Last year, Ralph Hicks and I released a book through Tapspace Publications called “Beyond Basic Percussion.” The book contains 10 percussion ensembles for the percussion student who has finished their beginning percussion year. Each ensemble is geared to teach a certain concept to better familiarize the students with information that is important to know beyond simply being able to play snare drum and keyboard well.
Some of those concepts include: playing accessory percussion instruments, using a trap table, switching mallets or sticks, basic multi-percussion set-ups as well as ensembles for chromatic passages, 16th note syncopation/timing and even Latin Percussion.
One thing Ralph and I agreed on was that the information we put in the book would make a great TMEA clinic. So, in May of 2011, we applied to give a clinic at TMEA. Part of our proposal relied heavily on the performances of our students. A clinic with great information is one thing, but when you can see the lessons pragmatically applied, it often has a greater impact on the clinic attendee.
Our clinic was accepted. We were overjoyed to have the opportunity (not to mention terrified to put together something of the scope of such a clinic!). Planning began immediately as we spread the news to our students and notified industry sponsors who we hoped would be willing to provide equipment for the clinic.
Ralph and I tried as much as possible to stay conscious of not letting the clinic be a “bait and switch” sort of ordeal where the clinic was touted as a way to learn a number of these concepts, but upon arriving, having a product beaten over your head in hopes that you’ll buy it. We’d both been to such clinics and were incredibly disappointed to have wasted our time on an hour-long commercial.
This awareness effected a lot of the way we approached the clinic. Yes, I’ll be the first to admit: we were hoping that people would buy our book having seen the information in action. But more importantly, we were hoping that people would learn a lot from the clinic and be inspired that these concepts could be taught in their band halls back home.
We not only set out to cover a number of the topics that we engaged in in the book, but also added some additional teaching/playing strategies. From the book we focused in on the topics that we thought would have the most immediate impression on the average convention-goer: the importance of playing accessory percussion well, the use of a trap table and navigating a multiple percussion part. For material that was not a part of the book, we discussed utilizing student’s band warm-up time either being able to do “five minute drills” on snare drum or keyboard in a separate room, or having your percussion section be a part of the band warm-up using various parts that are “retro-fitted” to the existing band warm-up. For each segment throughout the clinic, we used students to demonstrate.
We capped off the performance with something that we thought would just be fun: a performance of my percussion ensemble Clave and Sons. Clave and Sons is a latin percussion primer intended to not only teach students about all of the different latin percussion instruments, their rhythms and their techniques, but also to put it all together to form an authentic latin piece. The students really had a blast with it and it turned out to be the perfect way to finish out the clinic!
In the future, I’ll be writing about this clinic from the student’s perspective and what it took for them to get ready for that day!
In the meantime, if you’re interested, the clinic is on YouTube in seven parts. The link to the first part is below.
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