8 hour days

[Duck Tape]

So with Easter I had 4 days off, my girlfriend was working the entire time, I did an 8 hour day on the Friday, then the Saturday, then I thought why quit? I’ll just do my entire break, as an experiment or an exercise.

I watched a Dave Weckl interview last week and he said he was doing 15 hour days as a youth. Why not try.

4 days, 8 hours each day.

I got through my weeks planned practice in maybe the first 1.5 days, got through the topics I avoid and procrastinate on and then I had to find new topics to work on. At night I got on the pad and went through the snare drum solos and sight reading videos on YouTube. I decided to do new breed 2a and 2b, counting out loud like Chris Coleman recommends. I found a full chart for Rosanna so I could finally figure out those small details I never nailed, but didn’t care enough to work on.

I noticed how much the sight reading exercises helped me read the new breed pages, I was never great at reading at a 16th note level but I flew through it. So I broke through a glass ceiling that was there because of the difficulty or because I always had excuses to avoid trying and that’s cool. Things felt really effortless. After that I played some great creative solos within the framework.

I also watched myself pull rudiments and patterns from the sight reading videos that are really not part of my vocabulary. I saw things in my usual routine that I could improve and added some new notes/notation, I felt smarter.

By the 4th day I began to meander and couldn’t think of what to do besides play through my music playlists (organized by types of grooves), I saw my productivity drop, my interest dropped too. I could have dredged up some of my old books/routines but just didn’t.

I recorded myself playing a few covers which I had previously believed I played well and I thought I sounded awful, but it’s hard to separate if that’s my general skill level or if I’m being overly critical or just not inspired.

I think I learned that when I do something that is new to me I can get a boost of creativity/inspiration, and so maybe I should be doing much more of that, and maybe rehashing the same old things is not helping me.

In the days following, my usual practice session went by in a flash, I think I realize when you put the big hours in it becomes easier to breeze through 4 hours of practice without blinking.

I am back at work, a bit tired and I have kept up my practice regime but not feeling inspired.

I think I used my weeks/months inspiration. I have a gig this Saturday, I wonder how I will perform.

My lower back felt sore from the second day onwards. This isn’t really easy and I know there are guys that do this for years. How do they do it?

Most professional opinions on practice seem to suggest that 4 hours is a good length if you want to progress as much as possible, I am still decompressing but I think maybe I agree with it. Or perhaps doing this occasionally (maybe a few times a year?) really helps boost progress.

Anyway I am sorry for the chaotic post, if it comes off like that, I am just in the process of debriefing and would really like to hear any helpful and interesting opinions besides “I only do 1 hour every few days and anything else is stupid/ridiculous/trying too hard”.

I didn’t study music at college/university and in a way I try to act as though I am enrolled in one now because I’m just not happy with my skill level.

Do you have a limit on how much you practice? Is there a point of diminishing returns? Is it a waste of time to revisit thd same topics week in week out?

 

[Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX]

for me, in the summer - when I have school off - I can get about 6 hours in before my butt, ears and back starts to hurt. That is usually 4 days a week. I do spend time on the pad during other parts of the day, so I probably total about 8 hours on those days. I am on the pad every day for at least 2-4 hours though b/c my hands can not sit idle.

Honestly, I play so much I don't really catalog the hours when it comes down to it. I just know my drum set times b/c of the physical limit I have being 55

 

[Tamboreter]

Do you have a limit on how much you practice? Is it a waste of time to revisit the same topics week in week out?

I don't put a limit on it, but can easily work on material a couple hours per day. I also spread it out across the day, not two hours in one sitting -that seems to help with retention. If I am rusty on "old topics," I will periodically revisit them to brush up and check the muscle memory.

When I was a Music Ed major many moons ago, it was required that we practice two hour minimums on our major instrument (percussion for me). That did not include all of the various ensemble groups I was performing with, and then I also had to put in practice time for my Double Bass minor. It added up quickly.

 

[Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX]

I don't put a limit on it, but can easily work on material a couple hours per day. I also spread it out across the day, not two hours in one sitting -that seems to help with retention. If I am rusty on "old topics," I will periodically revisit them to brush up and check the muscle memory.

When I was a Music Ed major many moons ago, it was required that we practice two hour minimums on our major instrument (percussion for me). That did not include all of the various ensemble groups I was performing with, and then I also had to put in practice time for my Double Bass minor. It added up quickly.

yeah...in Music Ed, you played 4-6 hours a day no matter what. And that was light. I was one of only 4 percussionists at my college, so I was playign in every required ensemble (concert band, jazz band, percussion ensemble) plus I was in 3 musical pit orchestras, the community symphony, my private lesson stuff....it was reall;y just constant practice. Which I LOVED!!!! I actually miss the hectic-ness of those days honestly

 

[RiotReed]

I think I learned that when I do something that is new to me I can get a boost of creativity/inspiration, and so maybe I should be doing much more of that, and maybe rehashing the same old things is not helping me.

At least for me, it's always been a balancing act of exploration/experimentation and repetition/refinement. I feel like in the past I've spent too much time on one or the other for whatever reason and I don't see the same results I do when I have a healthy mix in day to day practice.

My lower back felt sore from the second day onwards. This isn’t really easy and I know there are guys that do this for years. How do they do it?

Earlier this year I was practicing 6-8 hours a day (on drums, anyway) and I kept that up for about a month before I had some other work that started eating up my time. What really helped me was thinking very carefully about the ergonomics of my setup and gradually fiddling with heights and angles until it worked for me. Practicing on the pad with large, heavy sticks also helped me realise there were inefficiencies in my technique that I had just been muscling through when using my regular, much lighter sticks. When you have that much weight to be swinging around for that long your body tells you what could make it easier in a hurry haha. Once I addressed those, it seemed that my speed and endurance went through the roof over a pretty short period. Taking short breaks every couple of hours and just chugging away at transcriptions or something for 10-20 minutes helped a lot, too.

Most professional opinions on practice seem to suggest that 4 hours is a good length if you want to progress as much as possible, I am still decompressing but I think maybe I agree with it. Or perhaps doing this occasionally (maybe a few times a year?) really helps boost progress.

I do think practicing one instrument for much more than 4 hours a day becomes unsustainable, and if you were to try and keep it up indefinitely I think there would be pretty serious diminishing returns. At least for me after practicing that much I felt much less creative by the end of it which I think goes back to what I said about spending too much time playing the same things, but once in a while it can be great to tackle larger concepts that would otherwise take up too much time to justify.

Do you have a limit on how much you practice? Is there a point of diminishing returns? Is it a waste of time to revisit thd same topics week in week out?

I think there is, but as long as you are enjoying your practice and happy with the progress, don't worry about it. Ironically, when I was first learning to play music I feel like my attempts to squeeze every bit of value from each practice hour slowed my progression a lot because I felt discouraged to pursue things that interested me in favour of either externally or self imposed curricula. In my opinion, as long as you're putting in consistent and dedicated work, you'll get the most value out of following your whims.

Happy Drumming

 

[Alex Sanguinetti]

It all depends on the level you want to acquire, but the most important thing is WHAT you practice since you can practice things that are useless, or that are not at your level, or for which you do not have an efficient methodology and way of working, so no matter how much you practice the result will not be satisfactory.

Most drummers practice like this, with poor results.

In general it is due because they don´t know what works since the majority study things that they heard that they should study, but have no idea if that way of working works.

The lack of dedication is a big problem too, but many times it is generated by the above, it is that at not seeing results, it's not easy to make you want to dedicate more time. There's also the other thing, right? Similar to this joke:

"A year and a half ago I joined a gym, and after all this time I'm just as out of shape and weak as when I joined!
It seems like I'm going to have to start going too"

 

[Drummingdog]

So with Easter I had 4 days off, my girlfriend was working the entire time, I did an 8 hour day on the Friday, then the Saturday, then I thought why quit? I’ll just do my entire break, as an experiment or an exercise.

I watched a Dave Weckl interview last week and he said he was doing 15 hour days as a youth. Why not try.

4 days, 8 hours each day.

I got through my weeks planned practice in maybe the first 1.5 days, got through the topics I avoid and procrastinate on and then I had to find new topics to work on. At night I got on the pad and went through the snare drum solos and sight reading videos on YouTube. I decided to do new breed 2a and 2b, counting out loud like Chris Coleman recommends. I found a full chart for Rosanna so I could finally figure out those small details I never nailed, but didn’t care enough to work on.

I noticed how much the sight reading exercises helped me read the new breed pages, I was never great at reading at a 16th note level but I flew through it. So I broke through a glass ceiling that was there because of the difficulty or because I always had excuses to avoid trying and that’s cool. Things felt really effortless. After that I played some great creative solos within the framework.

I also watched myself pull rudiments and patterns from the sight reading videos that are really not part of my vocabulary. I saw things in my usual routine that I could improve and added some new notes/notation, I felt smarter.

By the 4th day I began to meander and couldn’t think of what to do besides play through my music playlists (organized by types of grooves), I saw my productivity drop, my interest dropped too. I could have dredged up some of my old books/routines but just didn’t.

I recorded myself playing a few covers which I had previously believed I played well and I thought I sounded awful, but it’s hard to separate if that’s my general skill level or if I’m being overly critical or just not inspired.

I think I learned that when I do something that is new to me I can get a boost of creativity/inspiration, and so maybe I should be doing much more of that, and maybe rehashing the same old things is not helping me.

In the days following, my usual practice session went by in a flash, I think I realize when you put the big hours in it becomes easier to breeze through 4 hours of practice without blinking.

I am back at work, a bit tired and I have kept up my practice regime but not feeling inspired.

I think I used my weeks/months inspiration. I have a gig this Saturday, I wonder how I will perform.

My lower back felt sore from the second day onwards. This isn’t really easy and I know there are guys that do this for years. How do they do it?

Most professional opinions on practice seem to suggest that 4 hours is a good length if you want to progress as much as possible, I am still decompressing but I think maybe I agree with it. Or perhaps doing this occasionally (maybe a few times a year?) really helps boost progress.

Anyway I am sorry for the chaotic post, if it comes off like that, I am just in the process of debriefing and would really like to hear any helpful and interesting opinions besides “I only do 1 hour every few days and anything else is stupid/ridiculous/trying too hard”.

I didn’t study music at college/university and in a way I try to act as though I am enrolled in one now because I’m just not happy with my skill level.

Do you have a limit on how much you practice? Is there a point of diminishing returns? Is it a waste of time to revisit thd same topics week in week out?

It depends on what im working on band(s) wise like writing out drum charts for stuff im learning. I attempt to practice 1-2 hrs 5 days a week. I practiced at school 4+ hrs almost daily. I used to use an egg timer to keep me in check when i had multible things to work on. 15 mins here, 30 mins there.

 

[ZDrumMan]

I find I need to set goals to work towards and I am not talking about multiple goals. I will set a goal that needs to be achieved by the end of the month and break it down into what needs to be done each week leading up to that month's end. I also have warm-up routines that start my practice schedule so I will work on the goal after warm-up. But my warm-up will consist of different patterned routines set by a metronome and I will record (write down) the fastest time I can do a warm-up cleanly. As the month goes on I look to see if that speed increased since starting it. Once a warm-up gets to a speed that I think is acceptable, I introduce a new warm-up and not use the previous one. The amount of time to practice is not something I want to concentrate on, but rather what I want to be able to do.

 

[Bo Eder]

That’s awesome! Breaking through ceilings is good. Congrats!

 

[Alex Sanguinetti]

I´m practicing right now, guys, how about you?:

 

[toddbishop]

Good job doing that!

So with Easter I had 4 days off, my girlfriend was working the entire time, I did an 8 hour day on the Friday, then the Saturday, then I thought why quit? I’ll just do my entire break, as an experiment or an exercise.

I watched a Dave Weckl interview last week and he said he was doing 15 hour days as a youth. Why not try.

4 days, 8 hours each day.

I got through my weeks planned practice in maybe the first 1.5 days, got through the topics I avoid and procrastinate on and then I had to find new topics to work on. At night I got on the pad and went through the snare drum solos and sight reading videos on YouTube. I decided to do new breed 2a and 2b, counting out loud like Chris Coleman recommends. I found a full chart for Rosanna so I could finally figure out those small details I never nailed, but didn’t care enough to work on.

I noticed how much the sight reading exercises helped me read the new breed pages, I was never great at reading at a 16th note level but I flew through it. So I broke through a glass ceiling that was there because of the difficulty or because I always had excuses to avoid trying and that’s cool. Things felt really effortless. After that I played some great creative solos within the framework.

I also watched myself pull rudiments and patterns from the sight reading videos that are really not part of my vocabulary. I saw things in my usual routine that I could improve and added some new notes/notation, I felt smarter.

By the 4th day I began to meander and couldn’t think of what to do besides play through my music playlists (organized by types of grooves), I saw my productivity drop, my interest dropped too. I could have dredged up some of my old books/routines but just didn’t.

I recorded myself playing a few covers which I had previously believed I played well and I thought I sounded awful, but it’s hard to separate if that’s my general skill level or if I’m being overly critical or just not inspired.

I think I learned that when I do something that is new to me I can get a boost of creativity/inspiration, and so maybe I should be doing much more of that, and maybe rehashing the same old things is not helping me.

In the days following, my usual practice session went by in a flash, I think I realize when you put the big hours in it becomes easier to breeze through 4 hours of practice without blinking.

I am back at work, a bit tired and I have kept up my practice regime but not feeling inspired.

I think I used my weeks/months inspiration. I have a gig this Saturday, I wonder how I will perform.

My lower back felt sore from the second day onwards. This isn’t really easy and I know there are guys that do this for years. How do they do it?

Most professional opinions on practice seem to suggest that 4 hours is a good length if you want to progress as much as possible, I am still decompressing but I think maybe I agree with it. Or perhaps doing this occasionally (maybe a few times a year?) really helps boost progress.

Anyway I am sorry for the chaotic post, if it comes off like that, I am just in the process of debriefing and would really like to hear any helpful and interesting opinions besides “I only do 1 hour every few days and anything else is stupid/ridiculous/trying too hard”.

I didn’t study music at college/university and in a way I try to act as though I am enrolled in one now because I’m just not happy with my skill level.

Do you have a limit on how much you practice? Is there a point of diminishing returns? Is it a waste of time to revisit thd same topics week in week out?

For me there's usually there's some kind of external time limit-- having to do something else. Or if I wear myself out doing something taxing, like New Breed with all that counting. Probably the most I ever do in a day now is ~ 4 hours, 2 hours drums, 2 hours pad or piano. Most often about 40-120 minutes. Generally once I start playing it's difficult to stop-- one thing always leads to something else.

I think diminishing returns come from practicing mindlessly, or too repetitively, counting on a "drill" to work some kind of magic. I don't think just playing through songs is great practice. Hanging out on p. 1 of Stick Control is a pretty dreary way to live life, too.

You can scroll through my site to see the kinds of things I work on-- there should be something there for just about any topic. Doing whatever you're doing with the metronome set to click the 1 only will hold your attention. I usually play along with some sampled loops I made-- to practice anything, not just copying the groove on the sample-- that will also pull you along and keep you playing. Most of what I do involves an interpreted system reading from Syncopation or a similar book.

 

[Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX]

For me there's usually there's some kind of external time limit-- having to do something else. Or if I wear myself out doing something taxing, like New Breed with all that counting. Probably the most I ever do in a day now is ~ 4 hours, 2 hours drums, 2 hours pad or piano. Most often about 40-120 minutes. Generally once I start playing it's difficult to stop-- one thing always leads to something else.

this has been me since I was a pre-teen. Especially in the summer or on breaks. I rarely actually count how much time I play, and have never really considered it practicing. It has always just been playing. The amount of time was never as important as getting things checked off the list, or getting lost in the Zen of playing...and things were usually getting checked off the list via playing.

I think I was lucky in that my dad - who was my first teacher - never approached/advertised practice/playing time as a chore. It was something you looked forward to. It was a gift, and a privilege. Getting to play, and being able to play an instrument elevated you from other people.

 

[Alex Sanguinetti]

I watched a Dave Weckl interview last week and he said he was doing 15 hour days

Oh, by the way here in 1984 from the largest Spanish-speaking newspaper (worldwide) where I talk about my 10 hours of practice. In reality, it was just a brief answer to the reporter to one of the questions about how much I practiced within a context of a long interview he did to me, but the interviewer seemed to be very surprised about that and kind of centered the article around it. I guess if people can work 10 hours a day at a job they don't like, I can practice 10 hours doing what I like most...

But again, if you don´t have the right instructor and program, it doesn´t matter how long you practice...

 

[Jeff Graw]

I try to modulate my practice time depending on how much yield I feel I'm getting. Some days I'm practicing all day (with small breaks--that seems to improve yield compared to giant, contiguous blocks of time). But on a day where I'm not really feeling it, I call it quits real quick. I think that longer breaks can sometimes bestow benefits. I'm not sure why though. Could be the body recovering, the mind digesting, or the spirit anticipating. A dirty secret is that, for myself at least, energy drinks noticeably improve yield.

 

[joedrum]

It all depends on the level you want to acquire, but the most important thing is WHAT you practice since you can practice things that are useless, or that are not at your level, or for which you do not have an efficient methodology and way of working, so no matter how much you practice the result will not be satisfactory.

Most drummers practice like this, with poor results.

In general it is due because they don´t know what works since the majority study things that they heard that they should study, but have no idea if that way of working works.

The lack of dedication is a big problem too, but many times it is generated by the above, it is that at not seeing results, it's not easy to make you want to dedicate more time. There's also the other thing, right? Similar to this joke:

"A year and a half ago I joined a gym, and after all this time I'm just as out of shape and weak as when I joined!
It seems like I'm going to have to start going too"

Is that like the guy who brought his new chainsaw back because it wouldn't cut? He said I want to return this. The salesman said what's wrong with it? He said it doesn't cut. The salesman took the saw and started it up. The customer yelled what's that noise?!