My Drumming Journey
Drums. In retrospect, I should have known. Reviewing my playlists, all my favorite songs had heavy drum parts or great drum solos. Give me the opening to We're an American Band, or the beat in Radar Love, or just about any classic song by The Who and I was a happy listener.
Music was part of my life, but I was not musical at all. I tried to play guitar when in middle school, thinking it might give girls a reason to like me, but I gave it up in about two days. Besides being forced to play the recorder in elementary school, a flute-like wooden tube that only produced a sad wheezing sound for me, I have never been able to play music. I don't sing. I don't dance. It was always a mystery to me why I wasn't invited to hang with the cool kids after school.
I was 61 years old and in good health, but I felt my time was running out. How much more time did I have left before my body or my mind decided it was time to plop down into a recliner and watch Jeopardy until my number was called? Like other seniors, the pandemic had prevented my wife and me from joining them in checking off National Parks and state capitols from our lifetime to do list. Perhaps I should do something new with my enforced stay-cation.
What should I try? Pickle Ball sounded promising, but it was already too trendy with the senior-set. I bicycled around town, but I could only ride so much before I started questioning why I kept riding in circles of varying size (about 120 miles a week total). I tried online gaming, but EA Sports put my sim city into digital timeout because I kept winning the top weekly prize of sim cash. Their loss. I moved on, deleted the app, and gained about two hours a day back into my life. Wow. Did I really spend that much time on my phone like a teenager? Apparently so.
It was time to do something fun. Something I could get better at. I've always enjoyed getting better at stuff. Music beckoned because I knew my starting point was very, very low. Nowhere to go but up!
Below is a diary of my journey I use to track my progress and thoughts about drumming. I hope you enjoy it.
Drums. In retrospect, I should have known. Reviewing my playlists, all my favorite songs had heavy drum parts or great drum solos. Give me the opening to We're an American Band, or the beat in Radar Love, or just about any classic song by The Who and I was a happy listener.
Music was part of my life, but I was not musical at all. I tried to play guitar when in middle school, thinking it might give girls a reason to like me, but I gave it up in about two days. Besides being forced to play the recorder in elementary school, a flute-like wooden tube that only produced a sad wheezing sound for me, I have never been able to play music. I don't sing. I don't dance. It was always a mystery to me why I wasn't invited to hang with the cool kids after school.
I was 61 years old and in good health, but I felt my time was running out. How much more time did I have left before my body or my mind decided it was time to plop down into a recliner and watch Jeopardy until my number was called? Like other seniors, the pandemic had prevented my wife and me from joining them in checking off National Parks and state capitols from our lifetime to do list. Perhaps I should do something new with my enforced stay-cation.
What should I try? Pickle Ball sounded promising, but it was already too trendy with the senior-set. I bicycled around town, but I could only ride so much before I started questioning why I kept riding in circles of varying size (about 120 miles a week total). I tried online gaming, but EA Sports put my sim city into digital timeout because I kept winning the top weekly prize of sim cash. Their loss. I moved on, deleted the app, and gained about two hours a day back into my life. Wow. Did I really spend that much time on my phone like a teenager? Apparently so.
It was time to do something fun. Something I could get better at. I've always enjoyed getting better at stuff. Music beckoned because I knew my starting point was very, very low. Nowhere to go but up!
Below is a diary of my journey I use to track my progress and thoughts about drumming. I hope you enjoy it.
----- 2020 -----
March - Decided to take up the drums. I'm not musical at all so this will be interesting and potentially hilarious and/or painful to anyone listening to me. I wish I had videoed my first attempts at playing on my desktop electronic drum set. I'm sure the dropped sticks and misplayed notes would be hilarious.
July - Set up my Roland TD-17 electronic drum set. Bought it from sweetwater.com. It's awesome! I have it set up in the master bedroom for now. My wife can hear the thump, thump of the drum sticks on the pads and rubber cymbols, but the television mostly drowns out the sounds so she's okay with it.
July - I didn't know anything about music so I bought Hal Leonard's book: Drums for Beginners. It's excellent. I feel like I'm learning a lot already, but I have a long way to go.
I'm enjoying the physicality of drumming.
July - Started reading about drummers my local library had on the shelf: Ringo first, of course!
August - Playing grooves I have to shout 1,2,3,4 to get the beat. Yelling 1-an-2-an-3-an-4-an is still too hard. Can't count and hit drums at the same time. Yep. This rhythm instrument is going to work out fine for me. lol
September - People say the stock sounds of the Roland TD-17 are not great, but they all sound great to me--which probably just means I have no sense of what sounds good or not.
March - Decided to take up the drums. I'm not musical at all so this will be interesting and potentially hilarious and/or painful to anyone listening to me. I wish I had videoed my first attempts at playing on my desktop electronic drum set. I'm sure the dropped sticks and misplayed notes would be hilarious.
July - Set up my Roland TD-17 electronic drum set. Bought it from sweetwater.com. It's awesome! I have it set up in the master bedroom for now. My wife can hear the thump, thump of the drum sticks on the pads and rubber cymbols, but the television mostly drowns out the sounds so she's okay with it.
July - I didn't know anything about music so I bought Hal Leonard's book: Drums for Beginners. It's excellent. I feel like I'm learning a lot already, but I have a long way to go.
I'm enjoying the physicality of drumming.
July - Started reading about drummers my local library had on the shelf: Ringo first, of course!
August - Playing grooves I have to shout 1,2,3,4 to get the beat. Yelling 1-an-2-an-3-an-4-an is still too hard. Can't count and hit drums at the same time. Yep. This rhythm instrument is going to work out fine for me. lol
September - People say the stock sounds of the Roland TD-17 are not great, but they all sound great to me--which probably just means I have no sense of what sounds good or not.
---- 2021 -----
February - Joined Drumeo. It seemed the most comprehensive of all the online drum schools. Very happy with all the content. I started with the Method since I'm a beginner. I'm worried that I won't be able to develop an ear for music. I can barely hear the drums in many songs.
February - Started watching youTube videos of drummers to be inspired. Found Sina, a young woman from Germany who is awesome! Highly recommended.
February - Started following Harry Mieles on youTube. His drum videos are hilarious and informative. Love 'em!
February - Read more about drummers: I read Ringo's unauthorized biography, of course.
February - Read a book about Keith Moon, the legendary drummer for The Who. It's a sad story, but he was a brilliant drummer who I just love to watch play. The way he plays the drums is inspiring. I want to play like that!
February - Read drummer Kenny Jones's book. Drummer for Faces, New Faces, and The Who after Keith Moon died. Told it like it was without shying away from much.
March - Upgraded to lifetime Drumeo membership. It will pay off if I continue using Drumeo for at least 4 years. A no-brainer!
March - Read about Kenny Aronoff, another great drummer orginally with John Cougar Mellencamp. His work-ethic is impressive.
March - I'm getting better already, but I'm not good. I'm still a beginnner but, as long as I continue to improve, I know I will eventually get better. Not as quickly as someone with musical talent, but talent is overrated. Effort is what I learned in my life that actually counts. There are many people with talent who have never fullfilled their abilities. There are many people without talent who have worked hard until they succeeded and reached their goals. I'm a hard worker and I enjoy the process of practice. I will get there--it may just take me a while!
April - Learned some fills to Won't get Fooled Again by The Who. Took 3 weeks of practicing and learning the last part of the song.
April - Keith Moon fills are awesome! Recorded my version of the last minute of Won't get Fooled Again by The Who. It isn't as clean as I would like it to be, but I'm happy with it for now. Time to try something else!
April - Read How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy. It's all about creativity in general, not that I plan to write songs, but I may just be inspired sometime in the future...
April - Started learning the start of Who are You by The Who. It has 8 fills by Keith Moon in the first 2 minutes! Love it! I must be getting better, I was able to learn all the fills in one day. They aren't automatic yet, but I could read and play them. Progress!
May - Really hitting The Method in Drumeo hard. I'm enjoying working through all the grooves and fills focusing on playing the notes in the right order. It's not music, but it's fun!
May - I'm hitting the drums, making noise, playing in a physical way, but not with any feel. At least I recognize that now, so that's good. This is why I took up the drums--it's a physical activity, but once I can get my muscle memory going, I will be able to play with more nuance. I have a long way to go, but I'm ok with that. I'm having a great time sitting behind my drums and banging them hard.
June - The first time through the Method 3.x I worked to read the music and play the proper notes at a decent speed. This month I circled back and started over again and it turns out I have learned something. I can pick up the grooves much faster this time. My body remembers! Weird!
July - I'm still playing grooves and the fills, but I need to work on the transitions from groove to fills and back again. I suck at that.
Aug - I'm trying top play grooves without shouting 1-an-2-an-3-an-4-an. I'm trying to feel the repetitiveness of the groove and actually hear what I'm playing instead of my own counting!
Sept - Hired a contractor to start work on expanding my back shed into a drum room. It will be about 100 square feet with musical art on the walls and a television to watch Drumeo and Youtube videos and play at the same time. I'm looking forward to moving my drum out of my bedroom (and so is my wife, I'm sure).
Oct - Started a notebook with basic easy drumming songs I want to learn to play from notes: I love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett, Another One Bites the Dust and We will Rock you by Queen, Come Together by the Beatles, Girls just want to have Fun by Cindi Lauper, and a few more. For inspiration I end up my day's practice by playing one or more of these songs.
Oct - I'm working on the opening to We're an American Band. When I told my wife I was going try singing and drumming the song, she just laughed and laughed. She's right. I can't sing a lick. I aspire to be able to sing as well as William Shatner, that's how bad I am at singing.
Nov - I've been playing my bass drum heel up and burying the head. I don't think burying the head is that bad with electronic drums, but it seemed to be limiting my speed and control. My doubles and triplets felt weak. I watched a few bass drum technique vids on Drumeo and had an epiphany: I needed to strengthen my ankle and the best way to do that was to play heel down without burying the beater. I want to be able to play heel up or down whenever the song requires it.
Nov - Playing the same songs over the past month has enabled me to recognize other parts of the song than the drums. I learned that my drums sound much better when I'm in sync with the bass player. Who knew?! :-) I count that as progress with my newly developing sense of music!
Nov - Removed my "Sticks" nickname from my Drumeo profile. I feel like I haven't earned it. Rebranded myself just as David .F. -- I added a period before the F because David F. was already taken.
Dec - Doing bass drum exercises every day. Amazing how much stronger my ankle is now--which makes my speed faster also. I've improved, but I still have a lot of work to do. I can do repetitive grooves, but changing the beat causes me to lose it! I can start a beat with my right foot, but then when I start to play with my hands, my foot loses it! lol. Still work to do on independence.
Dec - I've improved enough to know how much I suck at drums. But that's progress in itself so I take pride in how bad I am now, hoping I will get better over time and I will be able to laugh at my sad attempts at keeping time and my hesitations between groove and fill and groove again. I'm still having fun, so I'd say my drumming practice is a success. :-)
Dec - I've given my notice at the college and this spring will be my last semester teaching Computer Programming and Problem-Solving to college freshmen. "I don't want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day." And soon I will be able to!
Dec - Decided I needed to organize my practice time to be more effective. Created a notebook with these sections: Warmup, Challenges, Method, Rudiments, Review, Songs. Ten minutes on each is an hour of practice. 15 minutes on each is an hour and a half. When I finish a section I turn to the next so that when I sit down next time I know exactly what I'm doing and can just start playing immediately. This seems to be working quite well for me and I've increased my practice time and my focus. Woo-hoo!
Dec - Looks like the drum room will be ready to rock in January. Looking forward to it!
Dec - A life-hack I adapted from academic research into the benefits accrued from self-congratulatory behavior: When I finish up a practice session I congratulate myself with a fist pump, and a hearty call of, "Rock and Roll!". It makes me smile every time. :-)
February - Joined Drumeo. It seemed the most comprehensive of all the online drum schools. Very happy with all the content. I started with the Method since I'm a beginner. I'm worried that I won't be able to develop an ear for music. I can barely hear the drums in many songs.
February - Started watching youTube videos of drummers to be inspired. Found Sina, a young woman from Germany who is awesome! Highly recommended.
February - Started following Harry Mieles on youTube. His drum videos are hilarious and informative. Love 'em!
February - Read more about drummers: I read Ringo's unauthorized biography, of course.
February - Read a book about Keith Moon, the legendary drummer for The Who. It's a sad story, but he was a brilliant drummer who I just love to watch play. The way he plays the drums is inspiring. I want to play like that!
February - Read drummer Kenny Jones's book. Drummer for Faces, New Faces, and The Who after Keith Moon died. Told it like it was without shying away from much.
March - Upgraded to lifetime Drumeo membership. It will pay off if I continue using Drumeo for at least 4 years. A no-brainer!
March - Read about Kenny Aronoff, another great drummer orginally with John Cougar Mellencamp. His work-ethic is impressive.
March - I'm getting better already, but I'm not good. I'm still a beginnner but, as long as I continue to improve, I know I will eventually get better. Not as quickly as someone with musical talent, but talent is overrated. Effort is what I learned in my life that actually counts. There are many people with talent who have never fullfilled their abilities. There are many people without talent who have worked hard until they succeeded and reached their goals. I'm a hard worker and I enjoy the process of practice. I will get there--it may just take me a while!
April - Learned some fills to Won't get Fooled Again by The Who. Took 3 weeks of practicing and learning the last part of the song.
April - Keith Moon fills are awesome! Recorded my version of the last minute of Won't get Fooled Again by The Who. It isn't as clean as I would like it to be, but I'm happy with it for now. Time to try something else!
April - Read How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy. It's all about creativity in general, not that I plan to write songs, but I may just be inspired sometime in the future...
April - Started learning the start of Who are You by The Who. It has 8 fills by Keith Moon in the first 2 minutes! Love it! I must be getting better, I was able to learn all the fills in one day. They aren't automatic yet, but I could read and play them. Progress!
May - Really hitting The Method in Drumeo hard. I'm enjoying working through all the grooves and fills focusing on playing the notes in the right order. It's not music, but it's fun!
May - I'm hitting the drums, making noise, playing in a physical way, but not with any feel. At least I recognize that now, so that's good. This is why I took up the drums--it's a physical activity, but once I can get my muscle memory going, I will be able to play with more nuance. I have a long way to go, but I'm ok with that. I'm having a great time sitting behind my drums and banging them hard.
June - The first time through the Method 3.x I worked to read the music and play the proper notes at a decent speed. This month I circled back and started over again and it turns out I have learned something. I can pick up the grooves much faster this time. My body remembers! Weird!
July - I'm still playing grooves and the fills, but I need to work on the transitions from groove to fills and back again. I suck at that.
Aug - I'm trying top play grooves without shouting 1-an-2-an-3-an-4-an. I'm trying to feel the repetitiveness of the groove and actually hear what I'm playing instead of my own counting!
Sept - Hired a contractor to start work on expanding my back shed into a drum room. It will be about 100 square feet with musical art on the walls and a television to watch Drumeo and Youtube videos and play at the same time. I'm looking forward to moving my drum out of my bedroom (and so is my wife, I'm sure).
Oct - Started a notebook with basic easy drumming songs I want to learn to play from notes: I love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett, Another One Bites the Dust and We will Rock you by Queen, Come Together by the Beatles, Girls just want to have Fun by Cindi Lauper, and a few more. For inspiration I end up my day's practice by playing one or more of these songs.
Oct - I'm working on the opening to We're an American Band. When I told my wife I was going try singing and drumming the song, she just laughed and laughed. She's right. I can't sing a lick. I aspire to be able to sing as well as William Shatner, that's how bad I am at singing.
Nov - I've been playing my bass drum heel up and burying the head. I don't think burying the head is that bad with electronic drums, but it seemed to be limiting my speed and control. My doubles and triplets felt weak. I watched a few bass drum technique vids on Drumeo and had an epiphany: I needed to strengthen my ankle and the best way to do that was to play heel down without burying the beater. I want to be able to play heel up or down whenever the song requires it.
Nov - Playing the same songs over the past month has enabled me to recognize other parts of the song than the drums. I learned that my drums sound much better when I'm in sync with the bass player. Who knew?! :-) I count that as progress with my newly developing sense of music!
Nov - Removed my "Sticks" nickname from my Drumeo profile. I feel like I haven't earned it. Rebranded myself just as David .F. -- I added a period before the F because David F. was already taken.
Dec - Doing bass drum exercises every day. Amazing how much stronger my ankle is now--which makes my speed faster also. I've improved, but I still have a lot of work to do. I can do repetitive grooves, but changing the beat causes me to lose it! I can start a beat with my right foot, but then when I start to play with my hands, my foot loses it! lol. Still work to do on independence.
Dec - I've improved enough to know how much I suck at drums. But that's progress in itself so I take pride in how bad I am now, hoping I will get better over time and I will be able to laugh at my sad attempts at keeping time and my hesitations between groove and fill and groove again. I'm still having fun, so I'd say my drumming practice is a success. :-)
Dec - I've given my notice at the college and this spring will be my last semester teaching Computer Programming and Problem-Solving to college freshmen. "I don't want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day." And soon I will be able to!
Dec - Decided I needed to organize my practice time to be more effective. Created a notebook with these sections: Warmup, Challenges, Method, Rudiments, Review, Songs. Ten minutes on each is an hour of practice. 15 minutes on each is an hour and a half. When I finish a section I turn to the next so that when I sit down next time I know exactly what I'm doing and can just start playing immediately. This seems to be working quite well for me and I've increased my practice time and my focus. Woo-hoo!
Dec - Looks like the drum room will be ready to rock in January. Looking forward to it!
Dec - A life-hack I adapted from academic research into the benefits accrued from self-congratulatory behavior: When I finish up a practice session I congratulate myself with a fist pump, and a hearty call of, "Rock and Roll!". It makes me smile every time. :-)
---- 2022---
Jan - My new drum room is awesome! Here is a link: My new drum room! I've already found areas I can improve by watching myself play. I need to relax each arm when they aren't playing. I wave the not-being-used stick around like it's a magic wand!
Jan - Submitted my first Student Focus video featuring a cymbal-heavy Crazy Eights from level one. I turned in the 14th take. Some of the other takes I messed up early and just kept going for the practice.
Jan - Here are some things I see from my Crazy Eights video:
Jan - Sharon gave me some great classes to watch with exercises to do to help improve my timing. I've a demon with the click track since then and am trying to improve my time-keeping. It's going okay, but I'm afraid, because of my lack of musical background, I may never be able to keep good time. I frequently start to go too fast and then lose the count. All I can do is keep trying and practicing and be patient. But its been two days and I haven't mastered it yet! Arrrg! :-)
Jan - I'm playing the drum kit open-handed as a right-handed drummer. I kept the ride cymbal on the right side so I can play on any normally set up kit--I'd just have to lower the high hat and move it a little farther away so I can strike it with my left hand. A drawback of this set up, or a benefit as I see it, is that both my right and left hands have to be able to play rhythm: my left on the high-hat and my right hand on the ride cymbal. I have to learn a new groove with both hands which probably takes a little longer than somebody set up with cross handed playing, but I hope the gain in 4-limb independence is worth it. Since I'm starting the drums brand new, I don't have any habits to overcome except for being right handed. I want to work my left hand more, and this open handed setup is letting me do that, although sometimes playing a new groove with one hand is easy but when I try the other hand it jerks around like I'm having seizure!
Jan - I use both hands on the snare, depending on where the rhythm is being played. I make the effort to play as much as I can with my left (weaker) hand. The cool thing is that now I'm practicing fast fills and when I need a quick 5 beats on the snare and it doesn't matter which hand I end up with I sometimes start with my left hand and sometimes with my right. It's a completely unconscious decision that I only notice after I've started playing it! Could I be on my way to ambidextrous playing?
Jan - Now that I have a dedicated drum room I'm averaging 2 hours of practice and playing a day. I aim for an hour before lunch and an hour after lunch. I can feel the extra time playing--I feel more comfortable behind the kit, but I'm also wearing myself out physically sometimes! Drumming is a good workout!
Jan - I wish I had taken up the drums years ago. I could have used a stress reliever when I was a Director of a stressful software company in San Francisco. Now I'm older and I have maybe ten or fifteen years left of active drumming left. I feel like I have no time to waste -- I want to keep practicing and playing until I can't do it any more. Every day is a gift and every day I can drum is a bonus. I may never get past beginner status, but that's okay. I'm having fun and I'm still improving. Life as a drummer is good!
Feb - I'm working on keeping time by using a click much of the time. Either I'm adrift in the time-space continuum or the click is speeding up and slowing down randomly. Sometimes a fast click is easy to do because the clicks seem so far apart, and at other times I can barely keep up! Subjective time is weird.
Feb - For fun I'm creating a board game called, "Total Musical Domination". Players get a manager, go on gigs, earn money, play in concerts, go on tour, go into the studio, and more. It's a cross between Monopoly, The Game of Life, and Trivial Pursuit. It took me a week to design it and create a prototype. My wife and I intended to play it for 15 minutes, but an hour later we realized how much time had passed. That's a good sign for a board game! I have a bunch of musical friends who want to be beta-testers so I guess I'll be having a party! I'm using an online game board company to produce the game--it will be ready for production in another month or so. I hope people enjoy playing it as much as I've enjoyed creating it!
Feb - Here is the Facebook page for my game: https://www.facebook.com/TMD.TotalMusicalDomination. This is a boardgame for music fans. Imagine hiring a manager, playing gigs and concerts, playing in clubs, going into the studio to record, releasing records, and going on tour. Fun for the whole family! (Musical themes, but no drugs or sex. LOL!)
Mar - The TMD game is on hold--with the world's attention on Ukraine, it is not the time to put out an entertainment product like a board game. I'll try putting it out in a month or two.
Mar - I listened to a Drumeo lesson and they mentioned the drum beat in 50 ways to leave your Lover by Paul Simon--so I immediately wrote lyrics for 50 ways to fire our Drummer. Now I'm having fun learning the drum beat while singing my own lyrics!
Mar - Found this: https://www.drumeo.com/laravel/public/members/loops to help practice on timing. This is a legacy page so I can't add it to my list so I'm putting a link here so I can get to it easily.
Apr - Working on left-foot high-hat independence and coordination. Up until now I've pretty much ignored my left foot. Until recently I felt like I was playing mechanically, but now I feel something different. My whole body is moving and grooving when I use my left foot in combination with my right. I'm excited to see where this goes. :-)
Apr - I've definitely improved over the past year. I can learn new grooves and fills in a sitting or two. But I don't feel like a musician yet. I think too much while playing. What should I do? Continue with The Method (3.4+) or do something else? I decided to start Jared's Independence made Easy lesson pack (IME) to try to become more 4-limbed and develop more independence. I can tell this would be a game changer if I can get this going. I'm on week two now and I think I'm getting better. I think. We'll see.
May - I'm definitely improving my coordination through Independence made Easy. I'm easily doing the beginner tasks and even the intermediate tasks are doable with some work. The advanced version of the exercises seem impossible! lol
June - My left foot's coordination is much better -- I can play the exercises in IME although physically hitting the drums at the right times is not the same as playing music!
July - I made the decision to move my ride cymbal from the right side to the left. Before now I've played the hi-hat with my left hand (open-handed playing), and the ride cymbal with my right hand. That old configuration, meant to encourage coordination on both hands, is holding me back from learning grooves as fast as I would like to. Now I can use the left hand to play both hi-hat and the Ride cymbal -- I can already see quicker progress in shifting from grooving on the hi-hat and then the Ride and back again. I still love to play open-handed and don't really understand why people would play cross-armed! :-)
Aug - Felt the need to start Drum Technique Made Easy to check out my drum technique. Turns out I can play all the beginning exercises and almost all the intermediate exercises and some of the advanced exercises in only a day or two instead of taking a week. Of course I'm practicing for 2 to 3 hours a day 7 days a week, so maybe I'm doing a week's worth of practice in a day or two. In any case, I'm happy I can see such improvement in my drumming from day to day.
Aug - I'm a beginner in some ways (playing to music, intitating and ending fills, keeping time, playing with other people), but in other ways I've improved to an intermediate level. I can play new grooves and patterns fairly easily now with all 4 limbs -- with only some spasming! :-) I'll just keep plugging along for several hours a day. I'm really looking forward to the new type of lessons Drumeo is starting in September. Lessons based on following along to music sounds like exactly what I need!
Sept - Hurt my left elbow -- old golfer's elbow that is now drummer's elbow. Dug out my elbow band from my long unused golf bag and, after starting to use it when playing, my elbow feels much better. I also ordered Maple drumsticks (less hard than hickory) and discovered they were a little bigger round than my old sticks and that I love them! My fingers are fairly long so the thicker stick just feels better. Live and learn!
Oct - Bought a 60's Jazz Bass Guitar and started learning to play. I can read regular music now!
Dec - Still practicing and playing both drums and bass guitar.
Jan - My new drum room is awesome! Here is a link: My new drum room! I've already found areas I can improve by watching myself play. I need to relax each arm when they aren't playing. I wave the not-being-used stick around like it's a magic wand!
Jan - Submitted my first Student Focus video featuring a cymbal-heavy Crazy Eights from level one. I turned in the 14th take. Some of the other takes I messed up early and just kept going for the practice.
- One take, early on, I nailed it all the way to the ending and then on the big finish I missed hitting the cymbal on a no-look cymbal hit--arrrrg! So close!
- On another take my right ear-plug came out and all I could hear was my stick hitting the rubber cymbal--I pretended I was on stage and had to keep going.
- In another take I noticed my ride cymbal's lug nutt was almost completely off and I kept playing as the ride cymbal became more and more loose--I just hoped it wouldn't fall completely off until I finished the song.
- Not surprisingly, I got better and better the more I played the song until I started to get tired and then I got sloppy.
- I learned a lot from videoing my performance and reviewing it. Here is my performance if you are interested: Crazy Eights
Jan - Here are some things I see from my Crazy Eights video:
- I need to relax my right arm between notes and stop waving it around like a crazy person.
- I'm muscling the high hat with my arm instead of using wrist and fingers. (But, would the Hulk play the drums with finesse? I don't think so.)
- I rushed the big finale because I lost count of the bars and where I was in the song. Definitely something I need to do better.
- My snare seems a little low, but it's as high as my eKit rack allows. If I lower my throne then I feel like I'm sitting too low for my leg angle to the kick drum. Maybe I'll try moving my snare to a snare stand, although I kind of like it where it is since I can't accidentially hit rim shots with it so low. Or am I just holding my hands too low? Beats me. That's why I'm doing the Student Focus thing. :-)
Jan - Sharon gave me some great classes to watch with exercises to do to help improve my timing. I've a demon with the click track since then and am trying to improve my time-keeping. It's going okay, but I'm afraid, because of my lack of musical background, I may never be able to keep good time. I frequently start to go too fast and then lose the count. All I can do is keep trying and practicing and be patient. But its been two days and I haven't mastered it yet! Arrrg! :-)
Jan - I'm playing the drum kit open-handed as a right-handed drummer. I kept the ride cymbal on the right side so I can play on any normally set up kit--I'd just have to lower the high hat and move it a little farther away so I can strike it with my left hand. A drawback of this set up, or a benefit as I see it, is that both my right and left hands have to be able to play rhythm: my left on the high-hat and my right hand on the ride cymbal. I have to learn a new groove with both hands which probably takes a little longer than somebody set up with cross handed playing, but I hope the gain in 4-limb independence is worth it. Since I'm starting the drums brand new, I don't have any habits to overcome except for being right handed. I want to work my left hand more, and this open handed setup is letting me do that, although sometimes playing a new groove with one hand is easy but when I try the other hand it jerks around like I'm having seizure!
Jan - I use both hands on the snare, depending on where the rhythm is being played. I make the effort to play as much as I can with my left (weaker) hand. The cool thing is that now I'm practicing fast fills and when I need a quick 5 beats on the snare and it doesn't matter which hand I end up with I sometimes start with my left hand and sometimes with my right. It's a completely unconscious decision that I only notice after I've started playing it! Could I be on my way to ambidextrous playing?
Jan - Now that I have a dedicated drum room I'm averaging 2 hours of practice and playing a day. I aim for an hour before lunch and an hour after lunch. I can feel the extra time playing--I feel more comfortable behind the kit, but I'm also wearing myself out physically sometimes! Drumming is a good workout!
Jan - I wish I had taken up the drums years ago. I could have used a stress reliever when I was a Director of a stressful software company in San Francisco. Now I'm older and I have maybe ten or fifteen years left of active drumming left. I feel like I have no time to waste -- I want to keep practicing and playing until I can't do it any more. Every day is a gift and every day I can drum is a bonus. I may never get past beginner status, but that's okay. I'm having fun and I'm still improving. Life as a drummer is good!
Feb - I'm working on keeping time by using a click much of the time. Either I'm adrift in the time-space continuum or the click is speeding up and slowing down randomly. Sometimes a fast click is easy to do because the clicks seem so far apart, and at other times I can barely keep up! Subjective time is weird.
Feb - For fun I'm creating a board game called, "Total Musical Domination". Players get a manager, go on gigs, earn money, play in concerts, go on tour, go into the studio, and more. It's a cross between Monopoly, The Game of Life, and Trivial Pursuit. It took me a week to design it and create a prototype. My wife and I intended to play it for 15 minutes, but an hour later we realized how much time had passed. That's a good sign for a board game! I have a bunch of musical friends who want to be beta-testers so I guess I'll be having a party! I'm using an online game board company to produce the game--it will be ready for production in another month or so. I hope people enjoy playing it as much as I've enjoyed creating it!
Feb - Here is the Facebook page for my game: https://www.facebook.com/TMD.TotalMusicalDomination. This is a boardgame for music fans. Imagine hiring a manager, playing gigs and concerts, playing in clubs, going into the studio to record, releasing records, and going on tour. Fun for the whole family! (Musical themes, but no drugs or sex. LOL!)
Mar - The TMD game is on hold--with the world's attention on Ukraine, it is not the time to put out an entertainment product like a board game. I'll try putting it out in a month or two.
Mar - I listened to a Drumeo lesson and they mentioned the drum beat in 50 ways to leave your Lover by Paul Simon--so I immediately wrote lyrics for 50 ways to fire our Drummer. Now I'm having fun learning the drum beat while singing my own lyrics!
Mar - Found this: https://www.drumeo.com/laravel/public/members/loops to help practice on timing. This is a legacy page so I can't add it to my list so I'm putting a link here so I can get to it easily.
Apr - Working on left-foot high-hat independence and coordination. Up until now I've pretty much ignored my left foot. Until recently I felt like I was playing mechanically, but now I feel something different. My whole body is moving and grooving when I use my left foot in combination with my right. I'm excited to see where this goes. :-)
Apr - I've definitely improved over the past year. I can learn new grooves and fills in a sitting or two. But I don't feel like a musician yet. I think too much while playing. What should I do? Continue with The Method (3.4+) or do something else? I decided to start Jared's Independence made Easy lesson pack (IME) to try to become more 4-limbed and develop more independence. I can tell this would be a game changer if I can get this going. I'm on week two now and I think I'm getting better. I think. We'll see.
May - I'm definitely improving my coordination through Independence made Easy. I'm easily doing the beginner tasks and even the intermediate tasks are doable with some work. The advanced version of the exercises seem impossible! lol
June - My left foot's coordination is much better -- I can play the exercises in IME although physically hitting the drums at the right times is not the same as playing music!
July - I made the decision to move my ride cymbal from the right side to the left. Before now I've played the hi-hat with my left hand (open-handed playing), and the ride cymbal with my right hand. That old configuration, meant to encourage coordination on both hands, is holding me back from learning grooves as fast as I would like to. Now I can use the left hand to play both hi-hat and the Ride cymbal -- I can already see quicker progress in shifting from grooving on the hi-hat and then the Ride and back again. I still love to play open-handed and don't really understand why people would play cross-armed! :-)
Aug - Felt the need to start Drum Technique Made Easy to check out my drum technique. Turns out I can play all the beginning exercises and almost all the intermediate exercises and some of the advanced exercises in only a day or two instead of taking a week. Of course I'm practicing for 2 to 3 hours a day 7 days a week, so maybe I'm doing a week's worth of practice in a day or two. In any case, I'm happy I can see such improvement in my drumming from day to day.
Aug - I'm a beginner in some ways (playing to music, intitating and ending fills, keeping time, playing with other people), but in other ways I've improved to an intermediate level. I can play new grooves and patterns fairly easily now with all 4 limbs -- with only some spasming! :-) I'll just keep plugging along for several hours a day. I'm really looking forward to the new type of lessons Drumeo is starting in September. Lessons based on following along to music sounds like exactly what I need!
Sept - Hurt my left elbow -- old golfer's elbow that is now drummer's elbow. Dug out my elbow band from my long unused golf bag and, after starting to use it when playing, my elbow feels much better. I also ordered Maple drumsticks (less hard than hickory) and discovered they were a little bigger round than my old sticks and that I love them! My fingers are fairly long so the thicker stick just feels better. Live and learn!
Oct - Bought a 60's Jazz Bass Guitar and started learning to play. I can read regular music now!
Dec - Still practicing and playing both drums and bass guitar.
---- 2023---
Jan - I hoped Musora would start a Basseo, but they didn't so I'm learning bass guitar from a different online course provider. I'm playing a variety of 12-bar blues and, like I hoped it would, I can feel my sense of time improving on the drums.
Feb - I'm having a blast playing songs without drums in drumeo. Who knew? I can play a bunch of songs by following the moving line over the sheet music. All that practice learning various grooves is really paying off. I'm starting to feel like I can call myself a real drummer!
Feb - In bass guitar, I've learned five 12-bar blues song fragments and a few full songs such as Imagine. I can also play a few famous bass guitar licks. Surprisingly, my hands are really working well on the fretboard and picking the strings. I had no idea I could do this, but being a member of drumeo for the past two years has given me the confidence to try it and to do it.
March - I submitted a video for student focus. The main advice was to relax when I'm playing. Easier said than done. I've always been tense, tight, anxious, and nervous. The way I got past that in my career was to take it up a notch. I've been called high energy, intense, and a bit much. I don't know if I can relax when playing the drums, but I'll give it a try.
April - I've started playing piano! Learning Bass Guitar encouraged me to learn some music theory which led me to playing the piano. Now I'm a member of Pianote also! Woo-hoo! Fun!
May - My focus on drumming now is becoming better at just basic grooves. More precise. More musical.
June - My main musical focus is now the bass guitar. I'm still making exponential progress on that instrument so it's still a lot of fun.
Dec - Still working on the Bass Guitar. I've joined the School of Rock and am playing with their band and taking a weekly lesson. I'm not good, but I'm getting better faster than I thought I would!
Jan - I hoped Musora would start a Basseo, but they didn't so I'm learning bass guitar from a different online course provider. I'm playing a variety of 12-bar blues and, like I hoped it would, I can feel my sense of time improving on the drums.
Feb - I'm having a blast playing songs without drums in drumeo. Who knew? I can play a bunch of songs by following the moving line over the sheet music. All that practice learning various grooves is really paying off. I'm starting to feel like I can call myself a real drummer!
Feb - In bass guitar, I've learned five 12-bar blues song fragments and a few full songs such as Imagine. I can also play a few famous bass guitar licks. Surprisingly, my hands are really working well on the fretboard and picking the strings. I had no idea I could do this, but being a member of drumeo for the past two years has given me the confidence to try it and to do it.
March - I submitted a video for student focus. The main advice was to relax when I'm playing. Easier said than done. I've always been tense, tight, anxious, and nervous. The way I got past that in my career was to take it up a notch. I've been called high energy, intense, and a bit much. I don't know if I can relax when playing the drums, but I'll give it a try.
April - I've started playing piano! Learning Bass Guitar encouraged me to learn some music theory which led me to playing the piano. Now I'm a member of Pianote also! Woo-hoo! Fun!
May - My focus on drumming now is becoming better at just basic grooves. More precise. More musical.
June - My main musical focus is now the bass guitar. I'm still making exponential progress on that instrument so it's still a lot of fun.
Dec - Still working on the Bass Guitar. I've joined the School of Rock and am playing with their band and taking a weekly lesson. I'm not good, but I'm getting better faster than I thought I would!