November 30th, 2021

Hope is not a strategy. This is a blog celebrating action in the drum room. The effective action that follows our careful deliberation and reflection. We are grownups. The time of fooling ourselves is over because time is up. 
 
Here is an interesting start to our explorations: Time management 
 
Premise: Practice time is precious and limited. It's limited by the limitations of our bodies and demands on our time from life. Therefore, wasting it with non-deliberate practice is counterproductive to our goal: playing as well as we can with time limitations. 
 
Step one: Taking stock. "How do we spend our time when we are in the practice room? Do we carefully plan out the time, or do we jump Willy Nilly from one activity to another? It has been claimed that 90% music students play a piece through once, not even stopping to correct mistakes. 
 ( http://www.escom.org/proceedings/ICMPC2000/Sun/McPherso.htm ) 
 
Tactic: At your next practice simply record yourself on your phone. Just put the recorder in the corner and forget about it. Later in the day listen back. Ask yourself this: 
 
1. How did you spend your time? Fooling around, tuning, moving gear around, Facebooking, texting? You get the idea. Check out Benny Grebs funny stories about his practice journey. 475 - Benny Greb: Better Practice, Better Results (re-release) - Drummer's Resource: Conversations with the world's greatest drummers and music industry pros. (drummersresource.com) Start at 8 minutes 48 seconds. Worth your time. 
2. How focused were you? 
3. How do you sound? 
4. What did you accomplish? 
5. How did you work on problems? 
 
If I can help you, call me.  
David 

The video below features Greg Hutchinson. I was lucky to study for a week with him in Rome Italy a few years ago. That was memorable.

​Which famous drummers would you like to study with?