Five things I wish I knew when I started learning drums
One of the things you will inevitably encounter as a drummer are thoughts about how you would have done things differently if you were to start again. As a teacher, one of the biggest parts of the job seems to be giving my students the chance to skip over the mistakes and missteps I made as I was on my drumming journey (possibly because I ignored some things my drum teacher said).
While there may be a lot of them, I’m going to give you five of the biggest things that I wish I did sooner than later in my drumming journey, in the hopes that you can become a better drummer quickly and turn the next fives years of playing into two.
Spend more time on less things.
If you’ve learned with me, you’ve heard me use this mantra over and over again. And with good cause, it’s such a simple phrase to remember to help guide how you practice. I can think of so many times over the years where I would jump from thing to thing, a metal thing one week, a latin exercise the next. Improving on the drums, or any instrument for that matter, is a game of repetition. Information is going to be baked in a lot better if you spend more time with it and deal with subject matter that is only slightly tangential to the thing you’re working on. So, if your current practice routine has 8 different things in it, cut it down to 4 and spend twice as much time on it.
Less emphasis on speed.
My background is predominantly in metal, so I’ve gone through patches where I’ve gone well out of my way to dedicate large portions of my practice routine to building speed. What I’ve learned, is it’s not so much the volume of speed work you do within a given session, but how you apply yourself over a long enough time period.
The portion of your practice that you dedicate to speed might change depending on the genre you’re focusing on (for example, if you’re looking to be a metal guy, then you’re probably going to be doing more than most people), but regardless, it’s turning up every day that gets the job done.
Keeping this in mind will help keep you from getting too fixated on occupying your time with endless speed exercises, so that you can put time into other things. If you’re not sure where to start, if you practice for an hour, I would only commit five to ten minutes in that session where you’re trying to push your speed.
Record yourself more.
This list is in no particular order, but if I had to rank them, this goes at the top, no question about it. This is the thing where, when I think about it, I can only imagine how much further along my playing would be if I’d only started recording myself regularly during practice sessions as soon as possible.
It cannot be overstated what this does to your playing. You don’t need a fancy set up with microphones on every drum and an interface etc, you can just use the voice memo app in your phone. Whatever you can get your hands on, even a cheap second hand recorder will be the best money you will ever spend on your drumming journey.
The first time recording yourself is always a harsh experience, but once you get past that initial phase, it starts to feel more like you’re listening to another player and making your own critiques. You’ll hear things that you are less likely to hear while you’re in the middle of playing and what’s more is, as your ear continues to develop, you’ll start to hear these details while you’re practicing, so you’ll be able to make those adjustments on the fly rather than having to listen back to recordings.
If you ever wanted to know why professionals sound the way they do, it’s because they record themselves. Just start by carving out some time from your practice session to record yourself for five minutes, then listen back for five minutes.
Your progression will absolutely improve exponentially!
Have a healthy mix of creative, technical and repertoire practice.
This can be tricky. It’s a balance that can change depending on your goals and your current situation. Let’s quickly unpack what these mean.
Creative. Any time spent on the kit where you’re creating and experimenting with your own ideas. These could be just ideas you’re coming up with on the spot, or expanding on existing material.
Technical is where you’re working on exercises to expand on your facility in given areas, for example, speed exercises, coordination exercises, technical hand exercises, and so on. Things that might not have a direct musical application, it’s more like going to the gym than doing art.
Repertoire is where you’re learning other people’s material. In short, songs. This is where you spend time learning how other musicians play, navigating compositions and taking on inspiration.
Sometimes we spend so much time just playing around with tunes, that we start to stagnate because we haven’t been trying to push our facility in new directions so we can execute new ideas, or perhaps we’re so caught up in trying to get our hands to play quickly, that we start to lose sight of what it is to be a musician on the drumset. Or maybe we spend so little time being creative, we lack any real identity on the kit.
Sometimes our sessions need an even balance of all three. Sometimes we have to skew to one direction when we notice a particular weakness. There’s no perfect answer, but it’s an important thing to pay attention to.
Play another instrument.
I think this one is vital for many reasons. The key point is that when you learn another instrument, it helps contextualize your role in an ensemble. Drummers can, at times, develop a form of main character syndrome. Sometimes this is because of ego, but I think a lot of the time it’s an underdeveloped ear.
Picking up a bass, guitar or anything will help you hear the drums through the ears of other musicians and it will change how you listen to music as a whole and, most importantly, how you hear yourself. Drummers can get into the mindset of being “a drummer” when in reality, we’re playing music, we can participate in the whole artform without having to hang our hat on our identity as a drummer, and instead become musicians.
This may involve sacrificing time on the drums and if you don’t like that thought, then ask yourself, do you want to be a better drummer, or a better musician?
After I put this list together, I noticed that there was somewhat of a thread through all of them, which was a general idea of quality over quantity. We’re in a time where what’s fed to us through the internet is just a feed of endless content, sheer quantity. We know that information is best absorbed thoughtfully and with a great deal of diligence, where we take our time and focus.
Let’s make our practice sessions more thoughtful, and less like an Instagram feed.
