I am getting excited for our upcoming Unsnared Studio. 3 sessions over 5 weeks, focused on leveraging creativity in the practice room to develop flexible and expressive musical technique.
It has been such a joy to develop precisely the kind of class I would have loved to be a part of as a young student, and that jives with everything I know about learning.
I designed Unsnared Drum Lab (the book) to help percussionists develop their own snare drum technique, become familiar with the canonical repertoire, and invent their own material, enabling maximal flexibility. I wanted to celebrate the book by going further, and in the sessions, I’m excited to expand these ideas to support all kinds of percussion learning situations.
In each session, I’ll present on a topic around our creative practice. Then, we’ll open things up for people in the group to share their own issues, problems, or struggles, as well as reflections on the time between each session.
Why and how we stall
What skills should a musician have?
Design Thinking and Deliberate Practice
What’s in a performance: The Ant vs. The Taxi Driver
Studio class: live diagnosis
Building a custom-fitting, flexible, reliable, efficient, expressive musical technique
The Stone Tablet vs. The Post-It: improvisatory exercise design
Car-Talk for Drummers: Diagnostics and mental models
Studio class: live diagnosis
How invention and play support peak performance under pressure
Building communicative, flexible interpretations in the practice room
Metacognition and planning creative work
Studio class: live diagnosis
Highlighting the importance of learning communities, in each session, we’ll open things up for people in the group to share their own issues, problems, or struggles, as well as form affinity groups and become accountability buddies.
I’m asking participants to come with musical challenges they’re trying to solve, for any percussion instrument.
This might include:
a challenging passage, etude, or piece of repertoire
a broader technical issue
time management: planning your practice and musical learning, setting musical goals, etc.
During the studio class sessions, we’ll use that material to:
identify what’s breaking down
design creative and flexible exercises to address those issues
test how those solutions hold up in different conditions
plan musical development over a number of practice sessions.
Whether people are actively applying these ideas or squirreling them away for later, I’m really hoping we form a little community that continues to share ideas and learn from one another.
Session participants will get a pre-order of my book, so look out for that
There’s still a liiiiitle bit of space left in our little cohort. You can join here:
Or, reply to this email with any questions you have.
Happy practicing!
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