Amanda Muse is the Marching Percussion 18+ Winner of the 2018 Hit Like A Girl Contest. Backing track: "Odyssey" by No Wyld, an alternative hip hop band from New Zealand.

Now here's a feel-good, happy-go-lucky song. Always raises one's spirits. Eighty years old now, very popular with Russians of all ages ever since. Little kids love it, adults love it, grandparents love it. Dunaevsky senior at his best, to lyrics by the great Lebedev-Kumach. Transposed and arranged for two violins. Beautiful practice piece for beginners, a great mix of everything you need: a scale, an arpeggio, some repeated notes, and a cheeky run to round it all up and go out with a bang. Really fun to learn and play. The entire song can be practiced in strict time at M.M. 80, but usually the couplet is performed rather slowly, with a lot of rubato, and the refrain is much faster. I am including an exquisite performance by Muslim Magomaev that takes it to the extreme, but you don't need to go quite that far.

Here's a cut of James Gadson's firm drum break with Bill Withers. This passage was notated in the Soundslice editor, which just got some big improvements for drum entry. Read all about it: https://www.soundslice.com/blog/93/big-improvements-for-drum-notation/