Thoughts on Practice

I thought talking a little bit about practice would be an appropriate place to start these blogs.

Why do we practice? What do we practice? When do we practice? How do we practice?

4 questions that immediately came into my head when thinking of general questions based around the subject. I’ll try my best to answer and give some of my thoughts for each.

Why?

I suppose this one is pretty self-explanatory. We practice to get better. Right? It doesn’t matter if you’re a hobbyist player that plays pub gigs at the weekend or a professional touring musician.

Although on the surface there is likely to be a difference in what these two hypothetic examples are practicing, for me, the end goal boils down to two main things: to be more comfortable and sound better.

Getting more comfortable could contain things like, getting faster, playing more complicated styles, different phrasing, etc. You are practicing to make any drum kit concept feel easier.

Sounding better concerns how your playing sounds to you, but also the listener. Playing in time with yourself, consistent tempos, dynamic awareness, better musical application of concepts, more interesting phrasing, etc. There is a lot of overlap here as becoming more comfortable can often lead to you sounding better - subjectively of course.

I was always taught to learn things faster than you need to play them. This is now something I see as a necessity, as I never want to feel stretched or at my limit physically or mentally when performing. Renowned progressive drummer Gavin Harrison often talks about this in interviews, comparing it to “freeing up CPU” in order to be able to think about important performance based things, oppose to using your full concentration to play the material.

As a beginner player, if you stick by a consistent and well-crafted practice routine, your improvement will be very noticeable in the first few years of your playing. If you continue a similar effective practice routine years into your playing and practicing, the improvements may be more nuanced, but you are also helping to maintain your ability.

On a personal note, my practice over the last year or so has largely been focussed on pushing my ability to be more comfortable with improvisational language in different musical situations. This is perhaps getting into the what, but when I think why am I practicing, the answer is often to help me become more comfortable and sound better in these areas.

 What?

This answer is much more personal.

As a beginner drummer, what you practice should be relatively similar across the board - basic concepts and fundamental technique. It’s really after this where the answer can differ majorly.

In a lot of ways it’s very simple – you practice what you want to get better at. For me, at age 15, I wanted to get better at playing Dream Theater songs, so I spent most of my practice time doing that. Although I never really thought about it in any methodical way, it was goal orientated. I wanted to learn a song, so I listened and played along to it over and over again.

At the same time, I also wasted a lot of valuable practice time by just playing songs that I’d already learnt. I didn’t really have any proper routine and often neglected areas that I felt needed improvement.

Sometimes it’s just about learning something you can’t do – renowned jazz drummer and educator John Riley talks about not using a very high percentage of material that he practices, but still sees it as beneficial. I often find that interesting things happen when you practice anything that you can’t do when you first sit down at the kit, and then move to focus on more familiar concepts and material, or just to have a play. The ideas will be fresh and sometimes creep into your playing. It also works well as a warm up, depending on the material.

When?

This again, will have a personal answer.

I think the simple answer is as often as possible. The other answer is as much as works for you.

As a professional musician and instructor, I try to dedicate a few days of the week as longer practice days. If I’m teaching or rehearsing through the day, I’ll usually spend an hour or so in the evening, but not beat myself up if I’m too tired to do it. If schedules change (as they do pretty much every week as a freelance musician), some weeks I might not manage to practice at all. So if I’m out playing and not able to practice, that’s fine – after all, that’s really what all the practice was for.

Sometimes it’s even beneficial to take a break every once in a while. Although physically I’d feel the negative consequences of not practicing for a longer period, I may feel quite fresh and inspired mentally.

How?

In my opinion, once more, this is quite personal.

I’m not educated or qualified to know for sure, but I think a lot of it comes down to your personality type. For instance, if you are generally an organised person, it may benefit you to have an extremely regimented practice routine. As a more laid-back individual, something much looser might work out better.

Renowned drum educator Mike Johnson promotes a method in which you divide your time between individual areas (technical, creative, etc) for a certain specified time. I think this is a great way to get as much as possible out of your practice.

However, I prefer a more relaxed method, where I will often only focus on one concept for my entire routine. I found that dividing my time distracted me rather than benefitting my practice. I was far too concerned about knowing how long I’d been working on a certain area to immerse myself enough in the material.

The amount of time you spend practicing is really up to you and how much time you have to spare. Dedicated players will make time, in the same way that you’d make time to exercise. If you are in a state of flow (more on this in a future blog perhaps) and practicing effectively, you will usually feel that time passes quickly.

I hope this helps you start to think about your practice routine!

Scott

Midlothian Drum Lessons