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Jack Trousdale
Past Notes
December 17th, 2025
We started off with two times through Golden, and then added Jingle Bell Rock.
When Jack encounters something a little challenging, he wants to quit or move on. I had to push him a bit to keep trying, but I have to walk a bit of a line there, it seems. At home, maybe you can encourage him to work on the parts that he's not quite getting, like the drum fills.
December 10th, 2025
We started off with Golden, and went through it a couple of times. We then went to We Will Rock You by Queen, and played through it a few times.
Here's an easier version than the one below:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mDrZBCDuJQ
He got a bit tired of it after a couple of practises, and we went back to Golden.
December 3rd, 2025
First we worked on Golden and did it about 5 times, and then we added "We Will Rock You" today.
November 26th, 2025
We started out with naming the drum parts, and Jack has them nearly all down.
We then reviewed the first beat and I played on the piano with him for a couple of minutes. We then added his first real song, "Golden" by "Huntr/X"
Here's the drum video he can practise along with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsUfI3EKAj4
November 19th, 2025
We played the quarter note beat, and gradually worked it up faster and faster, while I played guitar along with him.
Feel free to send me any listings for a drum kit, and I'll recommend the best one.
November 12th, 2025
Jack is feeling sick today, so not coming.
November 5th, 2025
We started again like last week, playing the eighth note beat on the kit and me playing with him.
We then went back to the reading exercise, and completed up to level 3.
October 29th, 2025
We started off with playing piano and drums together on a simple quarter note beat. Jack has a solid sense of time, surprisingly (usually kids his age do not get this naturally). I tried to get him to play it faster, but he wasn't able to do it as well at different speeds.
We then reviewed the names of the kit, and worked on the sight reading exercise. We got through to the first page of Level 2.
October 22nd, 2025
We reviewed the names of the parts of the kit. We then reviewed the quarter note beat, and Jack played along with me while I played the piano.
I then pulled out a drum site reading video, and taught him the basics of reading the kit.
Here's the video. It might be helpful if you could review it with him, and go over Level One a few times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ssC7VfkQWE
October 8th, 2025
This was Jack's first week on drums. We started off with learning the names of the various parts of the drum kit:
crash cymbal, ride cymbal, hi hat, snare, tom toms, floor tom, and kick.
After that we learned the first beat, called the quarter note beat. We played it through with and without the hi-hat for the remainder of the lesson.