I'm still excited about lap and chair drumming, a month later. I've got to tell you about two awesome success stories in my classroom.

MYP Year 1: Grade 6 xBlock
xBlock is a new course that some schools are doing. Like Creative New Undertakings or Genius Hours, this is a course in which students are allowed to pursue any line of inquiry approved by their mentor teacher. I currently have two grade 6s who want to have a rock band. One is learning bass guitar and the other drum kit. Unfortunately, my drummer was terrified of touching the drums. He was worried that the sticks would go through the skins. He was worried it would be too loud and would upset people. He was worried that he wouldn't be good enough. In general, he was just worried. 

We went into the hallway and turned on the Just Play Drums PPTX file. Together, the two of us went through few tutorials. Once he was comfortable, I headed off to help my other xBlock musicians. The boy worked through the file. First, lap drumming, and then chair drumming. Over the next few classes, he became more and more confident. When he was finally ready to move to the drum kit, his confidence was soaring. He hit the drums loudly and proudly. He was now ready to start working on his piece with his partner.

We made up an xBlock promo video featuring the boy as he explained his progress through the creative cycle. The xBlock coordinator was amazed. He kept saying, "The level of confidence! The use of vocabulary! He really knows his stuff and is talking with a lot of critical thinking!"

MYP Year 5: Grade 10 Music
With the normal turnover rate of International Schools, we often get kids in with very limited music skills. This year, I had a student arrive in grade 10 with zero background in music. She signed up for the course because she loves music... though she had no skills. She attempted finger-picking guitar, and that went okay. She tried ukulele and did pretty well. Then, I gave her the Just Play Drums video.

I was worried that it would seem too childish for her. After all, the block before I had a 10 year old working on it, and she's 17. However, she faithfully sat and lap drummed with fast concentration. Next came the chair drumming. Over the next few classes, I walked around the different groups and didn't focus on how she was doing. On day, I noticed she was teaching another new boy how to drum. She was teaching him pretty complicated rhythms, especially for a newbie, and he was struggling a bit. I followed her back into her group's practice room to see how they were doing --> she was wonderful! It sounded like she'd been playing the drums for two months or more. She had more complicated rhythms than you'd expect for someone only playing for two weeks, and her sense of beat was spot-on.

​So yes, still completely enamored with Musical Futures' Just Play series. 

Here's a little present for you --> another rhythm sheet for your lap or chair drummers. This one is a rumba groove.  Enjoy!

Now, I don't want to have a race to the bottom, but I should tell you that you can buy drumsticks on Taobao for only 1RMB. That's $0.14 USD. Hey big-spender, go out and buy a class set for the price of $4.33! 

I'm telling you this because I learned about chair drum-sets at Musical Futures International this past weekend at a workshop in Hong Kong. You know when you learn something so fundamentally obvious that you just want to do a head-plant? That was me when I first learned about chair drum-sets. I tried to find a student video to show you, on YouTube, but there's none to be found. 

Basically, the kids play drums on their chairs. Yup. That's it. 

This is a screen capture from their tutorial PowerPoint. Your right foot steps up and down (pretending to be the bass). Your left hand hits the seat of the chair (snare drum) while your right hand hits the back of the chair (high hat). 

Then, you are given non-traditional notation - measures with pictures of the drum pieces, showing which are played on which beats. The files you get with MFI include cool rock favourites with the drums simplified and yet varied for the different sections of the song. It's harder than your typical, basic rock beat; it's much easier than intermediate drumming. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it's just right! 

What if you don't have access to MFI files? Well, I made the salsa notation shown above. I simply Googled, "Salsa drums sheet music" and found an example from www.onlinedrummer.com.  Then I went to websites offering free clipart and quickly put together this picture. 
​
Here is an example from a workshop in Cyprus (you'll need a VPN, my China-based friends!) This is a teacher's workshop; however, when I was in Hong Kong, they had a grade 5 class learn this for the first time, and the kids picked it up really well. 

Why am I so impressed with chair drum-sets?
a) It's cheap and so you can get an entire class drumming immediately
b) It takes away the prestige of the drum set, in which only a few chosen kids get to play it. 
c) It gives the basic skills on drum set, so when the kids get into their creative cycle groups and start deciding on instruments, everybody in the group can already play
d) It's a great gateway to playing on a real set. It's a way of talking about proper hand positions, etc., before they get on a real kit

I should say, thought, that standing isn't very helpful. When we learned this in the workshop, the teachers all sat down. This was better because it was more comfortable, but also because it more closely mimicked a real drum set. (Drummers don't typically stand when they play a kit!)

I'm in the middle of the creative cycle right now, so it's too late to introduce this to my classes. However, next semester's grade 6s are definitely all going to try this. I'm excited and am getting ready NOW!

Uzume Taiko teaches drums using oral traditions. There's no sheet music -- there's only the oral call of the leaders that is repeated by the students until learnt.  Sure, I did rhythmic dictations in university, but that was 15 years ago and still had me notating on sheet music the rhythms I heard. This was completely different!

1. Kodaly Be Gone!
You know those lovely Kodaly rhythms? When you sing them, you can automatically play them because each rhythm sung relates to a rhythm duration. Not so with Taiko drumming. Here, the sung syllables refer to how hard you are supposed to hit the drums. Very hard strikes are called 'Don.'  Two very soft strikes are called 'Tsuku.' So when you hear the caller singing the syllables, get it out of your heads that you are being told the rhythms!

2. Feel the rhythms and stop thinking about them!
We know that 'Don' is a loud strike and two very soft strikes are called 'Tsuku." Now, two loud strikes are called 'Doro.'  So a caller could yell, "Don tsuku Don Doro!" and this would result in:

See? It's the exact same rhythm, but played differently according to how the caller speaks. So you can't try to cheat and think, "Right... all eighth notes are Tsuku," because they aren't. (sigh...)

3. Think about the exact opposites. 
There are times in life when you just have to unlearn what you know. Hands are cupped in piano, but closed on the harp. Hands are high, V-shaped, and fluid on the snare drum, but held like straight clubs on the Taiko drums. I literally spent the first three days trying to train myself not to hold the drum sticks like a concert drummer. It was only on the fourth day when the instructor started to feel calmer about my sound quality and sticking techniques.

4. All dance moves are prepared.
Yes. Dance moves. I asked my instructor what the difference was between Chinese and Japanese drumming and she told me it essentially came down to the dance moves. Each movement setups up the next.  For example, if you have 'Don Don,' with alternating sticks, then your right hand has to be straight at 45 degrees while your left hand has to be 90 degrees beside your ear. The best advice I can give you is to watch the tapes at 15% speed and to really analyse how they are setting up each individual dance step.

How to Succeed: 
- let go of your inhibitions
- unlearn what you know
- FEEL the beats wash over you
- let your kinetic / muscle memory take over

Kids love Taiko Drumming.  Uzume told me they regularly do workshops in schools, and even bring all their own drums. So if you are interested in this really cool activity, please visit Uzume Taiko for more information.