10.000 hours of practice is not the magic number

There is no magic number. Ever. And you should never keep track of your practice. "I gotta practice for an hour or else I'll suck"... no... practice when it feels right and good. Cease practicing when you've had enough. Drummers drum and placing merit upon time spent an be counterproductive.

Now it's OK to set up an hour a day to practice and fill it, but some days you'll do 20 minutes, others 45 and other days you'll exceed that hour.

As for me I practice constantly, even when I'm nowhere near a drumkit. It's all in one's head.
 
2 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 14 years is 10,220 hours.

I usually hear 10 years, rather than 10,000 hours given as the time it takes to master a physical skill.

Both numbers seem pretty arbitrary to me.
 
I think it is possible to practice too much. Too much stress on the body and tendonitis or some other illness starts.
 
I've practised tons more than 10,000 hours and I've seen videos of 10 year olds that kick my sorry drumming arse. It depends on the way you practice, and natural talent of course.
 
There is no magic number. Ever. And you should never keep track of your practice. "I gotta practice for an hour or else I'll suck"... no... practice when it feels right and good. Cease practicing when you've had enough. Drummers drum and placing merit upon time spent an be counterproductive.

Now it's OK to set up an hour a day to practice and fill it, but some days you'll do 20 minutes, others 45 and other days you'll exceed that hour.

As for me I practice constantly, even when I'm nowhere near a drumkit. It's all in one's head.

I don't really agree about that. I believe it's really important to track it down and count how much you practiced. Also, not sure for you but surely for me it's way more fun to practice songs than to work on my singles or doubles, but since I religiously started practicing my technique chops 1h everyday guess what: I progressed a lot, even though I think it's boring, but it's a necessary evil to get me where I want to.
 
Having 'mastered' a skill implies that it can't be done any better.

I'm not sure I agree with that concept at all.
 
I can't really imagine how they arrive at statements like this:

"In music, it (practicing) was a 21% difference"

I made a topic the other week about how I wasn't sure I'd improved from 3 years ago, until just recently. If I have this much trouble assessing my own improvement then I can't see how they can quantify performance skills like that.

Practice makes perfect but only if it's perfect practice.

This comment really hit home with me, and like everyone here is saying - mindless practice won't get you the results of thoughtful, analytical, systematic (etc etc) practice.

I think one thing we can say with certainty is that the more you practice the more likely you are to improve.
 
... mindless practice won't get you the results of thoughtful, analytical, systematic (etc etc) practice.

I think one thing we can say with certainty is that the more you practice the more likely you are to improve.

That's pretty well it.

All playing is good, and nothing beats playing daily. Still, if your grip and stroke are unstable then it can take an awful lot of practice to achieve something that a player with sound fundamentals can pick up much more quickly and easily. I'm speaking from experience.
 
I've practised tons more than 10,000 hours and I've seen videos of 10 year olds that kick my sorry drumming arse. It depends on the way you practice, and natural talent of course.

^ this.

I used to practice pretty intensely and often, but you wouldn't know it.

The amount spread out over time, consistency, injuries, physical attributes, mental understanding of what you're practicing, all play into it.
And Dre nailed it:
mindless practice won't get you the results of thoughtful, analytical, systematic (etc etc) practice
 
The fact is the "10,000 hours of practice" pc. from Harvard was a very general guideline, and the researcher(s), iirc, clearly stated that.
 
Its tosh, isn't it?

Too many factors to take into consideration. Like, natural ability, some were simply born to play the drums and were lucky enough to want to play in the first place. Motor skills, some have great hand eye coordination, good natural manual dexterity. A natural sense of rhythm, some don't.

Also, what do you count as practice? Playing endless rudiments, working on new songs, just playing? Are we going to have to produce a "Drumming Diary", when going to an audition, showing beyond doubt that we have done the required 10,000 hours of practice before we can even have a shot at playing with local Punk band.

As I say its tosh. Do you like the way a drummer plays or not, that's all that counts.

I suspect surveys, and random figures like these, are produced by music institutions to drum up (sic) more business.
 
All generalizations are false.

;-D

The "10,000 hour" or "10 year" mastery/expertise timescale is indeed arbitrary. Yes, there are other factors which significantly impact attaining mastery, many of which are mentioned in this thread. Even more detail can be found here.
Even so, to dismiss it as "tosh" is irresponsible. It's a marker along the road to mastery.

Also, chalk me up as another who has a very definite idea of what constitutes "practice". Just playing for fun is not practice. Ever. At all. Performance is not practice. Ever. At all.

Practice must have structure. It must have clearly-defined near-term and long-term goals. For example, sitting down to work double-bass speed through repetition of specific, planned exercises is practice which leads to mastery. Sitting down to learn Metallica's "One" is not.

Can you get better by jamming or playing along to recorded material? Sure. But - surely you saw that coming - you'll get better faster if you stop being random and start planning how you're going to improve.

Of course, my definition of practice is narrow, as it only encompasses the development of technical skill. It's internal. In order to develop as a musician you do need to get out of your basement and play with people. To be external. Part of mastery is learning how to put your technical expertise to practical use. As musicians that means playing with other people. Only then can you develop sensitivity and communication.
 
I can't really imagine how they arrive at statements like this:

"In music, it (practicing) was a 21% difference"

I made a topic the other week about how I wasn't sure I'd improved from 3 years ago, until just recently. If I have this much trouble assessing my own improvement then I can't see how they can quantify performance skills like that.

It's actually worse than that. Not only is there the question of how they quantified it, just look at the other numbers. In sports they claim a mere 18% difference. So are they saying that if I never trained (practiced) as a distance runner that my personal best half marathon would be just 18% slower? Without practice I wouldn't have been able to finish at all, let alone be anywhere near my time.

Or how about their stated 1% difference in "professions"? So a non-practicing lawyer or doctor is just as good as one who does practice?

Lord Kelvin once made a comment that if you can't attach a number to something then you have incomplete knowledge of it. The flip is also true, namely that just because you attached a number to something is no indication that the number is meaningful. It's easy to come up with bullsh!t statistics, advertisers and lobbyists do it all the time.

And I must admit that I never took the 10000 hours thing literally. I always took it to mean "it takes a very long time of focused attention".
 
Wow, this post makes me think that many of you have taken the fun right out of this whole thing. To sit and plan out practice routines, then schedule that time in your day, then keep a running diary of the things you worked on. That sounds an aweful lot like work to me. Now obviously some of you are professional drummers and drumming IS work, so that kind of attention is necessary to keep a roof over your head. But for a weekend warrior like myself to put that kind of thought into something I do for fun seems like adding a second job.
 
Wow, this post makes me think that many of you have taken the fun right out of this whole thing. To sit and plan out practice routines, then schedule that time in your day, then keep a running diary of the things you worked on. That sounds an aweful lot like work to me. Now obviously some of you are professional drummers and drumming IS work, so that kind of attention is necessary to keep a roof over your head. But for a weekend warrior like myself to put that kind of thought into something I do for fun seems like adding a second job.

For me it is definitely a second job to me regarding technique, but no pain no gain...
 
For me it is definitely a second job to me regarding technique, but no pain no gain...

Me too. Personally, I like planning out my routines and tracking my progress. Gives me a tangible sense of improvement which can be difficult to quantify.

There are so many components to playing drumming (reading/writing charts, foot control, hand speed, dynamics, etc.) that just sitting down on the drums without any preconceived notions as to what I wanted to do seems to me like I would miss out on a lot. Kind of like going to the gym or the grocery store withouit a plan as to what I needed to do.
 
One of the worst things you can do is practice when you are extremely to mildly tired. You will unconsciously change your pattern or stroke, in drumming, and reinforce bad behaviour. Make your practice routine a quality one and not a quantity one.
 
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Wow, this post makes me think that many of you have taken the fun right out of this whole thing. To sit and plan out practice routines, then schedule that time in your day, then keep a running diary of the things you worked on. That sounds an aweful lot like work to me. Now obviously some of you are professional drummers and drumming IS work, so that kind of attention is necessary to keep a roof over your head. But for a weekend warrior like myself to put that kind of thought into something I do for fun seems like adding a second job.

I don't keep a diary but I work on different things and I have researched or figured out my own practice methods in order to explore each area that I want to work on... so what?

Any worthwhile drummer does this, or did this.

The guys that learn songs note for note so they can post youtube videos, and then go through all the production of making the video - that would be a bit exhausting for me.
 
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