Post your practice routine...

A

AnthonyScott

Junior Member
I would like to start a thread with drummers willing to post their practice routines. I am always interested to hear how different musicians put together their routines.
Mine currently is
Snare:
One Column of Stick Control
A Stick Control-like routine for triplets
One solo from the Wilcoxin book
Set:
From Benny Greb's Groove DVD: Practicing with the click in different ways.
Click with beats dropping out at random
Clicks on the upbeats
A very slow tempo such as quarter note equal 25 ppm

A song. I pick one or two per week.

Thanks
 
I start out with free strokes, eight on a hand and purple singles. Then single, double and triple paradiddles. And a rudiment, changing weekly. I'm concentrating on getting my fast Texas shuffle together so that is a big part of my practice routine at the moment, I separate left hand, just shuffling the snare, adding other limbs one by one. And my feet: quarters, triplets, eights, triplets and sixteens. All this starting out at 90 bpm and step up 10 at a time until I start to feel any tension. This is maybe 45 minutes. Then I work on some music, songs we play in our band or other. Lately I've started practicing brushes too.
 
For all my years, except when as a kid I was working on Syncopation, I have basically practiced by learning new songs, or by playing along or working with a click. I don't work much on rudiments or sticking other than double strokes. Twenty-something years on, I'm wishing I could turn back the clock and inject more of that into my practice routine. I have no doubt I'd be a better player by now for it. Recognizing it's not too late, I've begun to work on it now... but I wish I had been working on it then. Word to the wise for younger/newer drummers!
 
Skate said:
I saw your post on the thread you linked. You go hard on practicing!
Click to expand...

Yup. Nothing better to do.

Not full details there, but it's not completely static and I do it all in a musical way. It's an approach very similar to what I ended up doing on guitar the last 25 years. A full improvisation based concept, but very slow, methodical and controlled.
 
I practice transcriptions made by me of players that interest me plus my own ideas.
 
Stick control for hands and both feet!

Work from 80 bpm and up as it feels natural.
Ad ex. when you are comfortable with the current ones you know. Always use metronome for this.

Learn songs one bar at the time before learning another song.
 
Tommy Igoe's Lifetime Warm-up. Rebound stroke routine, then the accent routine, followed by the singles and doubles exercise, then the Lifetime Warm-up itself. Intermediate first, then the advanced. Takes me about 40 mins.
 
Right now my practice routine is:
Warm up 5-10 minutes on practice pad then 5-10 minutes all around the kit
Play along to a 2-3 songs I already know a couple times each
Then I play along to a couple pop/dance songs but I put my own spin on the drum parts i.e. playing metal drums to Lady Gaga or Katy Perry

That's it for now, I'm going to add in working on jazz drumming in the near future...
 
Ghostnote said:
Tommy Igoe's Lifetime Warm-up.
Click to expand...

Agreed - that's the best way to spend half an hour at the practice pad (shameless self-promotion alert: check out the Rude Practice Pad app, which has variants of the basic and intermediate routines).

On the other hand, lately I have mostly been playing along to whatever music my Spotify throws at me. Just because it's soooo fun! (And the having-fun-part is really important after playing daily for ~40 years.)
 
Last edited:
I work on different things every day. Usually I warm up with the Advanced Lifetime Warmup. After that I've been trying to get my triple strokes down, so I alternate between this Truth Serum exercise (constant 16th notes that switch between singles, doubles, triples, and quads), and this exercise from high school called Double Beat. I alternate between working on a piece of music (electric wheelchair) some days, other days I've begun working on one of the back pages of Stick Control to learn quintuplets.
 
Single stroke endurance exercises (hands and feet)
'Stick Control' page 1, heel-down, starting at 80bpm and going up 1bpm per day (currently at 83bpm)
Groove/timing exercises

Apart from that, just playing music. I really don't care to get into the whole 8-hours-a-day-methodical-practicing routine anymore, that bores me.
 
These days my routine goes something like:

Play a gig. Have trouble playing something I'd like to play. Think, "I ought to practice that." Get busy teaching and with life. Think, "I ought to practice that thing I was gonna practice." Play a gig. Have trouble playing something I'd like to play...
 
My practice routine is in constant flux, because I practice the things I'm having trouble with. Once I improve at those things, I move on to the next thing I need to develop.

Lately, I'm doing a mix of the same basic things for a few weeks since I got my DW practice pad set.

The one constant is everything is done with a metronome programmed to have fixed or random mutes. This is true across all tempos, ranging from 40 bpm to 380 bpm (fast jazz). I think there are some advantages to doing this on a practice pad set. I'm using a double bass pedal even when I'm practicing hi-hat phrases with my left foot. The feel is a little strange, but I find it really helps me zero in on getting my unisons together whenever beats line up with my feet. Any flamming is easy to hear and makes it easy to work on improvement.

With slow tempos, I focus on three different approaches:
1) Stop playing altogether when the mutes happen and come back in exactly with the click. Especially when there are 2–3 bars muted, this is hard to do without playing anything at all with my hands or feet.
2) Keep playing time with a simple money beat when the mute happens, either bass drum on 1 and 3 or four-on-the-floor. Make sure when the click comes back in, I am right with it. I also do this with a jazz ride cymbal beat.
3) Keep playing through the click, but improvise like I was trading bars with another soloist. I'll try unusual subdivisions, double-time, metric modulation to a triplet feel, etc. Again, trying to come back in exactly with the click.

Another focus has been double bass. 16th notes with different combinations with the hands on top; combinations of four-note and two-note groupings with the hands; double bass shuffles; and just trying to play songs I like that feature double bass.

Double bass is my weakest link. I can do some of the hero fills with two-note groupings since I learned those a long time ago, but there are other basic things I'm pretty new to, where I've only been at it for about 18 months of serious work. It's a lot of fun attacking something like this now. I'm making progress.

Lastly, I've been working on keeping my reading skills sharp using basic drum charts, rudimental solos and the usual culprit standard texts.
 
Daily routine

1 hour of practice pad (pas 40 rudiments, stick control, modern rudimental swing solos, modern reading text) done with varying foot ostinatos to keep things interesting

Plus 1 hour of drumset (practice grooves, songs for my band, soloing, and/or a certain technique specific application for the day ie comping, dynamics, bass drum speed, etc.)

Rigorous use of a practice journal with planned exercises for the day with notes and tempo markings keep me focused.
 
It's a bit different now.

It's been about 5 years since I picked up the sticks, 2 lessons with the late David Via back in '99 after and Erskoman clinic doesn't really count. I guess my initiation period is over and I generally feel at home behind a drumkit. I can sit down and make it work like a unit on the basic stuff. Not like Vinnie's 7 Days outro demonstrations on some of those clinic clips, but that feel going through anything is sort the benchmark. Keeping it so organic and deep regardless.

Anyway.

I am in a different place physically too, and my surroundings also probably influence how I feel about practicing these days.

Technique/endurance/speed:
I've come to the conclusion that I prefer to work on technique at home on the pad rather than on the kit. It's a different thing and just being at home with a pad and metronome feels more natural for this and obviously makes less noise. My feet need some work, so I'm looking for a better kick pad solution than my RealFeel. I feel that I don't need a big conditioning routine every day and I'm starting to lean towards a bit of a workout idea of alternating hands and feet and tak one day off. It's not because I view drumming as a workout. It's just quality over quantity and thinking that 3 times a week is enough.

I offcourse work on rudiments and etudes, which I do for fun anytime anyway, but the basic idea is this routine from Matt Patella:
[youtube_https]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br6TMLTVpmI[/youtube_https]

As well as this

[youtube_https]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EPErDwLpOw[/youtube_https]

Simple and sweet. Gets the job done.


General vocabulary is still on the kit and there's still the samba workout.

When it comes to ostinato practice I've taken away a lot. Just splitting ostinatos through the week and basically taking the reading pages of the first part of New Breed. Trying to shorten the amount of time spent on this as well.

This means normal double bass work is mostly off the table as I do want that in my vocabulary, but I'm not a metal player, I just need some facility and feet that work. This routine has worked so well for my hands it just makes sense to do the same with the feet.

Jazz: I do what has been suggested so far by different sources and work on new things, but part of that is to not, at least now, spend too much time on stuff I already can do.

The only Stick Control stuff I do apart from the jazz independence stuff and separate technique thing is the 2 in the hands 2 in the feet thing. I think that's a good exercise. There are a couple more similar ways. Sort of Dahlgren and Fine "light."


This cuts things down considerably, which means a little less time practicing, but it also just means more time starting to get more musical. Learning songs, transcribing a little bit, and really integrating vocabulary. Basically real practicing, the way it should be done. I can also make stuff like e.g. general odd time playing more of a priority.

I just moved. I'm trying to get some things together so I can get out and play more.
 
Go to the throne, pick up the remote, play whatever I'm am working on. Play along.

Sticking exercises. Play along
Fill exercises. Play along

Just play.

Get together with the crew. Play along. Make stuff up, work stuff out. Don't copy too much, find your (as a band) groove and play along.
 
GeoB said:
Go to the throne, pick up the remote, play whatever I'm am working on. Play along.

Sticking exercises. Play along
Fill exercises. Play along

Just play.

Get together with the crew. Play along. Make stuff up, work stuff out. Don't copy too much, find your (as a band) groove and play along.
Click to expand...
Ha ha, I know, right?

I'm amazed at how methodical some people are with their practice routines! Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that so many are so serious about it, and I think if time and access to a kit allowed for it, I might be inspired enough after reading this thread to turn over a whole new tree and take a serious crack at some of these strategies.

My reality is that I play my kit at band practice once a week, so when I get there an hour or two early (always!) to sit at the kit and reacquaint myself with it and to get some blood flowing, I'm mostly playing along to mp3s to get my groove locked in and relaxed while throwing in a bunch of hero fills to sort of stretch the old rubber band.

Simply making stuff up, like novel ways of playing more standard stuff, and forcing it into something that sounds nice is an endless source of wonder for me. I've always approached practicing this way, and for me it works. After 35 years of drumming, I still never get bored and I still continue to improve despite my slacker approach to disciplined practice.

I average 2-3 hours a day on either guitar or bass (or both) and my approach there has been very similar, though I do spend quite a bit more time running through scales and arpeggios than I ever spent on drumming rudiments.

Practicing drums for me is about fluid time and a taste for what kinds of parts work best for a given piece of music, while guitar is all that plus avoiding notes that don't sound good, so there's that added dimension that warrants a fair amount of left brain practicing.
 
Changes a lot these days. I have fewer new songs to work on so I pick spots in the existing song list and work on bits I am having trouble with. My time spent on rudiments is way down too. Now it is only about 10 minutes, and I am not proud of that.

Recently I am trying to improve the segmentation of triplets between hands and feet. Obvious classic cover band application? LZ tunes!
 
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