Of all the great music industry sites that are available on the web, very few can compare to what Vic Firth offers in the way of educating those who use their products (and for that matter -those that use their competitor’s products as well!). If you are a budding percussionist or a professional, Vic Firth offers free educational materials that will make you better.
Sure they want you to buy their products, but they want you to be able to use them right as well! Vic Firth offers a “second to none” array of free materials to be used by students, performers and educators alike. I’ve used their free materials for years in my percussion methods course at the college and can tell you they are top rate, first class and indispensable.
With regard to the realm of Snare Drum Studies, they offer an excellent guide to learning the 40 rudiments. Norm Weinberg’s WebRhythms not only boast a progressive way to learn rhythms, but also include online metronome goals and midi enhancements to help you learn them faster.
Percussion giants Jeff Queen and Mark Wessels offer free online video lessons to learn sticking techniques and rudimental techniques. These come complete with PDF guides and lesson sheets.
Tom Igoe breaks down rhythms to their essential forms and has a selection of his DVD rhythms online for exploration. You can even download a chart with play-along tracks to learn how to better play the drumset.
Concert and chromatic percussionist can also find an incredible array of free help in the form of video lessons by Giff Howarth, Victor Mendoza and Tom Guaguer. There’s even marching and world percussion help and videos available for free.
To round out their educational offerings, there are over 2 dozen, extremely well written and timely articles from the best percussionists in the field today. For example, have you ever wanted to learn how to improve your single stroke rolls to 1200 bpm? Let Peter Madadini guide you with his article: “The Speed Rating Chart”.
Recently they have added video podcasts that are easily to subscribe to with iTunes and there are a pile of them! I saw over 70 when I connected briefly and that was only one out of three categories for their podcasts. Guess what? All Free!
Vic Firth is setting the “gold” standard when it comes to an example of music industry led educational offerings. There are so many materials available online, for free, that you could create an entire percussion curriculum from them. Their website is the farthest thing from “stagnant” and borders on a dream for end users. The only things missing are a discussion forum and blog…then it would border on a web 2.0 dream and be almost perfect (Need help with that? I’m in!). :)
Direct Links to percussion education nirvana:
Home page: www.vicfirth.com
Educational resource center
Educational articles
Student Center
Drumset Podcasts
Marching Percussion Podcasts
Concert Percussion Podcasts
My advice…START TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THIS AWESOME RESOUCE TODAY!
Joe,
Thanks for bringing up the Vic Firth site! I constantly find myself trying to improve my teaching in the areas of concert and marching percussion. With only so many hours in a days time and little one on one time to spend with interested students, the podcasts on VF really are helpful. I have made arrangements where I can send some of the percussion students in the concert bands I teach to the computer lab to get some better instruction.
Too often in our daily rehearsals, the percussion get ignored. We can incorporate them into the warm-ups and use them to help solve rhythmic problems. It has been my experience that most percussion can play at least one grade level above that which the winds are playing. Many of them struggle with the idea that they must wait and count out 20 meausres before hitting a single triangle or rolling on a suspended cymbal. During the course of a rehearsal an ensemble can stop frequently and it frustrates the percussion student who is in band for one reason – well maybe two – and that IS TO PLAY!
Besides having them work independently on percussion ensemble music (if facilities and equipment allow), how else can we keep percussion engaged through the course of a rehearsal? In many cases, the inactivity can often lead to discipline problems in the course of a rehearsal. Why not turn them lose on VF and let them target an area of interest or get some assistance with an area in which they are struggling? This is such a great case (and an easy one) of being able to incorporate technology into the music curriculum – and it doesn’t actually involve the purchase of an ear training program, a notation program, or a sequencing program.
Kudos to Vic Firth on moving forward in an educationally sound way. It is an upward spiral for VF and us (directors) – kid wants to improve, kid goes to VF and curiosity peaks, kid seeks private instruction, kid starts wanting to play on better equipment, kid takes more pride in school performance and percussion equipment, kid inspires others to improve, kid buys 7 foot concert marimba for basement….Not saying it could play out like that, but it could. And if these kids start gobbling up VF stuff, more money to them right? Sure. But better bands for all us, better kids with better respect and appreciation for music. At the end of the day, I am okay standing on the side of Vic Firth and pushing for it.
T. Weller,
You hit on some awesome points. Did you ever consider becoming a blogger and joining our crusade?
I’d be happy to start you out!
J. Pisano
I remember using some of the rudiments and snare drum studies from this site in percussion methods. They were very helpful and easy for someone without much background in percussion. This is definitely a very useful site for music educators. I liked the ideas from the first post about using these materials for students to work on during rehearsals and warmups. I know what it’s like to be in orchestra and have limited and often very easy percussion parts. It gets pretty boring. I think it would be a great idea to use something like this for students to work on during rehearsals to improve their reading and technique. I also like that the site has materials for mallet percussion as well. At my high school, melodic reading wasn’t stressed as much for percussionists. Most of those students were on a much higher level with reading rhythms than they were with reading a melodic line.
Theres also a great podcast where you can learn to play the congas called the percussion instruction podcast at http://willjohnsonrythm.blogspot.com and in itunes