Decided to finally get serious, thoughts?

xsarith

Senior Member
Hey everyone, Well I've finally decided to get serious (well I actually decided this a few days ago but the forum went down and stuff was lost, I'm pretty sure every one knows this now though).

Anyway before the forum went down people posted a lot to this thread and my daily practice routine eventually became:

Stick Control - hands and feet - one page per day per week, 1 min per exercise
Derek Roddys Endurance - 30 min in total
George Kollias 16 week work out - 5 min
Derek Roddys Balance - 30 min total
Learn the 40 main Rudiments - not sure of the time on this one
Finish of by learning anything else I might need to work on.

However I didn't write the routine down so this is from memory, whats everyone's thoughts on this, is it a good or bad routine, anything I could add?

I'll be doing this routine away from the kit on a bass drum practice pad and stick practice pad, so things like learning beats/fills/grooves ect is separate from this one. People contributed a lot such as focusing on full strokes as well as the Thomas Lang linear drumming exercise so thank you to those replied to the post before.

Cheers guys.
 
is it a good or bad routine, anything I could add?

Cheers guys.

Yeah you need to stop typing and get on the pads :p ...you just lost like 15 minutes of valuable practice time writing this ;)

I'm at work, if I wasn't I would have been hitting my pad or acoustic kit or e-drum kit ;) ...even now I'm tapping my feet and hands :)
 
Haha yeah, I probably should mention I don't have the pads yet, well apart from the stick practice pad which I'm using right now, Im getting the bass drum on in about a week since thats when Ill finally be able to afford it.

I suppose thats one good thing about my college course only being two and a half days long a week, I have so much time to practice but I can only play my kit after 5, thats probably a main reason I've decided to actually get some constructive practice in haha.

on a side note do you ever get people at were you work or at home comment on your tapping, I tap constantly, either to music I'm listening to or mixing or just pull out a drum solo with pencils, of course I can hear the drums in my head, I'm pretty sure the people around me don't haha.

There goes another 10 mins lol
 
Haha yeah, I probably should mention I don't have the pads yet, well apart from the stick practice pad which I'm using right now, Im getting the bass drum on in about a week since thats when Ill finally be able to afford it.

I suppose thats one good thing about my college course only being two and a half days long a week, I have so much time to practice but I can only play my kit after 5, thats probably a main reason I've decided to actually get some constructive practice in haha.

on a side note do you ever get people at were you work or at home comment on your tapping, I tap constantly, either to music I'm listening to or mixing or just pull out a drum solo with pencils, of course I can hear the drums in my head, I'm pretty sure the people around me don't haha.

There goes another 10 mins lol

I only do it when there are no people around :p ...I have a lot of time at work when I'm not doing anything :)

Also, when tapping your hands/feet, the starting position is off the ground and back up, just like you would play a full stroke. I've found this helps build the "drum reflex" as a full stroke would. That's how it should feel when you speed up a double stroke roll for instance, like a reflex. Your hands and feet just do it automatically and it feels great :)
 
I only do it when there are no people around :p ...I have a lot of time at work when I'm not doing anything :)

Also, when tapping your hands/feet, the starting position is off the ground and back up, just like you would play a full stroke. I've found this helps build the "drum reflex" as a full stroke would. That's how it should feel when you speed up a double stroke roll for instance, like a reflex. Your hands and feet just do it automatically and it feels great :)

I'd get pretty bored if I had lots of free time at work, that's were practice pads become useful ;)

Yeah I was wondering that as I was practicing a Full stroke single stroke roll just to get used to it, I found it pretty easy. I wonder if its because I've already been doing it without realizing or like you said about the tapping, or maybe its just easy to do.
 
Ahh sorry, I was more clear in the original post and I've decided to get serious about practicing and drumming as a whole, as in a better technique, balance, independence, a larger vocabulary of beats and fills, etc. of course to do this I actually need to practice and go on my drums and play the same things I've been playing and calling it practice, cause of course Ill only learn what I can already do.

I personally don't care much for speed, which is kinda the opposite to what most other metal players would say, but I'd rather have groove, creativity and control over speed, my band probably would prefer speed though so I would be good to improve that too.
 
BTW the tempo of doing stick control is important as well.

For the feet, I recommend practicing the first 3 pages only for the first 1-2 months heels down at 60 BPM as eight notes. Focus on nailing everything so it sounds like you are doing single strokes with one foot. It's actually harder to play it at that speed. I started doing this and my feet changed in just 2 weeks. Don't speed up as you get better, get more accurate and focus on getting an effortless motion :) ...the george kollias exercise will give you speed, work on nailing everything on the other stuff and try to make the motion as relaxed as possible.

Oh and I almost forgot, get a click that will allow you to set bars of silence. Start out with just one bar, when that's easy add more bars of silence. Might want to do this as a separate workout at first but add this to all your exercises. I never practice to just a click. I always add bars of silence. It's probably the most important exercise for a drummer. If you have to keep just one exercise it's this one ;)
 
BTW the tempo of doing stick control is important as well.

For the feet, I recommend practicing the first 3 pages only for the first 1-2 months heels down at 60 BPM as eight notes. Focus on nailing everything so it sounds like you are doing single strokes with one foot. It's actually harder to play it at that speed. I started doing this and my feet changed in just 2 weeks. Don't speed up as you get better, get more accurate and focus on getting an effortless motion :) ...the george kollias exercise will give you speed, work on nailing everything on the other stuff and try to make the motion as relaxed as possible.

Oh and I almost forgot, get a click that will allow you to set bars of silence. Start out with just one bar, when that's easy add more bars of silence. Might want to do this as a separate workout at first but add this to all your exercises. I never practice to just a click. I always add bars of silence. It's probably the most important exercise for a drummer. If you have to keep just one exercise it's this one ;)

60 bpm is pretty slow, Ill most likely want to up it not because its easy (cause I think playing slowly is harder than playing fast) but because it'll be so boring haha, but I wont Ill keep to 60, after all there's other exercises for speed.

As for the metronome, I don't think my Rhythm watch can miss bars out, so I might have to invest in an 'app for that.' :)
 
60 bpm is pretty slow, Ill most likely want to up it not because its easy (cause I think playing slowly is harder than playing fast) but because it'll be so boring haha, but I wont Ill keep to 60, after all there's other exercises for speed.

As for the metronome, I don't think my Rhythm watch can miss bars out, so I might have to invest in an 'app for that.' :)

Yep, it's slow and should be.

The thing I like about practicing slow is after practicing say a double stroke roll with full strokes for 10 minutes I have a small break and just play a bit on the pad for fun and the motion I was just practicing slow becomes kind of programmed into my hands and it just feels great when you speed it up. Sounds like a machine gun almost.

When you experience this you might like playing slow because of the reward afterwards. This is just a temporary effect but it you do it for a few weeks it gets permanent :)

Try polynome, it's great.

BTW I started getting serious about practicing in october 2012 and my drumming is miles ahead now. It's not even funny how much difference there is. I have pretty much the same routine as you :) ...if only I had started doing it earlier I would have been a beast by now :)
 
Yeah I always knew Id be better if actually practiced I was always lethargic about it haha, but after all Practice makes perfect. ;)

I've looked for polynome, is it available on android cause I couldn't find it on my S3 :/
 
...I've decided to get serious about practicing and drumming as a whole, as in a better technique, balance, independence, a larger vocabulary of beats and fills, etc. ...but I'd rather have groove, creativity and control over speed...

For working on groove and control, probably the best book to check out is Gary Chaffee's ''Time Functioning Patterns'' - specifically the Fatback Exercises... LIke Stick Control, this book will transform your playing... This will work on your time and feel and give your kick drum foot a serious workout... Other sections of the book (as well as other books from Gary) will give you endless ideas for grooves and fills...

Definitely drop the metronome down low to work on control. Take a groove that you know pretty well - then set the click to 40BPM - now listen to how well you know that groove!
 
For working on groove and control, probably the best book to check out is Gary Chaffee's ''Time Functioning Patterns'' - specifically the Fatback Exercises... LIke Stick Control, this book will transform your playing... This will work on your time and feel and give your kick drum foot a serious workout... Other sections of the book (as well as other books from Gary) will give you endless ideas for grooves and fills...

Definitely drop the metronome down low to work on control. Take a groove that you know pretty well - then set the click to 40BPM - now listen to how well you know that groove!

Ill definatly look into that book and some other stuff by him too and I dropped the metronome down today and played a simple rock beat, I have a terrible sense of time haha
 
Ill definatly look into that book and some other stuff by him too and I dropped the metronome down today and played a simple rock beat, I have a terrible sense of time haha

If you have terrible time then that's your first port of call in personal practice. Forget everything else. Single strokes with good technique (assess after every stroke) at 40BPM for an hour a day for a week. You'll be bored but your time will definitely improve enormously.
 
If you have terrible time then that's your first port of call in personal practice. Forget everything else. Single strokes with good technique (assess after every stroke) at 40BPM for an hour a day for a week. You'll be bored but your time will definitely improve enormously.

Or even better, practice everything he already practices with the metronome going silent for two bars or more ;) ...this will improve timing significantly. Maybe a separate exercise at first, just playing beats this way until you get used to it and it becomes easy.
 
If you have terrible time then that's your first port of call in personal practice. Forget everything else...

I agree 100%, if you really want to get serious about your drumming/practice, that's your #1 priorities, it won't matters if you don't have an extended vocabulary, but it matters if you have bad timing.
 
I think I may have exaggerated the terrible time, I keep in time with my band and people I jam with, and can usually record songs pretty well, maybe in a 3-4 takes, but I know it could be better, I was mainly on about it being bad a slower tempo, my main guess is because I never go below 120 so I've never practiced it.

However I started playing everything just over a months ago cause I know it needs improvement, but like I said, I have two practice sets, one on the kit and one off. On the kit is where I work on timing with actual drum beats and stuff but I don't see why I couldn't practice exercises away from the kit too since there is a lot of time were I cant play my actual kit.
 
Practicing rudiments and stickings on a pad is just as effective a use of your time as playing on the kit. It allows for a more focussed micro-analysis of everything that you're doing and by isolating the hands lets you see and hear much more clearly than if you were playing on a full kit.

Full kit practice is - of course - important but working on a pad and then transferring what you've learned to a kit often results in better fundamental technique, building from the bottom-up. I often find it very difficult to focus on practice playing on a kit because I get distracted (and I'm very easily distracted) but playing on a pad makes me analyse.

The 'two bars on, two bars off' metronome is definitely a great idea and gives you a very solid idea of where your time actually is. In all honesty, to improve your time playing faster tempi it is very beneficial to practice at slower tempi. Having more space around your strokes makes timing errors much more obvious and means that you can hear timing issues much more clearly.
 
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