Re: VENT! and question.
If you aren't getting on with the teacher, get another one. Lessons are too expensive to pay for if you aren't getting anything out of it.
However, don't be surprised if other teachers aren't all that different in wanting to pursue the technical aspects rather than just learning to play a particular uber-fast song.
I've been playing about a year and a half now, taking lessons most of the time, and I've found there are essentially two things that I'm learning.
1. Songs, I mostly teach myself by listening and trying stuff. Slow at first then buliding up. This is the fun part of drumming. I have from time to time asked my tutor to help me figure out a particularly tough part, but to be honest he's never really shown me something I couldn't have worked out for myself, except for things that it turns out I don't yet have the skill for. So while I enjoy going over songs with him, it's not massively productive. In fact the main thing it has taught me is that to do these harder songs I need to work on....
2. Technique, i.e. rudiments, sticking technique, independence exercises, counting, etc. This is what I now focus on the most in my lessons, as this is much, much harder to teach yourself properly and where a tutor will provide real value. It's not as much fun as songs, but this is how you expand your abbilty which then feeds into learning harder songs. If you want the most value from the money you spend on lessons, this is where you want the teacher to be working, and if you are patient and slog through it you'll find the harder songs just come naturally.
You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common:
they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views,
which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.
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