12/13/2023 0 Comments Dont sleep with your drummerJust having the ability to physically play something is not enough. This will promote both learning and memory, and help bridge the gap between practice and performance. Learning becomes unlimited through what’s known as elaboration, which is adding your own elements and ideas to what you’re practicing - in other words, making it your own. When it comes to both listening and playing, it helps greatly to draw from many different sources. Music and drumming are becoming more homogenized, with styles overlapping and new hybrids springing up all the time. When you do this, you may feel like you’ve attained some mastery, but it is short-lived.Īlso, mix it up by practicing many different styles of drumming and music in order to expand your own unique musical voice. In contrast, a more typical but less effective form of practice is called massed or block practice, where you spend hours working on one specific thing. This learning process is known as interleaving. Then, the following day or two, return to practice the original idea, relying on your memory. Mix It UpĪfter practicing something for twenty to thirty minutes, move on to something completely different. Many have built-in recording capability and the ability to connect a laptop, tablet or smartphone, making it easy to record, edit, store, share and evaluate your progress. One of the most effective tools for obtaining instant feedback is an electronic drum kit (I recommend Yamaha DTX6 Series electronic drums). Here’s a good habit: Try and record yourself every time you practice, even if it’s just for a couple minutes playing on a pad, to evaluate what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Beginning students should share those practice recordings with their teacher, who can identify issues to work on advanced players can do this on their own. So, in addition to listening to many different recordings of music and drummers, you should also listen frequently to recordings of yourself in order to track your progress and recognize any weaknesses in your playing. However you obtain it, feedback is critical to your development and to the avoidance of acquiring bad habits. In other words, don’t just practice free-form: play along to recordings, loops, etc., and in a wide range of tempos, volumes and styles. Practice the Way You’ll PlayĪs much as possible, practice the way you’ll play, which is in context with music. For example, if you want to improve your jazz or Afro-Cuban drumming, identify or have your teacher recommend specific things to work on and listen to that are consistent with that goal. If your ultimate goal is to make music with other musicians, then always keep that as your target when you select things to practice and study. The learning zone is where improvement is made. We’re in the learning zone when we work on things that challenge and stretch us we’re in our comfort zone when we’re playing things we can already do fairly well. Spend 75% of your practice time in the learning zone and 25% in the comfort zone. How to practice is just as important as what to practice. My years of research in neuroscience have led to designing some more effective ways to practice and learn to play drums.īased on these findings, here are the top 10 recommendations I make to my students: 1. Some are based on custom, intuition, hearsay, trial and error, or tradition … but not all are based on facts. However, certain aspects of what (and how) we should practice have been handed down for decades. It requires time, a plan, commitment, desire, consistency, perseverance and patience. There are no shortcuts to becoming an excellent drummer.
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