Ep. 5 - Player's Guide for The Beginning Percussionist

"Player's Guide for the Beginning Percussionist" - Why did we write it? What makes it distinct? Who is it for? How can it help your students? Doug, Patricia, and Zach answer these questions and more. Tune in to the first of three episodes about the newest, most affordable beginner percussion book on the market. 

Questions? Comments? - Reach out! teamislas@gmail.com

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Doug
https://www.facebook.com/doug.bush.31
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Patricia
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Zach
https://www.facebook.com/zachscheer/
https://www.instagram.com/zach_scheer/

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:16

Salutations, friends, and welcome back to the Team Eastloss Podcast, Episode 5. My name is Doug Bush, and today I'm joined by...

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Patricia Eastloss. And...

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Zach Scheer. And this is the podcast for anyone looking to better themselves in percussion education. Player's Guide for the Beginning Percussionist. Mr. Scheer, what is the Player's Guide for the

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Beginning Percussionist? Yeah, Mr. Bush, Player's Guide for the Beginning Percussionist is the beginning percussion method book that was co-authored by all three of us. Well, what? It feels like we started this book shortly after I was born and finished it last year. 2024. Yeah, 2024. Timestamp that real quick. But in all seriousness, we started it pre-COVID and worked on it, yeah, for years. Yeah,

SPEAKER_04 1:16

I think- around six years yeah

SPEAKER_03 1:18

um to develop it into what it is today um and a big part of that was uh the book being tested and used by other um trusted educators uh which i think is what um helped turn it into the the product that we're really proud of right

SPEAKER_04 1:32

now yeah trusted educators not just in the state of texas but uh but across the nation we got tons of outstanding feedback that definitely influenced the direction of the book uh missy sauce why did we write this

SPEAKER_00 1:45

uh yeah to we wanted to create a tool that would help to solve some of the problems that we were all witnessing our students struggle with. Speaking back to my own personal experience, I was very fortunate to grow up in a very successful, large, high-achieving band program. Some of my educators were the best of the best at the time. Maybe surprising is not the right word, but recognizing my students struggle with some of the same things I struggled with way back in the day is something that we wanted to try to alleviate with this. I mean, obviously, there's going to be things that when you're learning anything new, there's going to be a struggle there. But it definitely felt like there are problems that we could be solving in a more effective way. And that was kind of what we were setting out to do with this book.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Absolutely. So we have the best and brightest listeners in the world here, so they can probably use content to solve this next question. But for anyone that hasn't, Mr. Scheer, who is this for?

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Yeah, so the book is designed to be, first of all, flexible, right? The book is designed to be flexible enough. So if you're a teacher who is not a percussionist, there's enough information about how to teach what you need to teach. Like, how do I teach foot tap? Or how do I teach diddles? Or how do I teach flams? There's enough there that if that's not your area of expertise, you can teach those things successfully. But it's also designed, again, same word, flexibility. It's also designed to be flexible enough that if you are already a master percussion educator and you're like, listen, I've got a 14-step way that I teach flams and I've been doing it for 20 years, our goal is to make sure that we didn't pigeonhole you pedagogically, right? So the book will still work as a great resource and hopefully bring some new things to the table for you to take your students and your teaching to the next level. So you can still use your 14-step plan for Flams if you want. That's great. But I think there's a lot of things in the book that will aid you in what you're doing. So we try to make it just super flexible and bring things to the table for everyone

SPEAKER_04 4:17

yeah absolutely absolutely and everybody's situation teaching beginning percussion is wildly different i mean missy sloss and i've seen it all we've seen it programs where they don't start till the seventh grade we've seen programs where in the sixth grade they're only meeting for 45 minutes a day uh sometimes where they're meeting an hour and a half a day every day sometimes they only meet a couple days a week and and in recognizing this and seeing um you know all the kind of diversity of of of uh setups for your teaching your beginning percussion is we wanted to separate the book into two chunks, the snare or pad or drum mode book, and then the mallet mode book. And it's literally separated right there in the middle of the book. And shout out to Mr. Randall Wynn at Coppell High School that came

SPEAKER_00 5:02

up with this brilliant idea. Thank you, Mr. Wynn.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

Of not having a front cover and a back cover, but the book is literally two covers, like where you have the drum mode cover, and you open it up and you jump through it. And if you close the book and literally... flip it in your hands the way you would a drumstick, a half flip there. Now the quote unquote back cover is actually the front cover for the mallet book. And you can just go through that. And oh man, that has been a hit. The kids love that.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

And when you send the book to the printer, when you do this, they will call you

SPEAKER_04 5:35

and

SPEAKER_03 5:36

say, I just want to make sure I think half of your book is backwards.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Half

SPEAKER_03 5:40

of your book is backwards and upside down. No, that's actually correct.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

That happened every time, I think.

SPEAKER_04 5:45

If you can't play it backwards off the left you know uh so one of the you know there's so many unique features in this book that you're not going to find in other beginning percussion books that aren't unique for the sake of being unique they're they're time-tested proven educational methods that we have used for years and are so excited to have them like codified in a like physical context here uh for example we have something called the composition corner missy sloss what is the composition

SPEAKER_00 6:12

corner yeah i love the composition corner so you will find at the end of every level in the snare drum book and in the keyboard book, a section that is basically a few blank measures. I think it's two to four blank measures, a key that has a lot of the note types and rests and dynamics of that level or previous levels, and opportunity for the students to compose their own music. And I love this personally as a kind of self-taught. I feel like it is not something that is explored enough in the music education system, you know, because music is a language, you know, you need to learn how to read and write it and play it. And we spend so much time learning how to read it and speak it, but we don't really spend any time creatively getting in there. And so this offers the students a chance to explore that in a way that is not super intimidating, you know, Composition for people who are not composers can seem really intimidating to try and teach, but I don't think it needs to be something that's super elaborate that requires all this knowledge about theory or even a big deal. It's something that everyone can be able to do if you do it simple enough, and this offers that opportunity. One of the other things I love about it is that it will give the teacher a chance to assess the kinds of concepts theory-wise that students are understanding and grasping because they're going to put that into their compositions and maybe the things that they don't quite get, you're gonna get that really quickly. So yeah, it offers a lot in terms of like holistic understanding of music theory. And I'm really glad we were able to apply it to the book.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Yeah, you know, Ms. Eastless, you hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what I was gonna say is, I remember you guys early on at Coppell saying like, we wish that there was a way for the students to have some opportunity to compose some things. And I was like, you know, going a mile a minute. I'm going from, you know, like this BOA contest to this beginner contest to this thing, whatever. And I just remember thinking like, guys, that sounds great. Okay. But I've got to teach this 12 year old to play the tambourine part to two British folk songs. And I've got to do it today. You know, I don't have time for that. But fast forward after we started implementing that in several places in the program, it actually became became one of the best teaching tools, exactly what you said, for me to go like, oh, wait, the reason that kid can't play the tambourine part in two British folk songs is not because I didn't teach it to him. It's not because we didn't spend enough time on it. It's because they don't understand whatever this thing could have been. You know, this thing about eighth notes or a quarter rest or a dotted dots. Oh my gosh. Right. They don't understand whatever that thing is. And that would be revealed to me when they tried to write their own little composition. Oh, wait, you think dots work like that? Oh, come here. Let's talk about that. So it was just such a good tool for me to actually see what I was getting through to the students and what they actually weren't understanding. And it actually improved their performance substantially.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah. And one of the coolest texts I think I got in the last year was from Danny Hawkins recently, who... And he teaches sixth grade classes in Coppell. And he sent me a photo of a gift that he was given from one of his sixth grade students that was a keyboard composition titled Chucky Brown Returns. Now, a little bit of context. There's a song, there's an etude in the book that is called Chucky Brown, the baddest chihuahua in town, which I assume they had gotten to at this point in the year. And this student, because of their confidence in composition and their enjoyment of of what they're doing behind Marimba, created a composition and put it in a frame and it's handwritten that they gifted to Mr. Hawkins for Christmas. And I think that's outstanding that a student would have that much love and excitement for playing music, but also have the confidence to explore that creative outlet. And that can lead to, if you fast forward a few years, experiences like we get to experience with our own students at the high school, where they're not afraid to arrange pieces or composed pieces that they then get to play at the percussion concert. And getting to witness that experience is incredibly rewarding.

SPEAKER_04 10:56

Absolutely. And I mean, those words that you're using, love, excitement, enjoyment, you know, the other side of the coin here that we've added that I feel is unique is something that we got from Mr. Matt Ehlers, outstanding educator, outstanding musician, outstanding human, right? And he really talked about the importance with the young students of them enjoying and being excited about what they're doing. And this transcription challenge was part of that where, you know, you have these blank measures where the teacher is afforded to play something and then the students to kind of write it in. And what's been really beautiful about the transcription challenge is if for some reason it doesn't happen in class or they get to in class, I do it in lesson, right? If I'm in private lesson with a student and I see that the composition corner has been filled out with the transcription challenge and in a one-on-one setting it's a really great opportunity exactly what Mr. Shear said to kind of see what they're doing what they're not doing but I think back to myself when I was younger I struggled significantly with the analytical part of reading the music and identifying the symbols and stuff but I was I had an outstanding ear I was very good at transcribing so this is another option here between the composer's corner for some of your more creative students and the transcription challenge for your students that have great ears and skill sets they would use in situations like playing, you know, drum set or whatever. This is a whole well-rounded education where all the students are getting opportunities to succeed regardless what their innate strengths and weaknesses are, right? You know, it's not just catering to one type of student.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

And just, Mr. Bush, I just want to give a quick example. Like you said, Composer's Corner and Transcription Challenge are two things that appear at the end of every single level in the book, right? So like I'm looking at at the end of level 17 right now, which is page 44 in the snare drum book. And it says composers, composer's corner, use the key to write a piece, including dotted eights and flams. It says dotted eights and flams. Cause that's what was new in level 17. And then the key, which is right below that has like, you know, 35 little boxes with everything from like quarter notes all the way up to 16th notes and buzz rolls and dots and flams. Cause that's everything we've learned so far. Right. And then below that, and again, you're still, will see this in every level it says transcription challenge and there's two bars and it says write what your teacher plays listen closely so it's just an amazing opportunity there and it happens at the end of every level

SPEAKER_04 13:26

yeah absolutely and at the very beginning of the levels uh mr sheer we have a daily review what is the daily review about

SPEAKER_03 13:33

yeah so this was um born out of me reflecting on teaching beginners um and being a firm believer that uh having a real at the beginning of every class that we can kind of go through to develop skills. We're not introducing necessarily anything new. We're not rocking their world with some musical concept. We are moving our hands and we are doing things, whether that's stickings or diddles or flams or whatever, we're reviewing. We're going to hit over and over and over these skills that we need to perfect. So at the beginning of every single level, you'll see at the top of the page. So for instance, I'm looking at level five right now. It says the top left of the page and big, bold letters, level five. And then it says daily review. And at this point we only have two things. So we've got level five stickings and the level five rhythmic building blocks. Those are the two things that we're recommending you do in class every day. You don't have to go exactly with what we've laid out, but I think all almost more importantly, you can Those are things that you can point to your students and go, hey, when you go home tonight, when you practice, this is what you practice. Daily review. It's right there. You don't have to guess. They don't have to remember what you told them in class. They know what to practice right there. So then if I fast forward, so for instance, if I go like, I just wanted to point this out. If I go to the last level of the snare drum book, it's pretty impressive what the daily review is built up to so obviously we add to it as we go throughout the levels and tempos begin to be included and you'll find that the tempos progress in a very predictable manner so that by the time they get to level 21 the daily review includes three note timing 116 to 126 level 14 stickings 118 to 128 and it goes on all the way through there's buzz roll exercises and diddle grids and triplet roll stuff and Jedi eights and, uh, flam tap builders, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but the daily review is an excellent tool for you as an educator to not have to reinvent the wheel and go like, Oh, I need to come up with this amazing warmup plan for us every day. No, you don't have to come up with that. It's already here in the book. And then also for your student to have a very easy way to go, Hey, what do I need to practice right now? And what tempo do I need to practice it at? Boom. It's already right there.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Another example of the thought and depth that went into this book here is that an observation Missy Sloss and I have witnessed throughout the entirety of our career is that sometimes percussion directors and band directors both can really struggle with beginners because they are so far removed from what it's like to be a beginner. Often that results in just too much information. We really need to slim it down. Anyone that is starting something for the first time, you know, we're trying to get to a very basic, simple thing that is achievable so they don't feel overwhelmed so that they feel like they're succeeding. And so because of this, when we go to the actual layout of the book, you know, I mean, one of the big goals for us was, can you get through the book in a year? Right. And, and be honest with me out here, folks, you got through your book before and I don't Some of these books out here, I don't know Mr. Bush could get through in a year, but I'm glad to say that multiple examples of groups that have made it through, and I think part of that is because in the layout process, obviously organically, there will be certain levels where you have some empty space. What are we going to do with that empty space? Well, the gut reaction is let's fill it up with stuff, right? More lines, more this, more that. And that was not the gut reaction. We wanted to have the exact right and correct number of things for the student to do, no more, no less. And so when we had this additional space, we chose to fill it up with quotes from famous musicians and that this was an opportunity as an educator to reinforce things that they were teaching in class or reinforce concepts that were in the book. And maybe even more importantly than that, I would say, introduce the students to these outstanding musicians that they should be aware of, right? And they should start listening to. We're saying people like Chick Corea and Pat Metheny and Vinnie Cagliuta, Shiyi Wu, you know, Christopher Dean. You know, one of my favorite quotes is on page 12. It says, I found good control of rhythm to be the single most important element in making good music. Oh. And that is by Mr. Chick Corea. And if you listened to, I believe it was our last podcast, you know, Step One is Timing. You see, Mr. Corea might be on to something here, right? You know, right? Yeah. So, yeah, that's another really kind of exciting facet in the book, is having the quotes. Now, right before you play some of the lines, we'll have these little sentences, these little reminders, if you will, or little tidbits of musical information. Missy's last, you want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, I mean, speaking again to trying to be really mindful of the layout and not trying to get too wordy or have too much language that will be skimmed over or not even looked at at all. We've been trying to be very strategic and precise with what words we do use and where we put them. And so above a lot of the playing lines in the book, not all of them, it doesn't happen every line, every few lines or so, we have these very short, very simple, concise reminders of things, concepts, ideas that we've been trying to introduce in each of the levels. So a few examples from level five of the snare drum book might be something like, my foot tap is with the metronome and my hands are with my foot. Or another one would be, I'm focused on accuracy, not speed. So these are things that the educator can point to, like, hey, what are we trying to do in this line or in this level? Like, what are some things that we've talked about? Oh, yeah, remember, accuracy is the importance here. So just ways that we could also further to... communicate these concepts in a digestible way for the student.

SPEAKER_04 20:08

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. One of my all-time favorites is hands that look the same and move the same sound the same. Hands that look different and move different...

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Sound

SPEAKER_04 20:17

different. Yeah. I mean, never in my career have I had a student that wasn't able to finish that, right? I mean, it's just so obvious. So great reminders in here. So, hey, let's recap real quick. The Player's Guide is designed to be portable, affordable, and accessible.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Mr. Shearer, portable. Yeah, portable. So you're going to find when you pick up the book, you can pick it up with one hand. Your sixth grade students can put this in their backpack and not have to tighten the straps and hunch over and try to lug it back and forth to school. I know in some cases, this might be one of the only or the only books that they're actually taking back and forth every day. And like Mr. Bush said earlier, and like Ms. Isla said also, we really made an effort. I think we spent more time taking things out than we did putting things in. We really, really made an effort to not have anything extra on the page because we thought that was best pedagogically. But also, we did not want the book to be one page longer than it needed to be. Absolutely. Yeah. And that was also part of our decision to not include accessories in the book. You will not find instruction on how to play triangle and tambourine and timpani and that sort of thing. And those things fall into the category of like, if we had really believed that a lot of people really need and want this in the book, it would be there. But in our conversations, again, this was not a decision we just made willy-nilly by ourselves, but in our conversations with a wide range of teachers. We just found that we didn't think, obviously those things are very important and you're going to spend time on those things in your classes, but we did not feel that teachers were turning to books for instruction on those instruments. So we took it out in order to keep the book as short as possible.

SPEAKER_04 22:18

Absolutely. Absolutely. Portable, affordable and accessible. Affordable was so important because again, we've seen everything, but some of these programs, it's like, you know, these parents are so excited. Oh my kid you know little Johnny's in percussion it's like okay here's what little Johnny needs he needs to get a pair of sticks and he needs to get a pair of Tiffany moths and he needs to get a pair of hard xylophone moths and he gets a pair of soft xylophone moths and he needs to get a pair of marimba moths to look like baseball bats and he needs you need to rent a marimba from this place you need to you know buy a pad you need to buy a sand man it adds up and it is a lot and we are so proud to say that this is the least expensive book of its kind the least expensive beginning percussion book in its class Again, another very conscious decision. We're trying to look out for the educators and the students and the parents in this portable, affordable, accessible, Ms. Islas, accessible.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Accessible. We wanted to keep in mind who is going to be using this book, and that comes down to things such as the cover. If you look at our book, you'll notice that both covers are very colorful. They're very inviting. The kids on the covers look like they're having fun playing music, which is what exactly we're we want to introduce to the beginners that playing percussion is a good time. And so we put a lot of effort into designing a cover, multiple covers, two covers, that would explain that without having to explain that, if that makes any sense. I mean, when you look at it, for the old heads out there, it looks like an old school Nintendo Power magazine because it has that feel to it. So that introduction to the book hopefully sends that message. And then in terms of the layout it's clean it's easy to read there's no extra clutter so that there's no confusion on what the focus needs to be when working through any level and then it's written with a 12 year old 6th grade student comprehension level in mind you know so many textbooks have so much wording and sometimes the language can be so advanced that it almost trains the student not to read the text but every Everything that we have written has been scrutinized to a high level of the amount and the language so that it is encouraged that this information is important and it should be read.

SPEAKER_04 24:39

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great job shouting out that cover. Gabby did such a good job with it. I remember that a big goal of ours was if a classmate, if another student looked into the bag of a percussionist, that they wouldn't even think it was a textbook. They're like, what is that? That is so cool. And we're like, this is my textbook for band They would be, wow, that's the book you use for band. I screwed up by not signing up to play percussion. All right, hey, thanks for hanging with us today, friends. If you have any questions for the podcast, send them to teamislas at gmail.com. That's teamislas, T-E-A-M-I-S-L-A-S at gmail.com. Shout out to all the great percussion companies that support Team Islas, Mapex Majestic Percussion, Remo Drumheads, Promark Sticks Them Out, Sabian, cymbals, Beatle percussion, and Lot Riot apparel. Missy's last If our listeners want the best beginning percussionist on the planet, where could they pick up a copy of Player's Guide?

SPEAKER_00 25:40

They could pick up a copy of Player's Guide from teamislas.com, lulu.com, Dallas Percussion, or Steve Weiss Percussion.

SPEAKER_04 25:49

Yeah, or anywhere else that they get their music books from. It should be available from any of your distributors of music education material. Don't forget to like and subscribe. If you can count out loud, tap your foot. with the Met and clap accurate rhythm, then give us a five-star review. Remember, friends, step one is time, step two is sound, and step three is subscribing to the Team Islas podcast.