7 ways to show musicality on snare drum
what to do if you get rejected from every summer festival
what percussionists can learn from bassoonists
bring your valentine to n.y.u. and hear delécluse's 12 études.
will james listened to my album! ...and then blogged about it.
will james is the principal percussionist of the st. louis symphony. before that, he was in the new world symphony, before me.
how often are delécluse études asked for in auditions?
day 12: my interview with jacques delécluse
day 10: delécluse click-track playalongs™
day 8: self-recording, the step-by-step method. #12daysofdelécluse
as you might imagine, there’s an incredible learning curve to self-recording. as you go through the process, you’ll find frustration and impatience. but this frustration and impatience can also be called “work,” and without work, you can’t progress. in fact, if you aren’t experiencing the tough work of focused self-recording, someone else is, and that someone else is accelerating their level of playing at a faster rate than you. be the person who is working hard, pushing their playing forward, finding more solutions to problems more quickly, and pushing themselves towards the goal.
day 7: every piece of gear you'll need for self-recording
day 6: the complete guide to self-recording - part one. #12daysofdelécluse
recording yourself allows this increased focus. first you play, and you put all your focus into what exactly you can do to perform this in an improved or optimized way. keep your eye on the ball here - set yourself up, draw your eyes to the tips of your sticks, and perform. don’t take your attention away from this activity. then, now that you have the recording, you can change your focus to listening and analysis.
day 5: didier vérité's 14 guidelines for playing delécluse. #12daysofdelécluse
day 4: introducing delécluse starter stickings™. #12daysofdelécluse
day 3: jb leclère compares french and american snare drumming. #12daysofdelécluse
today is day 3 in the #12days of delécluse. yesterday, i answered the question, "why record delécluse: douze études?" today, we hear from paris opera orchestra percussionist jb leclére. i'm also posting étude 3, which will be up for 24 hours. here are the three études currently up on youtube:
day 2 of the #12daysofdelécluse: why record delécluse?
the 12 days of delécluse!
welcome to the 12 days of delécluse, in which we count down to the official release of delécluse: douze études for snare drum on october 26th. think 12 days of christmas, but more french-classical and less santa claus.
each day i'll release one new étude on youtube, along with an accompanying article, interview, product, or other piece of content. the catch? each video is only up for 24 hours. today is day 1.
how to choose a tempo for anything in 4 steps
if you try to guess what tempo an audition panel wants to hear, you're shooting in the dark. even if you think you know what an orchestra wants to hear, how they play it, or how a certain person on the panel expects a piece to be performed, you're still guessing. instead of trying to second-guess the panel, use math. choose a tempo for your excerpt or solo based on a mathematical combination of all the reputable recordings you can find.
bored of practicing? stop and watch tv*.
while practicing for an extended period of time, i've often experience a phenomenon of ever-increasing boredom. my ability to clearly think through problems and solutions is significantly affected by the amount of time my brain has been engaged. after about a half hour of focused work, i get super-bored. i think it's a reasonable assumption that i'm not alone in this experience.
the road to delécluse... aka the 'caisse-claire crawl'
you know when you walk to 7 bars in a row and have one drink in each bar? that's called a bar crawl. what i did was like that, except instead of walking down amsterdam avenue in new york city, i traveled around the french countryside on trains and rental cars. and instead of drinking, i interviewed the greatest scholars of french snare drum on earth. even better. hence... the caisse-claire crawl.