Teaching drums

Lol..after many years of being a student, I have now placed myself in the shoes of a teacher. Anyways, I'm now teaching basic drums for Impac to earn some pocket money for myself..haha. It's an interesting experience though, to deconstruct everything that I've known from different sources. After playing for a couple of years, it kinda sinks into the sub-conscious for some aspects of drumming. It's like I don't think much on the fundamentals now that I doing more complicated drumming. With teaching, I really had to rake back and scrutinise the sub-conscious mind for the foundations of drumming which comes in automatically nowadays. That include dreaded things like timing and keeping count aloud..haha. Most of the time, my "timing" is based more on listening and instinct.

However, for every newbie to start off, there's still always a need for real physical count out loud timing so that they know when to hit. It's like a baby learning to crawl first before it learns to walk. And each person picks up at different rates. So for every person, it's vital to change my teaching approach so as to enable them to pick up the lessons in an efficient way according to what they're comfortable with. Yesterday, it was not a full class since there was a mix-up on the day and time of the lesson. It was originally supposed to be on Wednesday but since I had CF meetings on Wed, I had to shift it on Thursday. As they are so many people in one class and there's a limited amount of time, everyone can only have a short time to play at the drums. But the good thing about drumming is that you can practice almost anywhere by tapping using the wrists and stomping the feet so as to wire the muscle memory. Oh well, I'll see next week if more people will be joining the lessons..haha

Lol..for today, there was lots of running around as a secretary, getting forms signed and amending plus reprinting mistakes found in the proposal. After CG today, had a match for Left 4 Dead with Charles, Eric and Keith. It was super hilarious especially at the second level when all of us got nearly ripped off by the mob with us barely making it to the safe room at low health. Haha..if we manage to get 4 more people, then we can play versus liao and that'll definitely be game on! =p