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The recurring theme that I hear from middle and high school percussion students is the lack of time for individual rehearsal. Most young percussionists have multiple interests and talents, and many of them are taking advanced placement courses in school. Add to this family, church and other commitments, and there aren’t many large chunks of time left for rehearsal during the week.

The other problem is motivation. There is nothing like the prospect of public embarrassment (i.e., an upcoming audition or concert) to make us rehearse. Since school groups don’t play that often, keeping up momentum for daily practice is reduced, unless the student has a personal desire to master a certain skill or technique, learn a new piece, or learn a new percussion instrument.

Most of my students play multiple instruments and styles of music, which keeps them busy musically. They don’t always have the time to spend on several instruments, so time management is a real issue. One of the things that I recommend is to use short rehearsal periods and to focus on a small amount of material. Take a few minutes and rehearse a one or two measure passage, drum fill, or even a single scale or rudiment. Start at half or two-thirds of the performance or goal tempo, and slowly move up the tempo as the passage is mastered. (I recommend as little as one click, but no more than 3-5 clicks on the metronome at a time!!)

The student should see results in a fairly short amount of time, and ideally, have a sense of accomplishment. Gradually stretching the rehearsal time will help even more. Taking five, ten or fifteen minutes to do this as a “study break” can help in all kinds of ways. These “micro” rehearsal sessions allow the student to get tangible results in a short amount of time, and help to keep the rehearsal regimen moving forward.

Congratulations to my percussion students who won seats in North Carolina Bandmasters Central District All-District ensembles! Each of the students did lots of work to make the audition a success. They put in many hours and much effort to learn the pieces, and worked on their technical skills to be ready for sight-reading, timpani tuning and rudiments. As the teacher, my job was simply to prepare the student for the “audition experience”. Taking care to make sure that the student can perform all of the scales and demonstrate any other required technical skills, can perform the solo pieces correctly and at tempo, and generally can make it through the audition process.

During the preparation and rehearsal frenzy leading up to the audition, we often lose sight of the best part of the experience, which is learning about ourselves as performers. During the audition, did we play the solo or excerpts well technically? How was our sight-reading? Were our hands (and ears) well controlled? Did the performance sound good? If not, why didn’t it? How did our perception of those things differ from that of the judges? Why did we do the audition? Was it required? Are we preparing for more demanding auditions to come? Are we simply trying to become better musicians?

We have good days and bad, and the best-prepared percussionists can play less than their best, no matter how hard they try. The key is finding out what makes us play so that the music sounds the best. My personal experience is that it is usually tied to a combination of motivation, feeling confident, and being as relaxed as possible during the performance. I encourage my students to perform as often as possible in as many different situations as possible, so that they become comfortable with the “act” of performing

Percussion students in the Raleigh area have many opportunities to rehearse and perform with school, community and church musical groups. All of these give the student a chance to perform before an audience. The more we play, the more comfortable we become with the experience of performing, and the better we are able to prepare ourselves for performing in all types of situations. In other words it’s good for us to play, play, play!!

Last night I played nothing but bodhran (Irish frame drum) for two and a half hours at a rehearsal. Before that, I’d only played the bodhran a handful of times. I learned some basic techniques to play it on a couple of church gigs, and then put the drum aside.

This time I was rehearsing with a variety band for which I had played drumset years ago. I was comfortable with everyone in the band, and as a result, felt less inhibited about playing a new (to me) instrument. The band is playing Irish music for a St. Patrick’s Day gathering at a local venue here in Raleigh.

I needed to learn the tunes and their arrangements on the group’s set list. We played a lot of jigs, reels and ballads, and I learned lots of things about Irish and Celtic music along the way. The song form AABB is common, tempo and feel varies for different tunes within each genre, and finally, I learned just exactly how fast a fiddle player can rip through a jig!!

The neat thing about teaching and learning about percussion instruments is that they appear in every type of music. There is no limit to the fun that you can have, no matter what type(s) of music you enjoy! I had a blast playing a completely different instrument, while realizing that my role was the same as on the drumset…play for the song, keep a groove, listen to everyone around you…and have fun!!