The Art of Practice

Practicing truly is an art form, and if your practice sessions are efficient and productive then your skill as a drummer will increase 1000% faster then someone who is sloppy and not focused.

There are a few guidelines you can follow to make your practice sessions really productive:

1. Focus
The most important thing you can do is learn to focus and really be "in the moment" anytime you are practicing. This is much harder to do then it sounds. We, as humans, are constantly letting thoughts creep into our head that don't pertain to the task at hand. You need to fight that as hard as you can and really concentrate on every movement of your body, every sound you are producing, exactly where the metronome is, how everything feels. Your mind should not be thinking about your girl friend, or what your gonna eat for dinner, or how much fun that party was last weekend.

The moment your mind starts to wander is the most critical point in remaining focused. If you don't stop it right when it starts then soon enough you don't even realize its happened and you might spend 5, 10, or 20 minutes practicing with a wandering mind and not being productive. If you feel your mind starting to wander then stop right then and take a short break, maybe take a couple deep breaths, stretch alittle bit, take a few sips of coffee/water (whatever drink you prefer, i always keep a full glass of something right next to me), then start up again re-focused.

2. Relax
This is one thing your mind should be focusing on. Maintaining very relax muscles and strokes, and also a relaxed disposition. All the best drummers make it look so easy because that are relaxed and in control. The more you focus the more you can relax and the more you relax the more you can focus, this is a great cycle to get yourself in.

3. Schedule
Your practice sessions are going to the most productive if you can go through a variety of material in short segments everyday. 20 Focused minutes of practice 5 days a week is going to be better then 4 hours of practice twice a week. It takes repetition AND time for your body to absorb what you are learning. If you only use repetition (4 hours twice a week just pounding out the same stuff) then you are not taking into consideration that your brain needs time to make new connections/synapses and that repetition alone is not gonna cut it. So if you have 1 hour to practice every day then spend alittle time warming up, another short chunk of time doing some technique exercises like rudiments, then move on to playing some grooves in time, then another short chunk playing fills, finally warm down by playing along to one of your favorite songs.

If you can follow those three guidelines I guarantee that you will see drastic improvements in your playing over the course of a few weeks and you will continue to progress for the rest of your life.

Single Paradiddle

Our first Rudiment! Rudiments are short patterns made up of different stickings (combinations of rights and lefts) that help a drummer gain control and vocabulary.

Sometimes 8th Notes are beamed in groups of 4 (as shown below) instead of 2. In this case they are grouped in 4 to illustrate that a paradiddle can be thought of in 2 groups. R L R R and L R L L

4 Bars of Single Paradiddles.


Metronome at 3 different tempos: 72, 112, 160


Here are all the rudiments on the Percussive Arts Societies web page:
Rudiments

We will be going through them all so there is a link under "Resources" on the right hand side of this page that will take you to the PAS rudiment page.

8th Notes

Now that we have quarter notes down we are going to start looking at the next Subdivision. A Subdivision is just a word to describe what happens when you break a beat into smaller pieces. Each Quarter Note is 1 beat long, so if you break that Quarter Note into 2 pieces you end up with 2 8th notes. In other words the 8th notes are a subdivision of the Quarter Note.

8th Notes are counted several different ways, but we'll be using the Eastman Counting System, in which 8th Notes are counted as "Te" (pronounced as Tay). The Eastman Counting System is NOT the most popular way for counting. The most popular way to count 8th Notes is to count them as one of the following: and, an, + . These are all the same thing, they represent the word "and". Even though this way is more popular (because its older and more widespread) I think the Eastman Counting System is the most useful way to count rhythms, so that's what we'll use.

My teacher tells me to count 8th Notes as "and", should I switch to the Eastman Counting System?
Maybe, ask your teacher if he is familiar with the Eastman Counting System and if you can start using it in your lessons. If your teacher insists that you use the "and" system then stick with that, anytime you view a lesson on Drum Kicks then just substitute "Te" with "and"

This picture explains how 8th Notes are counted using the Eastman Counting System.


Now lets look at an Exercise for playing 8th notes and Quarter Notes together. Since this is an exercise, not a piece of music, you want to repeat every line multiple times. You could do them 20 times each or 10 if you don't have that much patience, its up to you. Once you feel comfortable with them all individually, then you can play straight through all of them with no repeats.



In this video I play through the whole sheet with no repeats. Eventually when you feel comfortable with each line by itself you should do the same thing.
Metronome = 100

Adding the Bass Drum

So far we've been using music with only snare drum parts. Today we are going to add in the bass drum. To be able to add the bass drum we need to know how to read where the different drums are on the staff. Look at the legend to see where the bass drum sits on the staff.


Now lets read a piece of music that puts the bass drum and the snare drum together.


Play Along

Repeat Signs

A Repeat Sign tells the musician to repeat (play again) a certain section of music. This is handy for anyone writing music because it allows them to abbreviate by simply telling the performer to repeat what they just played, as opposed to writing it out a second time. It is also useful to the musician because since they just played the music before the repeat, they are familiar with it, making it easier to play again, and then move on.

This is what a repeat sign looks like.


Now lets talk about how they work. If you only see 1 repeat sign (with the dots to the left) then we repeat to the very beginning. If you see 2 repeat signs (dots to the left and right) play to the second repeat sign, then go back to the first repeat sign and play that section again.

This music only has 1 repeat sign so when you get to the repeat you go back to the beginning.


This music has a "closed" repeat section. You play the first and second line all the way through, when you get to the end of the second line, repeat back to the beginning of the second line.


If I repeat a section I'll eventually come back to the same repeat sign, do I repeat again?
No, you only play a repeat sign once (unless otherwise indicated, we'll talk about that in a later lesson).

Now let's put it all together into 1 piece of music. We will be using everything we've learned so far, quarter notes, rests, repeats, and counting in 4 bar phrases.


Print and Play Along. The video tempo is 100 but set your metronome slower if you need to, or faster if you can.

Developing Proper Grip and Stroke

So far we've talked about some of the basics of reading music. We've also played some exercises with quarter notes and quarter note rests. Now that you have some of the basics down you need to start developing a good drum stroke. The MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN EVER LEARN ABOUT DRUMMING IS TO RELAX I can't emphasize that enough. Relaxing all your muscles in your whole body is the first thing you should do before playing, and you should constantly be checking to make sure they are staying relaxed. Any bit of tension will not only make you a worse drummer but will also lead to injury.

This video describes and demonstrates the first step in developing a relaxed drum stroke.

Quarter Note Rests

A Rest, in music, represents the parts that are NOT played. In other words, a Rest indicates silence. There are different types of rests, just like there are different types of notes. Right now we will only be looking at a Quarter Rest. Here is what it looks like.



Now we are going to play a piece of music with Quarter Rests. Remember to Count the rest but DO NOT play it. Also remember we are going to be counting the 4 Bar Phrases from now on.



As Always Print the music and play along