I used to hold back introducing what I thought were more advanced exercises from my students because I assumed since they were beginners they would not be able to do them and they would get frustrated.
I am now starting to introduce more advanced ideas and approaches as early as possible now and it is paying off big time.
The one I am currently working with is an approach introduced by Gary Chester in his book “The New Breed”. It involves singing the differents parts you are playing as well as the metronome or click.
My students were a little put off at first of the idea of “singing” however when they realized they were not singing a song things moved along.
The results have been very gratifying. The main thing I noticed was they now play through breaks in tracks they play along keeping solid time whereas before they would stray slightly when the drums stopped playing.
There are numerous other benefits to this exercise that I will detail later on.
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Hi Ken,
After teaching for 10+ years, I have also started to do simlar: introducing more advanced movments at an earlier stage than I used to do. I think it has to do as much with my own confidence in myself as a teacher – as I gain experience I am able to rely more and more on my own sense of what each individual student is able to grasp in the moment and less on a “formula” for teaching X or Y. As a less experienced teacher, I relied heavily on the formula of teaching this before that. With experience I am more easily able to trust myself, my own knowledge & ability to teach, and my student’s ability to learn. I also use singing to help them learn the various Middle Eastern rhythms. As long as they are singing “doum doum tek tek” and not an actual song they are okay.