After teaching a few people throughout the last part of the 90’s it rose to 89 students a week in 1999.
I have been teaching in a private capacity and at schools in Cape Town, namely,
SACS Junior and High School, Rustenburg Girls High School, Westerford,
Reddam House, Rondebosch Boys High School and Sun Valley Primary.
I teach people of all ages and levels and enjoy the process of helping a student who maybe more rhythmically challenged as much as I enjoy teaching a talented student.
At Rondebosch Boys High School, where I have been teaching since 2010, and students play drums as part of taking music as a subject, I make use of the Trinity College of London and the Rock School syllabus.
Rondebosch has a fantastic music department and band program and my matric students have received A’s for their practical exams at a grade 8 level.
A number of their students are chosen each year to play for the South African National Youth Orchestra including one of my drummers.
I have produced two introductory books for my students, Rhythm Roots 1, an introduction to drum kit and Rhythm Roots 2, how to play with a Bass guitar, which have helped prepare them to understand their role in a band and play with music.
Even though I have had success with students in the recognised graded system,
this thought has kept coming up for me, If music is a language, why are so few learning to play?
I thought about how we learn to speak, we LISTEN and then SAY the words so I have developed a system called,
Listen, Say, Move, Play!
I vocalise the rhythm for the student(Listen).
The student then vocalises the rhythm(Say).
We play the rhythm as body percussion(Move).
And then take it on to the kit(Play).
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The incredible benefit of this is that by the time the student gets on to the kit, they have the RHYTHM in their body and the SOUND in their head.
In the short time I have been trying out this approach, with kids as young as 5, I have seen the benefits and had a great deal of fun teaching this way.
Everything in the universe is rhythm and I tie into this listening process being aware of Rhythm around us in Nature and human made.
