10 months into my comeback, and...

Suburbankidz said:
Hang in there there Jimmy! You'll get there man!

I'm trying to get Led Zeppelin 's Immigrant Song kick pattern sustained at speed...and discovered I needed to walk three to six miles a day...and hike up mountains and so on. I'm getting there đŸ˜† I'm very determined
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After I quit it was lost, when it was so easy before quitting 15 years ago. I literally quit counting at 20 hours, but that's how long it took to get it mostly zoned in again. 20+ hours for someone who had it nailed.
 
JimmyM said:
...I really dislike how incremental my progress has become.
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There are those plateaus where things can feel stagnant, sometimes for what seems a long while. But, diligence is investment. As with most things, fortune comes when you stop looking for it, and just focus on the work. So enjoy the journey and acheivments up to now, and eventually you'll score new ones, sometimes out of the blue.

Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX said:
I look at plateau periods as time to have fun and revel in what I have achieved.
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C. Dave Run said:
I get that. My point is thought, you would still have to figure out how to use that instant knowledge. So I dont think one would play anything differently at first.

Like if all of a sudden I had every tool known to man at my disposal, I'd probably still only build bird houses and furniture at first because that's what I know. Musical instruments would come later after some learning.
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You know, this post really resonates a day later. Even if I develop the tools needed to play that song, I would still need to build the bird hou…er…arrangement. That’s a song that requires choreography.

It seems everything about drum parts is choreography, except you teach all the dancers something completely different and force them to share a brain. A weird experience, but that’s par for the course with drums. Nothing is normal about drums. Everything is weird.
 
JimmyM said:
It seems everything about drum parts is choreography, except you teach all the dancers something completely different and force them to share a brain.
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I'd argue, that it's the same with other instruments. Just that the fingers are the dancers.
Piano is like a Can Can where one dancer is always in the wrong spot.
And trying chord-melody on guitar feels like this:
Hang in there! Maybe try something completely unknown to freshen up drumming a bit.
 
JimmyM said:
You know, this post really resonates a day later. Even if I develop the tools needed to play that song, I would still need to build the bird hou…er…arrangement. That’s a song that requires choreography.

It seems everything about drum parts is choreography, except you teach all the dancers something completely different and force them to share a brain. A weird experience, but that’s par for the course with drums. Nothing is normal about drums. Everything is weird.
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Totally. And you need not teach all the dancers at once either. Hell, you dont even need to teach the dancers the same dance Steve Smith taught his dancers, as long as all the notes and accents land in the same spot.

He plays straight time with his left and does the accents with his right. Now if you put your hats on the right...

...I freaking love this instrument because of this stuff. It's the ultimate puzzle.
 
JimmyM said:
Nothing is normal about drums. Everything is weird.
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only if you think about it

It's like green pants and red shirt
if no one points it out you'll think " yep. Fine."

Drum Set you're in a Cage and all four limbs + mind&body are engaged.
You start to break down all individual parts when starting out or starting over you'll never walk those green pants and red shirt out the door..

Let it fly.
Pick up the pieces later.
 
I think it's a pretty universal phenomenon. And in reality the curve is not smooth; it has all sorts of little ups and downs.
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What do you do when you’ve been struggling with the same hurdle for several years. ?

Been to teachers , spent countless hours on it and very little progress ???
 
Maybe it's not the correct answer but I just do what I do on a test and skip to the next and hope to come back to it.
 
Houndog1964 said:
What do you do when you’ve been struggling with the same hurdle for several years. ?

Been to teachers , spent countless hours on it and very little progress ???
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Depends on the hurdle. Hurdles can be technical, physical, or mental. Gotta figure that part out first.

And then there are some things we personally just cant do. Once we accept that, it's easy to move on.
 
Houndog1964 said:
What do you do when you’ve been struggling with the same hurdle for several years. ?

Been to teachers , spent countless hours on it and very little progress ???
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what hurdle is it?

sometimes with a thing like this, I will try to compare it to learning in other activities I do and see if I can approach it from completely outside the box. I cross reference hockey, and mountain bike riding in a lot of my musical endeavors, especially when it comes to physical blocks.
 
Houndog1964 said:
Can’t accept it ……
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It's some basic fundamental Sticking discovery you haven't yet tackled.
The numbers go 1 to 100 in time they are all there you have yet to traverse ones you may have skipped over
It's math 1st. Then hands.
That's Brain to Hand


or I'll get my baseball bat : )

It's math on a graph

Once you know the possibilities- know or sense what's possible then it's possible.
It's math and motion.
Math turned into motion.
Division of time. Can divide it a thousand or six ways and still be 'in time.
It's all Time Division. No magic. When and where a drummer chooses is the magic.
The special sauce That's the highly personal thing.

But we're all in time. Within the confines of time.
It's how we choose/when and where/ to extract it. To extract (what) from it.

Time exists; we Just live in it Frank.
 
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1 hit wonder said:
After I quit it was lost, when it was so easy before quitting 15 years ago. I literally quit counting at 20 hours, but that's how long it took to get it mostly zoned in again. 20+ hours for someone who had it nailed.
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I've only been playing drums just two years, so it's all new and uphill. Ive got it steady at about 90 bpm...Need to get it to 115
 
It's that last 10% of anything that takes the longest and makes it really great. This applies to just about anything. Keep going, or not. That's up to you. Good enough might be good enough.
 
10 months isn’t long in drummer years so you should be real happy with your progress. Remember the Golden rule of drumming- do unto drumming as drumming does unto you. It’s in the Drummers Bible so I’m not sure what that really means- I think some Aramaic to Greek to English just saying practice and you’ll get better. LOL
 
JimmyM said:
...I really dislike how incremental my progress has become. Sure, you have to expect it once you get to a certain point, but I loved that feeling in the early days of my comeback when I was noticeably improving on a day to day basis. And you can't imagine the joy I felt when I, someone who never played double bass pedals in his life, actually developed a degree of competency within a couple months. I got good again quickly, and for the first few months, every day there was something I couldn't play that I was able to work out and play the next day, except for the kick in Good Times Bad Times...but I finally got it nailed over the last week.

And now it's all gone to hell. Breaking the Bonham Barrier seems to have angered my drums. They mock me now. They say, "So you think you're so damn cool now, eh Jim? Well try to do double strokes as smooth as Buddy or play Don't Stop Believin' without cheat beats." That's the thanks I get for turning that crappy collection of orphans nobody wanted into a beautiful one of a kind collector's kit :D

On the other hand, I shouldn't object to playing competently again. Getting to this point was the 1-year goal, and I'm two months to the good. But now I'm going to have to work a lot harder to improve. That kind of sucks. But hey, I guess there are worse punishments than playing drums, although drums never seem to want to make it easy for you at any step of the process.
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Not sure I'm understanding what happened here... you said you spent a while without playing, then came back to playing and within a short time you were able to play a lot of stuff you couldn't before including double bass.. so far so good. Then you are upset that you are not immediately better than you were yesterday since you were able to progress faster on the previous 2 months? Maybe the goals you set yourself before were much more attainable than the goals you are setting up now? Either way I don't see getting better as a bad thing, what I do see a lot of people do here is try to learn new things before being able to proficiently play what they already know. I'm guilty of that myself so not saying you do or don't just what I see here. Anyway, I think only you know what level you want to reach and only you know what proficient is for you, but I wouldn't worry about playing like Bonham or Buddy, Play like you, develop your own style from all your influences. Nobody said that you have to play like someone else to be good.
 
C. Dave Run said:
This is better than trying to digest everything at once. Imagine if you woke up and had the facilities to play whatever you wanted on command. What do you play?
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That kind of happens to me I stop playing for months, then I return and for some reason I am able to play things that I was not able to play before. I think it has to do with mental block rather than physical. I study the music I like, then once I have the patterns down path, I can most of the time play them correctly save for some extra fast double bass... What do I play?? Whatever song I have in my head that I learned from listening in the car while driving to and from work.
This guy (Franchesco Paoli) was the guitar player for Fleshgod Apocalypse, they lost their drummer so he took over the drums, never played drums before he was able to play like this in ONE year. (also this is their slowest song). The band hired Eugene Ryabchenco so Franchesco returned to playing guitar.

 
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