Practicing musically, approaching the task like a musician and not an athlete, working on music, not performance statistics. I’m struggling to write an introduction, so here are some things to think about, scattergun style: Dynamics, […]
Category: practice
Various internet drumming misconceptions complained about
What I want to do to the internet sometimes. I wrote this as I was finishing the 2017 Book of the Blog. Getting a book ready for publication means having a lot of frustration to […]
Getting your practice pad time in
Just copy every detail of this photograph and you’ll be fine— KIDDING!!! I see this question on line pretty often: “How do I get my snare drum chops together? Which system do I use?” I have a […]
The useful from the useless
Here’s something I’ve been meaning to get to. This question— edited slightly— came up on the Drummerworld discussion forum today: I keep finding tons of new material on line, YouTube in particular, and am constantly […]
On playalongs, pt. 2: play exercises
Stuff like this. Anything. Why not? Back from tour and easing back into blogging, here, with part 2 in this thoughts on practicing along with recordings series. Today we’ll discuss the value of not just […]
On playalongs, pt.1: use real music
That’s the idea. I was working on a single post about practicing along with recorded music— something I’ve been doing a lot of lately— but it was running long on me, and taking forever to […]
Additional tom moves
If like me you’ve been working the hell out of the pages o’ coordination (me, I’ve been hitting the Afro 6/8, the 6/8 Rumba clave, and the page of Mozambique) you may be getting a […]
More technique
This is one of the more memorable quotes from the pianist Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery— I think a lot of people noticed it, and fully embraced it: Once after playing a concert an interviewer […]
Self-improvement through neurosis
Normally I don’t bother editorializing about cartoons, but this thing has gotten so ubiquitous on the music ed-related Internet, I thought I’d say something about it. Let’s get this out of the way up front: […]
VOQOTD: note to himself
Play at least ten minutes a day on the drum set. — Paul Motian
VOQOTD: Dave on practicing
If you come to my house and walk into the room where I’m practicing, you’re going to hear me sound like I can’t play. That’s because I’m working on stuff that I can’t do so […]
Metronome perspectives
There’s an excellent piece on the Modern Drummer site getting views on metronome use from a number of top drummers and educators. I’ve excerpted some of the best bits, but go read the whole thing. […]