Ed Soal Year 13 BTEC Music

My ideal practice session would last for 1-1 1/2 hours. This is so that I have enough time to warm up my muscles and get sufficient work and progress done which I can come out with something new. The first 15-25 minutes would be all on my practise pad with a metronome. I will be practising my rudiments, usually I would do; singles, doubles, triplets, paradiddles, paraparadiddles, paraparaparadiddles and the 6 stroke roll. Depending on the rudiment I will start at a certain bpm and work up either by 5 or 10 bpm's after a couple minutes. I will do this with every rudiment until I feel comfortable with each rudiment at different speeds. This warm up really helps as it relaxes and loosens my arm muscles and also makes my wrists used to playing rudiments which means it'll be easier to play these when putting them into what I want to learn. Without a sufficient warm up you can become stiff and heavy with your playing, which makes it very uncomfortable as a drummer and you will mak...

The Hotdog Social Welcome to The Hotdog Social, the college gig which us was a class are planning from scratch. Although this is something many of us haven't got any or many practise in, it is something I have done a few times with my church. For example I headed the planning for the past two Christmas Balls and a Music Evening, taking into account rules and regulations, health and safety and making the event as fun and atmospheric as possible whilst keeping the cost of the setup as low as possible. As a musician it is important to be good at managing events and having the confidence to go round asking people/places for their services as it will benefit your band/session musician.  In our first meeting we had together we assigned everyone a position in preparation for and during the event itself. These were all strategically discussed and appointed based on the skills each of us had. The positions are as followed: President - Someone who overlooks the whole projec...

Diary Entry Section A: My instrument is the drum kit. I've been playing for around 6 years and have recently developed a lot. This will be my instrument that I'll be focusing on for my dairy entries and three solo performances. I don't know what grade I am as I haven't had many lessons and have been self taught for the majority of my playing. The most recent songs I have played are mostly originals with my band, however I have played Kings Of Leon's Use Somebody and The Immortals. As I said before, I am in a band with three of my friends. The lead singer has already got many acoustic originals which we are now trying to turn into full band versions. We plan to try and go gigging as much as possible, but for now we want to learn a lot of material so that we're prepared to gig. We want to have a mix of both originals and fairly well known covers so that the audience can interact and know the songs, but also so it can promote our own music. I also go to chur...

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...