Drums - failed grade 2 and general advice please!

[blackeyes72]

Hi there,
we are a house of musicians, all my older children play instruments to different levels of ability; so we are not exactly novices in the world of music and I certainly have dealt with a large number of music teachers in the years. I know the children need to practice to succeed/enjoy the instrument and I also have had all sorts of teachers.

Our youngest DD (just turned 9) has been learning the drums for 2 years. She has a great sense of rhythm as she has been doing tap for a couple of years and has passed her exams with very high grades. She also has just started singing lessons 2 months ago and the teacher has already put her in for her grade 1 exam in December.

However we have had a very unsuccessful time with her drums but I need to understand if it is the teacher or not....hard really. She has failed her grade 2 in the summer. I was very annoyed about this because she had been practising for well over a year and failed on things like "technical exercise" which was just a couple lines. Her pieces were ok-ish. The annoying thing is that the teacher only told me she wasn't ready 2 weeks before the exam but I decided to let her go for it...

Also he has now decided to put her on "technical exercises". So for the past 2 months, all she has been doing is lines and lines of exercises. No pieces.

I have asked several times if he could give her a piece to learn alongside the technical stuff as she likes to have fun playing something and he has just repeatedly told me to just stick in any pop song and let her play. I told him this doesn't really cut it because she wants to work through a book and have a sense she is learning pieces but yesterday when I asked again for pieces he went bright red (he was fuming) and told me that if she really wants to learn pieces she can do it herself but he refuses to do it as she has to rebuild her technique and his job is to do that in the lessons.

I find this approach very odd as it has never happened before with any of the other teachers. I do feel that he has some responsibility in her failing the g2 but never said as such to him. For context, none of the children have ever failed a music exam so it is sad for DD...

However DD is starting to lose interest doing the same exercises for months on end.

She has the option to move teachers of course, but I wanted a second opinion here...

Ideas and opinions would be very welcome!!!!

I'd think about changing teacher if it isn't working out but there are a couple of things to check based on my experience with DS1! He passed his grade 1 in primary school but he lost quite a lot of marks because he hadn't done much practice with the backing track and got behind in the actual exam.
He then switched to tuned percussion for a year and loved it, while playing in a percussion ensemble. In the summer holidays after Y7 he resumed drum lessons with a different teacher and completely different method and got a merit at grade 4 the following year.
He still has drum lessons with another teacher but likes to focus on jazz technique and is not interested in exams! So it could be you need to look closely at exam requirements, or it could be worth trying other percussion and other styles.

Thanks for that druid. Will have a look although getting DS to focus on things like that is tough. Barely does anything on a pad generally.

Love Tommy Igoe. This one of him playing The Chicken with Buddy Rich Big Band is great.

Video of Yamaha Futurbeat final is anybody interested:

Also Young Drummer of the Year for under 16s open for entry for another week or so.

Tap and drumming are not the same - I have one son who tap dances and abother who drums so I speak from experience here. Obviously both are based in rhythm but they are not interchangeable.