That’s it, CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER! is now an all what-I’m-teaching-in-lessons web site. I’m preoccupied with other stuff right now, travel plans and whatnot. I started doing this around 2013, and quite a bit lately— changing […]
Category: practicing
Too perfect
Perfect and boring For a long time I thought robotic perfection was basically impossible to achieve for people not practicing massive hours… so you may as well just try your best to achieve it. Lately, […]
Max wants you to turn off YouTube
“We used to listen to records and take off the record what the person was doing. You didn’t see the person. You’d just hear it. We’d figure out what was happening with our ears. Then […]
Delayed continuity
I’ve been looking some piano literature lately, reading an old book called Practising the Piano (British spelling) by Frank Merrick. You can get it on Scribd without having to pay anyone but Scribd. Another site […]
Very occasional quote of the day: practicing vs. playing
Most important thing on this site: DL: How important is it to play, and how important is it to practice on your own? SM: It’s more important to play. I’ve always felt that playing is […]
Tempo and practicing
Yes, it is. This always hung me up— the seemingly infinite tempo possibilities for any one thing you practice. It was a constantly lurking thing that I’m not doing this fast enough, and you would […]
What are we doing
Been having a minor existential crisis in the last week or so— I played my first session in over a year last week, was feeling really unpracticed and generally out of touch with music… and […]
What I’m practicing
I’m at the point where I’ve published so much stuff on the site, I’m a little embarrassed. I don’t want people thinking I’m just fascinated with writing patterns. I do practice this stuff, and otherwise […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Mickey Roker on practicing
More from Mickey Roker’s Modern Drummer interview by Jeff Potter, October, 1985, on the subject of practicing the drums: It has always been hard for me to practice, because I get bored if I don’t […]
Harmonic coordination practice notes
Hard on purpose. A few notes on practicing my recent harmonic coordination improved thing. I can write a lot of verbiage about this system because it’s very abstract and time consuming, and I want to […]
Practice tips for drummers with limited time
Get it, use it. Here are some suggestions for people learning to play the drums, but who have limited time to do it… 1-2 hours a day to practice. That’s most people, actually. As you’ll […]
The leap to playing
I feel like this A big problem for many students is how to get from practicing exercises in a book to real playing. It’s actually an issue for everyone, but in this post we’re just […]