Here at the Mobile Music School, we spend our entire year delivering music programmes and transition year workshops for schools nationwide. We deliver our transition year workshops nationwide. This January, we were delighted to head to Lusk Community College, where our fabulous tutor Taylor delivered one of our famous transition year drumming workshops!
Transition Year Workshops: Let’s Drum
Let’s Drum is our interactive and hands on drumming workshop. These engaging and exciting drumming workshops incorporate percussion instruments from all over the world. For TY groups, the duration of each workshop is 80 minutes. During these 80 minutes, each student gets to play on a variety of percussion instruments, learning various different rhythms and techniques from our tutor. The students build on these techniques throughout the workshop. Further, rhythms and patterns that are commonly heard in African and Samba music are developed with the students. During the workshops, students also develop their ability to listen, their ability to follow instruction, and work as part of a team.
Our day in Lusk Community College
On the 30th January 2024, our tutor Taylor went to Lusk CC to deliver a drumming workshop with the TY group. Thegroup received an 80 minute, energetic and hands on music making session. All of our music tutors make every effort to ensure that each session is interactive and engaging, and that each student feels comfortable to express themselves, and contribute to each session. As part of this sessions, Taylor incorporated four different kinds of percussion instruments, setting up a ‘work station’ at each instrument. Taylor demonstrated how each instrument was played, and gave an introduction to each instrument. Each student then got a turn on each instrument, rotating down the different work stations.
What was involved in each station?
First, the students developed their concept of the beat, along with some simple notation. When the beat was developed, they moved on to some more challenging rhythm patterns.
The group then moved on to some African rhythm patterns, such as call and response. Taylor led the group by playing a rhythm, and the group copied the rhythm back to her on their individual instruments, like an echo. The rhythms gradually became more complex, and Taylor added in dynamics and increased the tempo when the class group became more comfortable.
Thirdly, the group moved on to an exercise where they layered rhythm patterns over one another. One group began playing the rhythm pattern, and the following groups joined in one by one. The class did this exercises with many different rhythm patterns, changing the rhythm patterns each time.
Lastly, the students moved to the final set of instruments. Each group was assigned a rhythm, with each subsequent group joining in. Once all the groups had joined in, each group passed their rhythm from group to group. Taylor added in solos to this exercise, while the rest of the group continued to play the rhythm patterns. The speed increased as the group became more comfortable. At the end, the group combined all the different rhythm sections they had learnt.
We had a blast in Lusk CC, and hope to return again!
Interested in our workshops or programmes? Get in touch here.
