Welcome to my first progress blog post! If you didn’t know, I am currently hard at work learning how to drum with the guidance of my now confirmed mentor, Jason Overy. 

 

If you were here for my last In Depth blog post, you will know that I was having some troubles with getting into contact with Jason Overy, who I wanted to be my mentor because of the things I had heard about him. This was quite stressful at the time because I had thought I had found a mentor suitable for this project and that I had overcome that stage, but when I could no longer contact him for a while, I was worried. Since then, I was able to contact him properly, get to know him, and discuss my goals, timeline, and plans. 

To get me started on my journey through drumming, Mr. Overy gave me information about the basics during our discussions. This included the basic pieces to a drum kit, and the most essential pieces to help me see if I had the correct equipment to practice my drumming at home. He also gave me a document with the basics of drumming on it so that I could get the project started by myself, have a look at the world of drumming, and see how well I could get myself prepared for our first meeting. Mr. Overy also asked me to look at drummers and rock songs that I liked from the websites The Drum Ninja and Drummerworld to get my creativity flowing. But that wasn’t the extent of our conversations before our first meeting. 

I also got to learn about my mentor and how he had become who he is today. Jason Overy is a professional musician, performer, and music teacher as he has 4 years of experience in those fields. Mr. Overy took piano lessons in the beginning, but didn’t enjoy it all that much, and found drumming interesting, so he decided to take it up. After many years of practice, he started performing with others, learning different types of drumming, and decided to teach drumming lessons for a living. When I first went to his studio, I could tell that he really enjoyed drumming, as it was full of different types of drums and instruments I’ve never seen before. 

 

While on the car ride to my session, I was very nervous, as I didn’t want to make a bad first impression on my mentor, and I was a little stressed during the session. But, Mr. Overy gave me many reassuring words, and kind gestures, which made the environment much more relaxed and fun. 

 “Your arms have gears in them. Each gear is used in a different manner. For example, your shoulder is a gear used only for certain types of drumming that require lots of power. Your elbow is also a gear that you use for more powerful strokes, and although they’re not very powerful, your wrist and finger gears help you make quick strokes with control. You will need to learn how to click between these gears on command.”

– Jason Overy

After meeting up with him for the first time, my first impression of Mr. Overy was that he is a very kind but strict and organized teacher. During the first 30 minutes of the session, we worked on the basics that he had given me beforehand, and he had taught me the correct techniques to use when practicing and applying those basics, and what I will have to be able to do eventually, such as the quote above. During this time, he was quite particular with my technique such as accenting on correct beats so I can improve my control, and he wrote down all of his comments in my notebook for me so that I could apply them during my practice. I found that this gesture was very helpful and kind, and he immediately reminded me of my piano teacher. 

After we had finished warming up with the basics, we played a couple of games that revolved around improving my sense of rhythm, and putting the basics to use, which were quite fun. These game were also helpful because Mr. Overy would give me lots of insightful tips. One exercise that we did that stuck out to me was an exercise where we used a machine to see how many times I could hit the drum pad using different types of rolls within the span of ten seconds. Mr. Overy explained that we would keep track of my scores every time we meet to track my improvement. This week, I got 567 on the singles roll, 557 on the doubles roll, and 844 on the multiple roll. 

When we started to move to the actual drum kit, Mr. Overy re-explained all of the pieces, and explained all of the fancy attachments that his own drum kit had. When we moved to the drum kit, Mr. Overy taught me how to perform a basic rock beat, and how to add fills to it, which was quite exciting considering the fact that I had got it in the first couple of tries. So, he had me play the rock beat to the song Billy Jean by Michael Jackson, and left me with some songs to work on, encouraging words, and a comment about how I could bring him songs that I enjoyed and we could figure out how to play the drum par t of. This comment was one of the biggest parts that stuck out to me because it aligned with my goals of being able to have creative freedom, and I hope that by bringing him songs, I could learn how to figure out the drum line of my favourite songs by myself. 

!Volume warning!

Video of me drumming to a part of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson

 

Just from my first drumming session, I think I’ve learned so much about drumming, and made a great connection with my mentor, causing me to have fallen in love with drumming even more. I had so much fun during my first lesson and even have been enjoying practicing and improving little by little, so I look forward to what’s to come.