Ed Soal Year 13 BTEC Music

Solo 1: Adventure of a Lifetime - Coldplay With my practising I was trying to work on grooves and how make them more interesting with difficult bass drum, fillers on the hi-hat and using the bell as well. I tried to show that I was growing in confidence in this and tried to use a slightly harder groove compared to the original track but making it still sound slick and not over the top. I really struggled with my timing on this piece, as I came in too slow and behind the song, I managed to alter this when I got into the 1st verse. I think the cover of the song on 'Karaoke Version' was a bit slower and I had been doing most of my practises along to the actual version produced by Coldplay. So transitioning to a version which was slightly slower in tempo really threw me. However what I am pleased about is how I managed to alter this and get back in time with the song, this shows confidence but also that I'm cool under pressure as I didn't make any negative signs ...

This is Saxona, Dan and my original performance of a typical 1950's song called Boogie and Jive. The drumming part was very good as it replicated similar drumming grooves with the 1950s with very simple and repetitive grooves throughout the song. Also I played a "honky tonk" rhythm which was notorious in the 1950's. I also mainly used snare only fills as that was also very prominent in the 1950's. The lead guitar, Dan, was playing the famous 12 bar blues scale throughout the song. This also links with the 1950's as in Elvis Presley's song 'Hound Dog' also has a 12 bar blues guitar part. The lyrics were also taken from the 1950's with lyrics such as 'Smokestack' which was a famous song in the 1950's played by Howlin' Wolf, the full song called 'Smokestack Lightnin' This is Saxona, Dan and my original performance of a typical 1960's song called The Local Gym. The guitar was played in 'Drop D...

This was Saxona, Dan and my cover of One Way Or Another by Blondie. We chose this for our 1970's cover as we realised how important and how influential Blondie was in the 1970's. We had Dan playing a strong riff with distortion to fit the 1970's style of music. My drumming style was very fast paced, which was also very prominent in the 1970's. I think, as a whole this song was well performed and we all knew our parts very well. The song was in time and all the different parts to the song fit in well and was flush. However I have to say, an area in which we weren't so good was in communicating with each other, we didn't look at each other that much so therefore we were on the edge a bit. More communication would have resulted in a better performance. This was Saxona, Dan and my cover of I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles. The Beatles were, in no doubt, the iconic figure in the 1960's so we decided to cover this song as it performed by suc...

At the beginning of the course I wanted to try and develop my skills all around the kit, from rudiments, to strengthening my right hand, to adding more intricate and unique fills to make my drumming sound more complete and give songs a nice flow. I managed to, over these past few months improve my rudiment skills a lot. This included being able to perform paradiddles, double and triple paradiddles to a high and clean standard. Whether that was just on the hi-hat or snare, or around the kit in fills or grooves. I also do warm ups with using rudiments to get my hands used to playing. I tend to do a 45 minute warm up that starts at 60 bpm and goes up to 120 bpm, depending on the rudiment/exercise I am doing. I do each bpm for 2 minutes on each rudiment/exercise. These rudiments ranged from simple single strokes alternating, all the way to the 6 stroke roll, performed both ways. I believe that what I had set out to do has been achieved the whole, however there is one key area that I no...