Week 5 - Drumming Workshop

As part of the course, we had a proffesional drummer come in and give an interactive lecture on several drumming styles, using the same rhythmic pattern for all of the different genres. I found this particularly interesting because it showed that all the styles are connected, just by playing it in a different way in a different tempo it could change the whole genre of the song.
The main part of the lecture was about the key 'fundamental skills' every musician should have.
This included time keeping, reading music skills, versatility in playing genres, knowledge of music technology, as well as working well with other people/musicians.
Something that the lecturer said stuck with me "I rarely see people who are just composers/producers" meaning that most people are playing an instrument on the side of being a full time composer/producer, I found this information interesting because at the moment I see myself wanting to go down the production/composing route, but if I do get a job in production I might need to keep up paino playing as a source of income too.

Week 4 - Learning Style Overview

The basic categories of learning including visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, I think that people do have preferred learning techniques, and by learning techniques I mean the most efficient way someone can memorize information. However, I think it's healthy to learn in a variety of different ways.
For example if you are a proclaimed 'visual learner', you aren't going to learn how to ride a bike just from watching it on a video (generally speaking) you would need to psychically ride the bike in order to master it. In this respect every learning style has it's own specialties that are not capable of understanding with any other learning style.
Because of this, I personally feel that labeling oneself as a particular learner, and limiting themselves to that one style is not as beneficial is it might seem. As for me, I consider myself to be a flexible learner - meaning that I know when one learning method is going to be a lot more effective than another when I'm learning new material, but no learning style is inherently 'better'.
Although, rather contradictory I will say that I am more confident when learning with visual and kinesthetic methods, which is probably why I (and everyone else) prefer one or two styles because in the end, having confidence when learning something can take you a lot further, regardless of the style.