How To Get Feedback At Dojo U

Many of us shy away from recording our playing. But regularly recording yourself and getting feedback on areas to improve is a must if you're serious about mastering anything!

Here at Dojo University, we believe that feedback on your playing is a key part of improving as a musician. And one of the key benefits of being a Dojo U member is having access to so many world-class instructors at your fingertips, from anywhere in the world. 

Here are some of the ways you can get detailed, personalized feedback from our expert piping and drumming instructors.

Upload recordings to the Community

Our Community forums are a great place to chat with our instructors and other members about anything and everything to do with piping and drumming. 

But they're also the perfect place to upload your recordings for feedback. 

Here's how to do it: 

1. Record a video of yourself and upload it somewhere accessible – check out our up-to-date recommendations for the latest advice on how to get a great sound and quality of recording, and where to load it.
2. Once you have a link to your file, post it in the "Recordings for Feedback" forum in our Community (membership required to access).
3. You can also navigate to this by logging into the Dojo U homepage, clicking on 'My Dashboard' in the top menu, clicking on 'Live Classes and Community', and then posting in the relevant forum from there. 
4. Once you've posted your video, within a day or two (weekends and holidays pending) an instructor or several will usually provide you with feedback on areas to focus on for improvement. Sometimes we'll also give feedback on these in live classes...

Get feedback in online classes

Our online classes are another great way to get tailored, instant feedback on your playing. You can either upload your recording to Communities as outlined in the section above, or attend a class live to play on chanter or your bagpipes for the instructor. 

Classes usually have a topic or plan for the day - check the class schedule for descriptions on what will be covered in each class. Usually open sessions or recording reviews are a great chance to receive critiques, or you can contact the instructor ahead of time to make sure the class you attend is one where they can plan feedback as an activity for that day. 

To play live, you'll need to use some specific settings that allow our instructors to hear your chanter or bagpipes. Zoom has instructions on how to do this, or one of our friendly tutors can talk you through it live in a class. 

Submit recordings related to specific courses

Many of our 50+ self-paced courses on the Dojo have exercises, assignments, or quizzes where you'll have the opportunity to submit recordings for our world-class tutoring team to critique. 

Whether you do this in the course or via our Community forums differs depending on the course - each course provides specific instructions on when and how to do this for that course. 

Participate in our Bagpipe Freedom or Drumming Freedom program

Our Bagpipe and Drumming Freedom programs are part of how we operate here at the Dojo. 

To be able to express themselves with true creative freedom as a musician, we teach that every piper or drummer needs to pass through five "freedom phases" - these are methodical, structured steps that build musicianship from its rhythmic foundations all the way up to fully embellished tunes played at tempo on a well-maintained instrument with incredible tone and skill. 

To achieve this, our students work on new repertoire each week as a way to expose themselves to new note and rhythm progressions, and improve sight reading. If you want to participate, many of our weekly classes focus on the "tune of the week", and you can choose to submit recordings of your progress with the weekly tune for critique in classes, or in Communities, or for grading in order to "pass" to the next Freedom Phase, and work on the next skill in order. 

Still got questions?

We run daily orientation sessions where our friendly tutors would be happy to personally show you around the site, and walk you through step by step how everything works here at Dojo U, including where you can submit recordings for feedback. 

And if you ever have any technical queries or need help finding where and how to get started, you can always email our helpful support team at any time: [email protected]. 

We're based in several timezones around the world and will aim to get back to you with a helpful response within 24 hours (or slightly longer over weekends and holidays).