For my initial assessment I chose to do a piece I have been working on recently, Mindsweeper from Rockschool’s grade 6 book for drums. This is a piece I have been working on recently as well as a few others in grade 6, however I chose this one as it is the most out of my comfort zone. I have usually played rock pieces, as showed in last year’s initial assessment. However I wanted to challenge myself, which is why I chose this track.
The reason this track challenges me is due to the speed of the track, the track is played at 164 bpm, and due to the frantic nature of the track, it is very fast and feels it as well.
I had the track playing through my headphones while I was recording this, however as I only have a phone to record video and audio, I don’t have a way to sync the recording to audio of the track.
What went well – Dynamics were something that I did good with on some parts of the track, such as the first verse. The audio quality isn’t the best, but the down beat on the snare is accented well, and the ghost notes aren’t distracting and loud and in your face. The overall feel of the track is there, the loud and fast paced nature of the track, I think I did a good job of playing that and showing that. I think I ended the song strongly as well, with the fills and all that part of the song were played quite well.
What to improve upon – A big thing that I could’ve done better is the transitions in between the different parts of the song. A lot of the time j got lost in playing the song, that I forgot about the lick that puts it into the next part. Dynamics are something that I could’ve improved upon past the first verse. The 2 bar fill which is all on the snare, is meant to be heavily accented, so 2 hits are louder than another. However due to the speed of the fill I still need to improve that. As well as during the song as a whole, dynamics on the snare are something I need to work on at such a high speed. Something else is making this video less basic than just me playing drums with no backing audio. If I were to do this again, I would figure out how to properly mix the track. Put the backing track with the drum track I have played, and mix it so it will sound a lot better than what I currently have. Another part of the song that I didn’t play too well, was the part where it breaks down and goes onto the hi where there are a lot of cross sticks. I am a bit behind with the timing and it just comes across as a bit messy. I just need to play the track more to get more comfortable with all the many parts.
All in all, I think I did a good job playing this track. The improvements I would say would be to create a better quality video in terms of audio and video. As well as playing this track more to be more comfortable with it.
Self Assessment
Practical Skills – Good. I played the piece to a high standard however it wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t the most complicated song in the world.
Evaluation – Satisfactory. My evaluation was OK, it had some good details in, however there was a lot more I could’ve said and talked about.
Targets
1.) Improve upon my digital space documents. Improve upon my writing skills, and make the documents more detailed and professional.
2.) Learn the bass guitar and play it to a good standard.
3.) Improve my drumming skills so I can take that next step of improvement.