Well its been a good few months since we had to stop offering face to face drum lessons at our studio in Eastbourne. Since then we have been offering online lessons via Zoom, Skype etc and building our YouTube channel. We have even started putting together an online course called drumming for Beginners. But we have always been hoping for the day that we can open our doors once again and welcome students back to us here at Ravebugs.
Of course we have had to make some minor changes and put certain measures in place to enable us to open up and keep everyone safe as well as comply with current government advice but we feel the changes wont effect the enjoyment of the students or our ability to offer first class drum lessons to students of all ages. Look forward to seeing you all soon. Phill
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Is it possible to learn to play drums online? I think it is. However there are a few conditions to that statement...
There are plenty of people online nowadays offering to teach you to do something on YouTube. For the most part this is fine but to get the most out of any musical instrument you need a teacher. Someone who can show you the correct way or technique needed to advance in the best way possible. So when looking at online teaching ask yourself “who is it that is providing the course”? It may be a reputable school with years of music teaching experience, in which case that is great. There are, however, other courses being offered by people that just want to sell the “course” rather than genuinely help you on your journey. Here at Ravebugs we are starting to develop an online course based upon our years of face to face lessons. We are hoping that it will be informative and entertaining but most of all we want it to be genuinely helpful. Until next time. Keep up the practice. With lockdown slowly being lifted and more businesses and schools starting to reopen,we asked our students and their families to comment on what we would need to do to start doing our 1:1 drum lessons again. We at Ravebugs pride ourselves on the relationship that we have with our families and it is very important to us to ensure that they are completely happy with the procedures and precautions that we put in place before re-opening our doors to students. Although very much still in the planning stages at the moment we will, of course, keep everyone informed of what measures we will be putting in place before we open our doors for music lessons again.
as you are no doubt aware we have been continuing our drumming lessons via remote meeting software as well as doing the occasional live streams on YouTube. Doing this has made us realise how much we enjoy making this kind of content and so you can be sure to see a lot more being created in the future. Why not subscribe to the Ravebugs YouTube channel and don’t forget to hit that little notification bell to be reminded of any new content as it gets published. Hope to see you all again soon. Phill Well here we are entering our seventh week? Of lockdown. Some of the restrictions are very slowly being lifted and there is even talk of the kids going back to school before the summer holiday.
Unfortunately the likely hood of people being able to come back for drum lessons still looks to be some time away yet. As we mentioned in previous blog posts we are trying to keep peoples skills up to date by offering online lessons via video conferencing and also doing a regular live stream for the kids on a Wednesday morning. We are also busily creating content for the Ravebugs YouTube Chanel and hopefully will be able to offer an on line course in the near future. Just as most other businesses are having to, we also must adapt to an uncertain future and explore different ways of doing things. As always stay safe and see you again soon. Phill In these strange times, people, businesses and everything have to adapt to a new way of doing things. Here at Ravebugs we are no different, we have had to move all of our lessons online as well as doing weekly live streaming lessons and making a lot more of a YouTube channel.
As many of you know I am not just the teacher at Ravebugs. I am also a professional musician playing in many bands and the occasional show. During this lockdown period all music venues and shows have been forced to close meaning that the live music scene has effectively died a death. There are a few musicians still streaming their performances online, however as a drummer this is quite difficult to do. This hasn’t kept me from being behind the drum kit though. Good use is still being made of the studio by recording high quality drum tracks for songwriters and other musicians. Online sessions as these are known are a great idea for people who want to engage with musicians without he cost of renting recording studios or, as is currently the case, cannot travel. Anyway that’s all from us this week. As always. Keep safe and have fun. Phill. In these crazy times many of us are having to home-school our children with varying degrees of difficulty, (I am ashamed to say that my 6 year old has taught me a few things over the past weeks)! Luckily there is a ton of help available out there and what’s more most of it is free! You can get lessons and guidance on P.E. from Joe Wicks every morning and BBC bitesize is now on iPlayer covering any number of subjects. Ravebugs has also been contributing with our weekly live-streams on a Wednesday morning. These cover everything from fun bucket and junk drumming to Key Stage 1 music topics such as Pulse and Rhythm. They are always very informal and light hearted as those of you that have joined us will testify.
All of our past streams can be found on our YouTube channel along with some lessons and other drum-related videos. Just search for Ravebugs, and while you are there don’t forget to hit that subscribe button! Anyway that’s all from us this week. Keep safe and have fun. Phill. So we’re into the fifth week of lockdown for us here at Ravebugs, and the country has just been told to expect at least another three weeks before restrictions may be lifted...
What does your average drum teacher do with all this extra time? Other than relentlessly practicing and honing his craft of course... Well we’ve been keeping busy with our Facebook Live Drumming Sessions, which seem to get noisier by the week! We’ve found out how to live-stream these to YouTube at the same time, though our settings appear to need a few tweaks, so that’s meant lots of fiddling about! Also keeping Phill busy, the online lessons he’s been doing via FaceTime, Zoom and Skype - one student commented this week that she actually prefers doing her drum lesson via FaceTime, as it means she can see Phill sitting at his kit while she sits at her own. She probably finds he drinks a lot less of her tea when he’s 20+ miles away too! As most people know, our youngest two children are aged 6 and 4. We’ve planned for quite some time to get some musical instruments out in the garden for them to play, and are pleased to announce that we’ve finally done it. Phill has attached some triangles of various sizes to the side of our trampoline, and we now regularly hear the ting-ting of a little tune when the children are outside. Phill’s other creative project for the garden is a set of wind chimes. Again made from triangles of various sizes, Phill put his welding skills to good use to attach them all together at the top, then added some strings to suspend the lower triangles from. He’s hung it up in the garden, but, typically, I don’t think there’s been a breath of wind since! What creative things have you been up to during the lockdown? As always keep safe Phill We’re another week on in the Covid-19 Situation, and Lockdown Life continues - it’s very different to what we were used to of course, but we’re all getting used to it at Ravebugs. Our children, aged 6 and 4, seem to be enjoying not having to go to school and nursery, and I think they grow slightly more feral with every passing day.
Their wildness makes for some interesting Wednesday mornings. We’ve been doing a live-streamed drum session each week, exploring different rhythm/drumming ideas especially aimed at the Key Stage 1 age group, though suitable for all ages to join in and have a go! We’re doing this via our Facebook page, so it’s live at 10.30 each Wednesday morning, but then available to watch at any time after that on both Facebook and on our YouTube channel. These sessions are great fun, but our children need to work on their professionalism - the first week they were marching round with saucepans on their heads (they were meant to be hitting them with wooden spoons!), the second week our 6-year-old managed to somehow fall off a bucket (she was meant to be hitting it!), and this week our 4-year-old turned up late wearing a pair of his sister’s tights! We never did get an explanation out of him... We’re working on how to broadcast our live-streamed sessions on YouTube as well - early investigations suggest that we need more followers to get this to work reliably - so please, do subscribe to our Ravebugs channel, and tell everyone you know to as well! As always stay safe and keep making music. Well, what strange times we find ourselves in!
If someone had said to me this time last month that I’d have just endured - sorry, enjoyed - two weeks of social isolation with my family, and that I’d be looking at a lockdown for the foreseeable future, I’d have thought they were getting an early start on April Fool’s Day. But no, here we all are, getting used to a new way of life. And how does it change things for Ravebugs? Well, I’ve had to move almost all of my activities online! I’m so happy to report that this has worked really well with drum lessons. My students are able to connect via Skype, FaceTime or Zoom and have a full lesson. I am able to both see them at their drums and demonstrate techniques etc to them on my own kit. I have also started giving students access to a student ‘portal’ on the Ravebugs website, which allows me to share music and charts with them. For my younger students, parents can also see their child’s progress, contact me and track how much practice etc is going on. For students that don’t have their own kit at home, I have been modifying lessons so that they can still learn while using a practice pad, and we have even been enjoying using Facebook Live to broadcast drumming sessions to viewers in their own home who want to make some noise on everyday household items such as washing baskets, buckets and jugs! It’s a bit of a different story of course when it comes to the live performance aspect of my work, this has become a bit impossible since all pubs, bars, cafes and theatres closed, however I’m in regular contact with all my band-mates and we’re still putting music together, recording separately and sharing it between us so that we’re able to keep the momentum going. Prior to starting Ravebugs, I worked with computers and saw many developments over the years, but I could never have dreamt what a difference the technology would’ve made to our lives today during the lockdown. How lucky are we to be able to do things like drum lessons, and even to be able to just stay in touch with others in our community, all from the safety of our own homes? #stayhome #keepsafe #keepplaying Bit of a different one this week.
We are certainly living in crazy times at the moment with schools closing and entertainment venues shutting while we all stay home self isolating ourselves. So I thought I would let you know what we here at Ravebugs are doing to try and help relieve boredom, and help our students continue to learn their instrument. I have mentioned before that we do offer lessons over Skype, FaceTime Google hangouts etc for anyone that wants a ‘virtual’ face to face lesson. These work just like normal lessons but you are sat at your drum kit or practice pad in the comfort of your own home. These are a great solution for those already having lessons as we can continue to practice and develop the skills that you are currently working on. In the next few days we will be doing some Facebook livestream events that will be suitable for everyone. These will include a bit of bucket drumming, some info on building a ‘Junk Percussion set up and generally some fun things to do with music. We may also stream some lessons for anyone that might be interested. There is also a host of videos to watch on the Ravebugs YouTube channel and we will be adding much more over the coming weeks so please check that out and if you could subscribe to the YouTube channel that would be amazing. Talking of social media please check out the Ravebugs Facebook and Instagram offerings as we are also trying to build those as well..... Of course if you have people you would like to share these with that would be brilliant and we certainly would appreciate it. Anyway that’s enough from me, you are probably busy stopping the kids from killing each other 😂 Stay safe, be nice to each other and don’t hog all the toilet rolls! Phill xx |