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Gustavo Alarcon
Oct 9 2017
Learning Report

Different from other musicians I did not come from a family where music is around. My

parents were not musicians and did not even enjoy music. This gave me a disadvantage, because

I did not start playing at young age I had to learn everything later the rest of musicians who

started young. I want to relate mi situation with Angela Duckworth. Angela started as a 7th Math

teacher and after a few observations thought that performing well in a class depends of the time

and perseverance the student invests in the subject, not the IQ or intelligence they were borne

with. Angela went to graduate school and tested her hypothesis in other areas and different

contexts. She reached the conclusion that IQ has nothing to do with performance. She says that

success is correlated to grit and perseverance. The same is with Music; talent or ability in an

instrument has nothing to do with how good of a musician someone is. If time and discipline is

not invested in practicing an instrument, excellence cannot be achieved. I realize that getting into

Berklee is a great achievement yet my family cannot afford the last years of my college career.

Because of this, my long-term goal will be getting a scholarship from the college. To achieve this

I, think that I need to play really good jazz drums. I realize that in three weeks I cant achieve

this objective. Therefore, I want to have a head star that can help me achieve my bigger goal.

For the next three weeks, I want be able to become better at sight reading and better in turn

around vocabulary. And increase the amount of time I practice

I practice three times a week for about one hour and a half and two hours. For the first

week, my plan is to practice every day for one hour so that I can get more hours of practicing in a

week, and the practice sessions less tiring. Even thou it is really tedious for musicians to practice
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is what we have to do in order for becoming better performers. I told my private instruction

teacher that my short-term goal is to become better at sight reading. He gave me a couple of jazz

charts to improve on these skills. He gave me a book by Garwood Whaley solos for snare

drummers. Every day I plan to study my jazz charts for half an hour; the other half an hour I

will practice the book my private teacher said will help me. I am planning to be able to play 2

solos in 4/4 time from the book by Garwood Whaley. I will do these my first week of practice.

These where my goals for the first week. The first day of my practice session I learned that I

was losing a lot of time with my cellphone. I decided to go back to my room and leave my

cellphone there. I noticed that even thou if I turned off my phone after a while I will turn it on

again to see if some had texted me, and without realizing a minute later I will be scrolling

through Instagram. Now that this problem was solved; I realize that If I practice one hour a day I

feel more encourage to go to the practice room the next day. It was like I didnt have enough of

playing drums that day. If it is only one hour every day I am more focus in practicing, different

from practicing 1:30 to 2 hours 3 times a week where the last couple of minutes I am exhausted

and cannot concentrate more. The last day week I was going to leave my practice session a little

bit early. I got frustrated because I heard other drummers from the practice rooms and I thought

that I was not as good as them. I remembered Angela Duckworth and her words of perseverance

and grit, I said to myself that I didnt need to be harsh with my abilities and that with more

practice I will be able to reach those drummers skills level. Because of this I felt encourage and I

practice for an extra 35 minutes that day, and I practice Saturday for one hour even if this was

not part of my learning plans.

My other goal is to become better in turnaround vocabulary. Drummers had agreed that

Max Roach is one of the best when it comes to turn around vocabulary. I have transcribed around
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10 licks that he used for turnaround vocabulary. I just have not had the time to practice it in the

drum set. My second week Im going to add 20 minutes more to my practice sessions in order to

practice these skills. The other hour Im going to keep working on the other skills I was working

the previous week. For sight reading Im going to start practicing charts in odd signature time,

such as 6/8 5/4 12/8 etc For the Garwood Whaley book, I will work on a solo in 3/4-time

signature. I want to know as well If I am able to be focus for 20 minutes more.

Since I didnt play Sunday because it is my rest day; My first practice session in Monday went

great it was easy to practice for one hour and twenty minutes. The next days where kind of tough

and after one hour and a few minutes of practicing I got deconcentrated. What helped to keep me

focus was my desire to become a better musician, even thou I was tired my passion helped me

focusing.

On the other hand, the factor of practicing in odd times made my learning slower. I had to

think more about the hits and counting because It was not in common time. Due to this I could

only learn one snare solo and one jazz standard. The licks for my turnaround vocabulary went

pretty good as I planned. I was able to learn 3 licks perfectly in really fast tempos. An interesting

thing that I discovered was that If I practice for one hour and twenty minutes, rest for a couple of

hours and then go back to practice the same day for another hour, the hardest thing is to start

practicing, but after I already started it is easy to keep going. I did this on Thursday because I

needed to practice for my ensemble that was on Friday.

Finally, the last week I want to rehearse everything that I have learned and put it in a real

context. The way Im going to rehearse this is by playing the jazz charts and adding to my

comping the turnaround vocabulary. Im also going to dedicate this week to rehearsing all that I
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feel needs more time practicing. Furthermore, I want to try If I can increase my practice time to

two hours, my strategy to do this is by taking a 5-minute break when it I reached my first hour of

practicing.

This weak was really challenging First of all because it was really hard for me to focus

for two hours in a row. It was totally different from week one where I only practiced for one

hour. It felt really exhausting every day that I started my practice sessions. Without realizing I

will get away from the subject I was practicing and playing other things. I learned that If I make

my break of 7 to ten minutes it will be easy for me to concentrate in my task. I had to have a lot

of perseverance and Angelas Duckworth grit in order to keep pressuring and dont give up.

The third day of the week I was short of material to learn. Therefore, I went to a tutor that

berklee provides for drummers. His name is John Hazila I told him that I wanted to improve in

my Jazz skills. He told me to play along with the album Kind of Blue of Miles Davis. Hence, that

is what I did for the remaining days of my learning experience.

Angela Duckworth affirms that practice or in other words perseverance and grit will

make someone successful. I have to say that this is very true, I felt that since I came to berklee I

put a lot of time practicing and I think that I have improved as drummer. Benny Greb one of the

best contemporary jazz drummers says that he has practice almost every Monday to Friday for

the last 15 years of his career. This is a proof that discipline and perseverance beats every talent

and abilities that some have. Angela Duckworth is once again right about Grit.

I will keep having my long-term goal of having a scholarship at berklee. Likewise, I will

have smaller goals that will help me achieve this objective and they will be: adding more and

more time to practice sessions, discovering new ways of not losing my focus while practicing
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and trying to find more material to become a jazz drummer. I think that is just a matter of time to

get use to practice routines and practice timing.