Over the past two weeks I have been up to my eye balls with playing gigs and practicing with bands so I appoligies for being a week behind on my blog. I have been in contact with multiple venues to secure gigs and open mic nights, it has done a lot for my perfoming and orginisational skills as well as expand on my networking opportunities. I am have also strated experiencing paid gigs and it's helpful for buying equiptment, Ive found myself paying money to make money these days. With regards to my college work I just recently passed my theory test which was focusing on rythm; Identifying time signatures, Note groupings, notating rythms etc. When revising for my theory exam I found myself developing a farmiliarity with iregular time signature which made me start to use them in my drumming. Signatures like 5/4, 7/4 and 7/8 have been my main focus for grooves and fills however with my rudimental exercises I have been working on playing 5's over a quarter note click track. I find 5's the most unusuall. I have also been compiling my development stage of my graded unit by recording practice sessions with bands and also me on my own, working on pieces for my course work and for bands i will be gigging in. For now i will continue to do what i am doing and continue to devlop and progress to the next level.

Blog 1

Over the past week I have been practicing drums for at least a couple of hours every day. I have been building on my foundations i.e rudiments, stick control, co-ordination etc. When I oractice the drums i always practice with a click track (metranome) which i believe helps to improve my playing expinentialy. I have been gigging inand around dundee a lot over the past week aswell, I think this also improves my playing with regarads to confidence and experience. Not only have I been working on my first instrument i have also been working on my second instrument which is singing, I often sing and play drums at the same time or at diferent time when I am gigging. Time signatures are things I hae been looking into at the moment with regars to identifying them from listening to tracks and trying to learn the drum beat, which a lot of the time requires me to write them down first. I think working with iregular time signatures is one of the starting points at becoming a more versitle performer aswell as learning different styles. Aswell as gigging I have found myself practicing inbetween times with multiple bands (4-5) to ensure a tight and well excecuted performance is delivered. This requires me to be punctual and make sure I am attending the practices at the correct time if not early to provide time to set up and warm up.

Here are some links of me playing gigs where i use my vocals and drums togather and seperate. The last two were not recorded within the last week however I do these things on a regular basis. If you are following me Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the videos. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDSRRqUn-ss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6QXo86RIk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGW1Ia5k3os&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUV8sBnedU0