drum cover
We also looked at 7 Nation Army by the White Stripes, and this video is a good one to practice with:
https://youtu.be/j3qy8H6-5WY
September 14th, 2021
I messed Jacob up last week with the right hand and left hand backwards. It should have been RLL RLL RL CRASH
Today we added a new option to that fill, where the kick is on the third beat of each grouping, like follows (Tom, Snare, Kick):
TSK | TSK | TS | CRASH
We also revisited opening the hat on 4&. The song Uptown Funk has the open hat on 4& every second bar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeYuFSBkkVw
It's a good one to learn drums on because it has lots of different techniques.
September 7th, 2021
Jacob is taking drums this year.
We reviewed quarter note, eighth note, and sixteenth note beats, and affirmed the importance of counting.
Count:
1 e & a | 2 e & a | 3 e & a | 4 e & a
The slower the beat, the more important the tiny subdivisions are counted to avoid speeding up and slowing down.
We added open high hat on beat 4& - it's a good way to get more in the habit of counting.
One good fill that helps with counting, is to play groups of three on beat three, starting with the left hand:
L R R | L R R | L R | CRASH
January 5th, 2015
Jacob wasn't able to come in today.
December 29th, 2014
No lessons this week for family (Christmas)
December 22nd, 2014
No lessons this week for family (Christmas)
December 15th, 2014
Jacob mentioned that getting to lessons won't be possible through the holiday season.
December 8th, 2014
Jacob couldn't get out of some last-minute meetings today.
December 1st, 2014
Jacob was in meetings today and couldn't make it in.
November 24th, 2014
Back to drums this week- I played along on bass, and we went through the form of BOOM boom first, with the fourth measure being for fills. We then did the same with boom BOOM, and then with a combination of both.
We talked about alternating the durations of indiviual notes in fills as well as the velocity with which one hits the drums to give it a dynamic aspect.
We then did some kick work where there is a dotted eighth on the kick, followed by a sixteenth kick, then a snare on two, another set of dotted eighth and sixteenth kicks, a snare on four, and then a quick kick on the four-AND.
After that we reviewed the disco beat, and finally, I showed him some of the basics of a swing jazz beat.
Swing is defined by giving the first of every two eighth notes more weight in time.
November 17th, 2014
Jacob and I started with a review of the kit, then focused on "Baby Its Cold Outside," including talking about inversions of chords.
November 10th, 2014
Jacob and I reviewed the various drum beats we've been learning, and then added some new stuff...
Here are some highlights:
1. BOOM boom on the kick and boom BOOM on the kick. (and then combined)
2. Finesse on the volumes of all the instruments, including hi hat, snare, etc.
3. ghost snare beats -- played lighter, stuck in between the 2 and 4 the snare usually plays
4. open the hi hat on the first beat of the BOOM boom combination beat
5. the disco beat, in which you open the hi hat on each beat, and play the pedals of both feet at exactly the same time.
Also, feel free to play around with the kick, making patterns that are variations on the ones we talked about
November 3rd, 2014
Jacob was hunting today.
October 27th, 2014
Jacob and I worked on the drums fills where we left off.
First we reviewed the ride bell off-beat thing, and then I asked him to just play the off beat on the bell. This is a fun groove to play at times, and you don't just have to use the bell to do it, though it sticks out almost like a cowbell when you do.
We then did that same off beat on the toms and snare to use a drum fill... adding a final sixteenth rat a tat tat on beat four before the final crash on beat one.
We then did a flam on beat one, with a long rest through out the bar, and a fill on beat four.
We then did a quarternote triplet fill, with a kick on each 1, 2, 3, 4, and triplets on each beat. We then took out the first beat of the triplet using only the kick to play it.
October 20th, 2014
Jacob was a little tired to do lessons today. :)
October 13th, 2014
No lessons this week (Thanksgiving).
October 6th, 2014
Jacob and I worked on the web site through his lesosn.
September 29th, 2014
Jacob and I worked through the rim-bell thing on the ride cymbal.
We took it to the next step by playing the bell just on the off-beat.
Then after we worked with that for a bit, I asked him to move the beat he's playing on the bell of the ride to the tom toms, as a fill-- with beat four-and (after the snare on four) being open for interpretation... in fact all of beat four can be a creative outlet.
September 22nd, 2014
Jacob and I had two sections to our lessons today. One was some technical challenges to focus on, the other a groove from a song.
1. We tried alternating the ride cymbal from the bell to the edge, and then added snare alternating from full on to side shot.
We also did some tom-tom syncopations, while focusing on keeping the kick on the count (1,2,3,4).
2. We tried to learn the groove from the Tragically Hip song, which he learned bass on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I8t34uHCLo
This is challenging especially after the riding crash comes in on the quarter note beats, while keeping the syncopation of the kick drum.
September 15th, 2014
Jacob and I went over the drums today, starting with the basics: different type of snare shots (flam, rim shot, side shot), the names of the various parts of the kit, and different types of beats (quarter, eighth, sixteenth).
We talked about drum fills, and how keeping the kick on each beat of the four during a fill helps to keep it anchored from speeding up/ slowing down, etc.
We tried a few different fills, for example a beat 3 four sixteenths, and a beat 4 flam.
June 23rd, 2014
June 16th, 2014
Today we reviewed Yearning or Snarling, then added "Happy is a Yuppie Word" by Switchfoot.
June 9th, 2014
June 2nd, 2014
May 26th, 2014
May 22nd, 2014
May 12th, 2014
Jacob and I went over yarning or Snarling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I8t34uHCLo
We reviewed leading tones, using the pinky for reaching notes, talked a bit about slapping, and I encouraged him to practice rudiments and scales.
May 5th, 2014
April 28th, 2014
Jake didn't come in Monday this week.
April 24th, 2014
April 14th, 2014
April 7th, 2014
March 31st, 2014
March 24th, 2014
March 17th, 2014
March 10th, 2014
March 3rd, 2014
February 24th, 2014
February 20th, 2014
February 10th, 2014
February 3rd, 2014
Jacob can't make it in from the city today.
January 27th, 2014
January 20th, 2014
January 13th, 2014
January 6th, 2014
December 30th, 2013
December 23rd, 2013
December 16th, 2013
December 9th, 2013
December 2nd, 2013
November 25th, 2013
November 18th, 2013
Jacob didn't come in today
November 11th, 2013
November 4th, 2013
October 28th, 2013
Jacob and I went over the songs for Saturday.
October 21st, 2013
Jacob and I talked through some of the music from Saturday night, in which I played bass.
I showed him 'leading tones,' in which you play the note in the scale right below or after the note you're moving to.
So, in C, B leads into it, as does D if you're going down.
In E, D# leads into E or, F# in G#, A, into B, etc.
The idea is to stay in the scale.
October 17th, 2013
October 7th, 2013
Jacob and I went over syncronizing the kick and bass, and did some complex beat patterns. We also did a stretched pattern, in which it played out over two measures instead of just one.
We went over a new song I wrote yesterday for the Psalm section of the service. It has a lot of upbeat pushes, so it was a good one to work on.
We spoke about possibly focusing on learning classic rock riffs to add to his "vocabulary" of playing.
September 30th, 2013
Today Jacob and I went over some of the songs he played at church on Sunday, and we reviewed the little pattern for moving from chord 5 to chord 1. It works on open strings, but also anywhere on the neck.
Then I suggested we work on rhythmic ideas using the kick drum and the bass. We locked in nicely.
I challenged Jake to extend his patterns to be longer than just one measure... a longer pattern is more fun to listen to, and it sounds like the band is tighter when they play complex patterns together.
September 23rd, 2013
Jacob and I did a few little riffs to use in chord changes, specifically when changing between a 5 to a 1, you can use a hammer-on:
5-6 1-2 1__________
I showed him how the strings are separated by a fourth, so that dropping down a string (say, from the high G string to the D below it) is a 5th down. The same is true for every string.
We also did some walk-between runs where you lead notes on the scale.
In our example we did the key of D:
[: D (c#) B (a) G (g) A (a-b c#- d):]
We talked about locking in with the kick-drum so that the groove has some strength to it. Connecting with the drummer when playing, and getting eye contact, you can often syncronize your efforts which makes the band sound tighter.
February 11th, 2013
Jake is havin' fun in the sun this week!
January 14th, 2013
Today Jacob and I went over the songs we played Saturday night at the Crossing.
I should probably think through some things to learn, that will help us to move forward week by week.
Some suggestions:
1. Reading the bass clef
2. 12 bar blues - various forms
3. Anticipating chord changes (being good at guessing what comes next)
4. Slap bass techniques (I have to learn this better myself)
5. Bass chords
6. Solo structures?
January 7th, 2013
Jake and I talked about major and minor and five chords, and then positions on the guitar frets and how they relate to the positions on a bass.
December 31st, 2012
December 17th, 2012
Jacob has moved his lesson until tomorrow at 3.
December 10th, 2012
Today Jacob and I talked about adding extras to bass playing.
One of the keys to this, is knowing the key you're in... and being able to play the scale for it.
We played along with drum beats from this site:
http://www.onemotion.com/flash/drum-machine/
I showed him how to run up into a note, and also how to play scales around the root of the chord.
December 3rd, 2012
Jacob isn't coming in today.
November 26th, 2012
Jacob and I worked on ear training again for the first half of the less, trying to find minors/majors by listening to the tonic/first note of the chord, and counting up "1,2,3"
After that we switched to talking about adding fanciness to a bass part, using fifths and octaves, and glissandos (sliding down the bass).
November 19th, 2012
Jacob put in the door for us today, so we didn't have lessons.
November 12th, 2012
Jacob and I continued the ear training today, focusing on songs that he knew already, like "Eye of the Tiger," "Crazy Train," and "How to Save a Life."
Jake, when you have three whole steps all in a line, then remember they are 4, 5, and 6, as that's usually the only place three whole steps line up. That will help you know what key you're in, so you can find 1 and build the scale from there.
November 5th, 2012
October 29th, 2012
October 22nd, 2012
We worked on minors again, and I played and he tried to find the key.
For Jake, when it's in minor, you're accenting on the 6, 2, and 3 which are the minor chords in the key.
So you find the 1 chord, by going up four frets (for example, from Em to G) this is the one.
Now that you know the one, you can use the comfortable hand position, with 6, 3, 2 and 1, 4, 5 as your main chords. It just means you have to listen to whether it is a major or a minor chord.
October 15th, 2012
Jake and I worked on hearing minor and major keys, and how to find "ONE" or "DOH" in that.
We played through a bunch of examples, and he tried to find 1... when it's a minor key, the "1" is actually a "6", so that helps you find the right hand placement on the neck.
October 1st, 2012
Jacob emailed me to say he wouldn't be able to make lessons today because he is taking Eli to the dentist.
September 24th, 2012
September 17th, 2012
September 10th, 2012
Today Jacob and I went through the songs we're doing this Saturday and Sunday at The Crossing, and Harrowsmith Church.
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