VedranS
03-30-2008, 07:05 AM
Hello everybody, I just registered recently and thought I might start by posting a thread with a couple of questions. My name's Vedran, I've been playing for about four years now, I most recently hail from Des Moines, Iowa, am mostly self-taught (by which I mean taught by Drummerworld), except for about three or four lessons I took a couple of years ago with a guy named Don Mumford (anyone heard of him? He died recently but was a great jazz musician, recorded some cool stuff back in the day, black short skinny dude, would've been about 55-ish now). He taught me the rhythm scale/note values, 1-2-3-4 hi-hat heel-toe-heel-toe, and turned me on to stick control before he passed.
Anyway, my first question relates to patience when it comes to practicing. Basically I love playing and find it hard to practice correctly to get the most beneficial results. A lot of the time I'll be doing something like slowly practicing free strokes around the drumset or doing Stick Control and trying to make everything evenly spaced and relaxed, you know, stuff to try to improve :) But after about 10 minutes of doing well most of the time, I'll REALLY want to play/jam some "music" and while it may start while still being productive (ie, relaxed) eventually I'll want to do something, like start making it complex (always compositionally and not for chops, hopefully) or do a 16th note triplet fill or something and my technique starts to suffer somewhat, I'll go beyond where I can be relaxed at every stroke and instead try to get the notes out and such. Does anyone have any tips on how to practice PATIENCE to make the most of my practice? I wouldn't say I quite get to bashing at any point, but if I ever really get into it, dynamics/relaxation tend to suffer :) Now, when I'm jamming with friends this type of "overplaying" is never an issue, I'm always way too concerned with playing well for them to do that ( I could happily play Immigrant Song for days with a couple guys)
The second thing on my mind is more of an interesting conceptual thing I noticed recently. Basically I was furious at this girl that I've been head over heels for for a long time 'cause I'm a sucker, 'cause she got wasted and made out with some guy or whatever and told me it happened (which was cool of her I suppose...)..... Anyway, I left to listen to some music that I love to cool off, with my head racing with all sorts of terrible jelous, paranoid stuff. When I tuned in to the music I noticed that my perception of time was really fine-grained for the moment, the spaces between the notes were huge and everything was crystal clear, I was able to actually hear the makeup of really dense figures and note groupings, it was downright psychedelic. Hope that doesn't sound weird or made-up, swear it was just like that. So, has anyone had any weird experiences or stories of having noticed a change in their musical perception, either temporary or permanent, immediately, or over time, and what were the (SOBER) circumstances??
Hope this wasn't too long-winded, glad to finally be on board (ha), figured this was worth posting, thanks for all the free knowledge everyone!
Anyway, my first question relates to patience when it comes to practicing. Basically I love playing and find it hard to practice correctly to get the most beneficial results. A lot of the time I'll be doing something like slowly practicing free strokes around the drumset or doing Stick Control and trying to make everything evenly spaced and relaxed, you know, stuff to try to improve :) But after about 10 minutes of doing well most of the time, I'll REALLY want to play/jam some "music" and while it may start while still being productive (ie, relaxed) eventually I'll want to do something, like start making it complex (always compositionally and not for chops, hopefully) or do a 16th note triplet fill or something and my technique starts to suffer somewhat, I'll go beyond where I can be relaxed at every stroke and instead try to get the notes out and such. Does anyone have any tips on how to practice PATIENCE to make the most of my practice? I wouldn't say I quite get to bashing at any point, but if I ever really get into it, dynamics/relaxation tend to suffer :) Now, when I'm jamming with friends this type of "overplaying" is never an issue, I'm always way too concerned with playing well for them to do that ( I could happily play Immigrant Song for days with a couple guys)
The second thing on my mind is more of an interesting conceptual thing I noticed recently. Basically I was furious at this girl that I've been head over heels for for a long time 'cause I'm a sucker, 'cause she got wasted and made out with some guy or whatever and told me it happened (which was cool of her I suppose...)..... Anyway, I left to listen to some music that I love to cool off, with my head racing with all sorts of terrible jelous, paranoid stuff. When I tuned in to the music I noticed that my perception of time was really fine-grained for the moment, the spaces between the notes were huge and everything was crystal clear, I was able to actually hear the makeup of really dense figures and note groupings, it was downright psychedelic. Hope that doesn't sound weird or made-up, swear it was just like that. So, has anyone had any weird experiences or stories of having noticed a change in their musical perception, either temporary or permanent, immediately, or over time, and what were the (SOBER) circumstances??
Hope this wasn't too long-winded, glad to finally be on board (ha), figured this was worth posting, thanks for all the free knowledge everyone!