G8 Bullet 1 – Getting to the next level; practice. To finally understand something, especially after some degree of effort, is truly one of life's most certain joys.
2. Who can deny the lofty elation one experiences when that wonderful "ah-ha" moment occurs? You've figured something out or you've mastered something complex after a long and difficult struggle. Often it occurs after a torturous low point, a seemingly endless frustration.... nothing seems to be happening anymore, no progress is being made. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, an epiphany! The solution is in your hands.
3. The point must be made, we don't get these if we do nothing.
4. Momentum must be maintained. Effort must be expended. Practice must be worked in and if we are being faithful, we say our prayers too.
5. From the revelation of personal experience, if God and his Church are not part of the equation, I will fail to do my best.
6. But God works in many ways, often allowing us to be "successful" (in a worldly kind of way) even when we are completely distant from him.
7. Growing up, my brothers and I made a conscious decision that we were going to be a band and really nothing else mattered from that point on, at least for a while. We didn't try to excel in sports or academics or religious studies or any other number of things successful teenagers do. Those just weren't our goals.
8. Personally, I missed out on getting to the next level because I stopped practicing for a while, I dropped out. How often does this happen with our faith life? It did mine.
9. Outside of church I made no progress; going further all on my own; without knowing it, becoming morally and spiritually bankrupt.
10. Piously practicing religion would have been boring compared to the worldly attractions I was chasing at the time. I got big headed and prideful. I believed if anything were to happen it would be solely because of my own efforts.
11. One thing for certain, outside of church and its influence, I didn't put forth any effort to learn more about God or to start reading spiritual books.
12. Instead, I started practicing the electric guitar once more but soon moved to percussion instruments. I was driven again to excel, driven by imagination and vision; visions driven by my brothers' successes and the sensualities felt in my heart for worldly success and fame. I was practicing to get to the next level alright. Meanwhile my brothers excelled in getting booked at more places to play as a band. Consequently, they did things with music that others only dream about.
13. Ultimately, it was because of their success that I was able to eventually get into the music scene later and do things I had only previous dreamed about before.
14. Ultimately, it was because of the unmerited grace of God (the love of God), the prayers of others, and the protective acts of my guardian angels that I was able to eventually recognize the call to my true vocation and find the narrow path leading to eternal salvation, Jesus Christ.
15. Do you see how we need practice, prayer, and one another in getting to the next level?
16. Shoot for at least 3–4 solid, 30 minute sessions per week; rhythm practice along with prayer time. Always opt for multiple days over one day-long practice or prayer session.
17. Once you've got the pattern down, pick a favorite song of yours (make sure that it's a 4/4 song) and play your pattern with it. Don't pick a super fast song.
18. "In the Church it is through living Tradition that the Holy Spirit teaches the children of God how to pray. In fact prayer cannot be reduced to spontaneous outpouring of an interior impulse; rather it implies contemplation, study and a grasp of the spiritual realities one experiences." Compendium: Catechism of the Catholic Church #557
G8 Bullet 2 – Fill in the empty beats with touch, but don't touch too much! Remember the touch serves mostly as a timekeeper between louder strokes helping your hands to flow and adding a subtle fullness to a rhythm. Alternate hands. Even on a tabletop, always concentrate on getting the best possible tones. You never know when you might get to transition to a real drum. No cotton hands. Leave some breathing room in your playing too. If you need to touch stroke to keep you on beat and in time, fine. With practice, there will come a day when you no longer rely on the touch stroke for timekeeping. If you get a chance to play with others or along with recorded music, don't fight to be heard. Don't even worry about hearing yourself. Concentrate on the feel of what you're playing and focus on the sound of the group you're playing along with. If your hands start to hurt, stop playing until they stop hurting. Before you start playing again, take time to analyze the problem. If you continue to play on an injured hand, you may do permanent damage. It's like making a daily examination of conscience before our Lord. Self analysis allows us to replace our counterproductive habits, our vice, with virtue - the habit that will make us kinder, merciful, and more compassionate to others. In our Lesson G8 pattern remember to play the touch significantly softer than the bass and slap tones.
G8 Bullet 3 – Drum set adaptation for the tabletop. In the cut-time/backbeat handout below, the slap tones fall on the backbeats – defined as every second pulse in a pattern with two or four pulses. In cut-time, every second pulse falls on beat two of each measure. In 4/4, the backbeats fall on two and four. The backbeat is the backbone of most dance music, from rock, Christian pop, funk and hip-hop. On a drum set, the backbeat is usually played on a snare drum using a technique called a rimshot (produces a loud crack). On a tabletop, the closest thing to a rimshot is a slap – so we use the slap for our backbeats. The pattern in Drum and Bass is simple but tasteful and it can be played with nearly everything. It may even sound like a popular drum set pattern. In this adaptation for the tabletop, the bass stroke mimics the bass drum on a kit, the slap stroke mimics the snare drum, and the touch strokes mimic the hi-hat. Another drum set technique used in this pattern is called the fill - "a rhythmic bridge between repetitions of a pattern or sections of a song." It happens between the end the part of the second measure, moving from slaps to open tones and then back to the bass on one. "Drum set players do the same thing by moving from the snare to a tom to the bass drum." (Pattern 1-9 adapted for tabletop - source quotes courtesy Hip Grooves for Hand Drummers: How to play funk, rock and world – beat patterns on any drum, by Alan Dworsky and Betsy Sansby)
G8 Bullet 4 – Cut time/backbeat handout. Understanding "time" isn't always straightforward. If there's one understanding of time that propelled me personally to the next level in playing of percussion instruments, it was not the theory of cut-time. The good news is that in preparing for this lesson - the theory of cut time has become even more "explicit" to me.
OK, here goes.
22. The difference is in the "pulse" underlying the rhythms. In our practice boxes, the "pulse" is always shown in the topmost row; its the greyed out box with a numeral in it. In 4/4 there is a pulse of 4 beats. In 2/2 there is a pulse of two beats. The time signatures 4/4 and 2/2 are mathematically the same. Both fractions, when reduced, equal one, which means that any measure with either of these time signatures would contain one whole note.
23. Basically, If I can play the same pattern in half the time it normally takes, I must be playing it in "cut time." Right? We'll sort of. piano.about.com writes: one uses cut time "to speed up tempo: when switching from common time (4/4), cut time means you'll be playing twice as fast. In this manner, cut time can be referred to as "halftime," or "playing in 2."
24. This handout will help (a bit). Watching the Drum and Bass movie with the YOU practice sheets in front of you will help a lot.
25. If there's one understanding about "time" that propelled me to the next level in my understanding of God it was found in the book by C.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity.
26. "A man put it to me by saying 'I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment.'"
27. What Lewis wrote next has had a profound effect on how I think about God.
28. "Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what time is like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this time series – this arrangement of past, present and future – is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist. We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in time at all: later the philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same. Almost certainly God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If 1 million people are praying to him at 10:30 tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call 10:30. Ten-thirty – and every other moment from the beginning of the world – is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split-second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames."
29. Ah-ha! Wow! An epiphany perhaps, something to turn over and over again, to ponder in the shower, to contemplate before the Blessed Sacrament, to gradually understand, to help make one's understanding of God more explicit.
30. God created time. Our Lord has no beginning and no end and exists outside of time (time itself 'a thing' created by God) as He has for all of eternity. If God has no beginning and no end, when I die, He can be there alone with me as if I am the only creature of his creation.
31. If God has no beginning and no end, when his son Jesus Christ died on the cross, He died for my sins and my sins alone.
32. If God has no beginning and no end, when I sin, i.e. "to miss the mark," it is me alone that offends my Lord and my God.
33. If God has no beginning and no end, then all of these apply equally to each and every person created in the image of God! That is you, my tiny band of students and followers, and the millions and millions of all the rest who could care less.
34. This is how big our God is. This is what he shows us about himself when he sends his Son to us. Whether we are found in the state of caring or not "God shows us in Jesus Christ the full depth of his merciful love." (YOUCAT #9)
35. Some things just naturally take "time" for us to gradually grasp - don't forget about putting forth a little daily practice and effort either; my not so well-kept secret of success.
36. "Yes even if Revelation is already complete, [there's nothing more to be said] it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries." Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) # 66.
G8 Bullets 5 – 7, Learn the Rhythm - Drum set groove: Drum and Bass
SPEAK THE RHYTHM: Ge te re te Pa te re te Ge te re te Pa Pa Du Du....
Work both hands: Remember; when working on technique, whatever is true for the right hand is true for the left hand. You will find that if you are right handed, the patterns starting with the right hand will be easier to play than when starting the same pattern with the left hand (and vice versa). Switch hands: If you are right handed, use your left hand now to start playing the pattern. It helps me to go to the practice sheet (see YOU Practice below) and write out L,R,L,R,L,R,L,R below the R,L,R,L,R,L,R,L line so that I can clearly see the strokes my left hand is supposed to be playing at a particular moment (beat) in time. Start slowly and work up your speed as your accuracy improves; this exercise develops dexterity.
G8 Bullet 8 – Topic A3, Tradition and Word. God approaches us men: The "Big Reveal."
1.) From John 1:18 complete the sentence. No one has ever seen God; ______________, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.
2.) Read Hebrews, 1:1-2 and CCC #65. List two ways that God has spoken to us.
3.). Which apostle was Jesus speaking to when he said "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9)
4.) According to 1 Timothy 6:14, how long should a disciple of Christ expect to "fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Timothy 6:12)?
5.) Read the following Bible verses and then complete the sentence at the end using just one word: Ezekiel 33:11, Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 15:24, Matthew 9:12, and Matthew 26:28. From the preceding 5 passages of Sacred Scripture, we can know that God is _________.
G8 Bullet 9 – YOU Practice: Rhythm sheet (2) and (3 cut-time). If you want measurable results - try to practice both your faith and drumming at least 30 minutes a day.
a.) Playing simple rhythms on a daily basis can be similar in repetition to (but never used in place of) a prayer recitation for family and friend, living and deceased. Try to pray slowly and deliberately for these loved ones and friends.
b.) Did you know that a typical weekday Mass lasts right at 30 minutes? What an ideal spiritual setting to bring prayers for family and friends!
c.) No local church in your area offering daily Mass? Watch online then! Most on-line daily masses are less than 30 minutes. Ask yourself: "If that's Jesus really present in the Eucharist shouldn't I really want to see Him as filmed during Mass?"
d.) Practice perfects the one undergoing the repetitious movement; either naturally or supernaturally.
e.) Answered prayers are reminders of God's supernatural order present in our very own lives. The Church teaches the fruitful value of a sound prayer life. My family and I can give personal testimony to the effectiveness of daily prayer. Practice makes perfect!
G8 Bullet 10 – Table Task: Decide. God has a plan for everyone's life. Even if there were times in your life when you didn't believe this - God did. Nothing is forced on anyone. You are free to choose - at all times. Ask God to reveal his plan for you. To choose it is to decide. Decisions entail actions; actions are practiced over and over until they become habits and then virtues. If we're prayerful - if we are in a state of grace, our advantages become realities when, more often than not, we are able to use sound reason over fickle feelings and emotions alone. Before bed, decide to conclude each day with an examination of your conscience, asking if you are doing whatever God wants you to do.
G7 Bullet 11 – Basic Notation (1) and (2) handouts: study them.
