Two months ago, my student Maksim came to a lesson with this song and announced, "I want to play this!" I was terrified! Not only did he want to learn a song by one of the most intricate bands in metal history, he'd already learned almost all of it before the lesson. Tool's "Schism" is a masterpiece that won the 2002 Grammy for Best Metal Performance. The meter shifts throughout the whole song, and after the lesson I spent four hours counting bars, desperately trying to find the downbeat. The band jokingly calls the time signature "6½", and all in all I counted 48 meter changes in a single song. Insane! And now we've recorded it, and Maksim played it absolutely perfectly. Proud of you, man! 🎸
Slipknot - My Plague | Bass Cover by Maksim Yakovlev | Groningen Guitar Lab
Maksim Yakovlev playing the bass part from “My Plague” by Slipknot 🔥
Slipknot is Maks’s favorite band — and even though this style is not exactly my cup of tea, at Groningen Guitar Lab we work on the music the student truly admires.
That’s one of the most important parts of teaching music: finding motivation through the music that genuinely excites the student.
Then we break the material down into smaller pieces and use it to develop time, groove, technique, articulation, ear training, and overall musicianship.
The final assignment for each tune is to make an audio & video recording of the song simultaneously. This way, we simulate a real studio session.
Each student has only 3 takes to record the song from beginning to end. If achieved — that’s a pass of this “mid-term exam” 👊