The world of percussion for all ages
Whether you’re a drum student or classroom music teacher learning ensemble percussion music can really advance your drumming skills, such as:
- Enhance Listening skills
- Learn fun combination of simple to complex rhythms and melodies
- Build technique
- Strengthen musicality
You’re never too young or old to develop listening skills
One of the great benefits of learning rhythms, is it increases listening skills. When I was teaching a lot of African drumming classes in Melbourne a rural Victoria, I would encourage students to sound out each rhythm. Which would help engrain the rhythm in their body. The old saying is “if you can say it, you can play it.”
As you can see in my latest video classroom music composition called Drum Dreaming, I play a beautiful variety of drums with different pitches. By having a variety of drum pitches you can really begin to hear the beautiful dialog between each rhythm. It would be really boring if all the hand drums had the same pitch.
In some sections of the song, I have added a combination of simple rhythms and in other sections added more complex rhythms such as two bar phrases. I have found, by creating two bar phrases can enhance sections of a song, making it more intriguing and create direction.
There are amazing musicians some who can read music and some who never learned to read. I would want those who have never studied music not to be discourage in their love of making music, so I have created an easy-to-read box form notation as part of my drum student resources, of drum ensemble rhythms.
Strengthen your musicality with percussion music
There is so much to be gained when we learn and delve deep into percussion music. I mean there’s just so much fun to be had especially when we play with others and feel the energy of one another’s playing. This video is my classroom percussion music version, where I’ve added melodic instruments such as xylophone, glockenspiel and metallophone. More young people get into music the more opportunity they have in sharing positive emotions, learn collaboration, teamwork and leaderships.
Learning percussion music is a wonderful opportunity to delve deep into improvisation. I am a huge fan of improvising and teaching others to improvise in my teacher training workshops. Its my favourite music making with others. Once we learn rhythms and melodies we can go to the place of total creativity, whoever the trick is to let go of all learning and just be in the moment and let go of the outcome.
If you’re interested in playing all drum rhythms, melodies and harmonies the sheet music to my classroom percussion version is available now.
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