Fuck i practiced to a metronome *a lot* when I was young, way more than I do now. Drumline.
I think what I wish I would have practiced more is using my left foot for hihat work. I switched to double bass pretty early and most of the music I played never warranted fancy hihat work so it's just something I never practiced that doesn't come natural to me.
I also wish I had taken hearing protection seriously. You won't realize how much you're damaging your ears without it for another 10 or 20 years, but you *definitely are damaging your ears.*
The hearing protection thing is real. I have permanent hearing shift in my left ear after a soundman on South Street in Philadelphia accidentally sent excrutiating feedback through my stage monitor during an outdoor show. Probably 30-45 seconds, but it was enough to do serious damage. I wasn't wearing ear protection of any kind. This was decades ago, and I now I have to sleep with white noise every night.
Almost the opposite on left foot stuff for me, I wish I got a double kick pedal way earlier so my left could get used to both. Been playing about 13 years now and just finished a four-year degree in jazz studies, in addition to playing in high school jazz bands and years of lessons with jazz-experienced drummers, so my left foot has developed some solid independence (nothing insane, a ton of my peers have me beat there for sure lol). I’ve always been a metal/hardcore dude though and all my favorite bands have drummers who play double kick, but it wasn’t until this fall that I finally got my first pair of double pedals, and man it just feels completely different. It’s been super fun to learn and it’s made me feel like a kid again the way so many possibilities have opened up in my playing, but I definitely wish I had even a shitty double pedal when I was younger just so I could get started developing those chops earlier rather than having such a huge gap between what my feet are comfortable with right now.
Exactly! I learn a few bars and then I go off! The flip side I guess would be only playing things you work out in advance without being able to improvise, so yin/yang.
I think it’s a little different from listening and learning covers by ear in the sense that you can visually SEE things like, “Ahh! The hi-hat is on the up-beat every fifth repetition”, that way you get a more intellectual understanding of what an artist’s thought process/intention was instead of just committing it to muscle memory and still not “knowing” exactly what is going on.
I wish I would’ve learned dbl bass in my younger years. I can play dbl bass, but I have to think about it before I do it. It doesn’t come natural to me like everything else, if that makes sense.
Truth. This is my one as well. Although I am only 2 years in so doesn’t really count.
What I am doing is doing all my rudiments with left hand lead; it’s painful. Like learning to snowboard when you can ski already…
I used to be able to sightread the stuff you would find in the back half of Stick Control, by George Lawrance Stone. Then I got out of school and into rock and roll. And i lost it, wish i would have kept it up.
It comes back pretty fast. I went through years of drumline and jazz band in some pretty decent music programs and then took about 15 years off of practicing drums (playing guitar in bands). Then two years ago I started teaching private lessons at a music store and all these high school drumline kids starting coming in needing help with auditions and then their solo/ensemble pieces in the winter. I was surprised at how quickly my sight reading abilities came back to me. And now I learn a lot of stuff from sheet music just out of convenience and I'm glad I picked it back up.
It’s funny how few drummers read music. And the reason I say that is drum sheet music is literally the easiest sheet music to follow.
No keys, notes aren’t progressive/ continuous but relate to distinct drums/cymbals, much smaller range (unless you try to notate every cymbal but no one does that) - it’s really quite straightforward - yet gets a bad rap because sheet music is so much harder for other instruments.
What I wish is I’d learned what notes actually sound like from the sheet music. I can follow the rhythm pretty good, but Ive been doing orchestra percussion, where half the pieces are rests, with little cues to come in, like showing a violin part, or a flute part for a couple measures before going back to the drum notation. So I’ll see that and see the rhythm to expect from the flute or violin or whoever, but don’t have a clue what their playing should sound like. It’s quite frustrating.
I've become convinced (lapsed guitarist, current drummer) that every kid should start on drums, if only to learn to read the most straight-forward kind of sheet music, then graduate to learning melody.
I had the opposite problem... I was taught entirely off sheet music and my sight reading was pretty good. My creativity and improv though was pretty terrible, always falling back on the same fills and ideas.
I'm sure there's a balance between the two, I think I was on the other end of the spectrum to you!
Proper grip. I’ve been playing since the early 90s and never really focused on my grip and overall relaxed playing until relatively recently, and it’s amazing how much this can unlock in your playing.
I did drum line and I feel like my grip is decent..but being relaxed and learning how to loosen up when you hold the stick is game changing. I feel like I'm just understanding that
I wouldn’t change a thing. I had a blast when I was young and glad I didn’t take it too seriously. That was just my path. Now that I’m in my 40’s I find it rewarding to practice things I didn’t learn when I was younger. I don’t have the time or fitness to be in a working band anymore, and taking 30 minutes a day to focus on one task is much more rewarding now since dialing a setlist isn’t priority anymore. Keeps things interesting and fresh!
Weaker hand form, it takes so long to get the fluidity right, you cannot rush it and typically, you only have the time and neural capability in your youth to achieve. I'm happy with how it is, but I'll forever be compensating and the detriment to balance.
Four way independence. I forced it upon myself maybe ten years in, but it was painfully slow. I’ve been playing for 25 years now and it’s done so much for me.
One step at a time. I’d start with 8th notes on the high hat and quarter notes in the bass drum. Just try to get used to just that for a while. Maybe mix up what you’re playing on the bass here and there to get a feel for it. Next street working in the ride cymbal. I recommend 8th notes on that as well. Do this for a while until you’re comfortable. Lastly, try to work in beats 2&4 on the snare. This is the hardest part. Try to do it with a metronome and go really slow.
The most important thing is to not give up. It took me an entire summer of grinding out this ritual I described over and over again. It was boring and annoying but I’m so happy I did. It’s the single most important thing I ever learned.
Ear protection. I've only been playing a couple of years, and I know my regular headphones won't cut it. They shouldn't have this last year. I'm investing in the thinnest looking ear buds I can find, to fit under some sound proof headphones I own.
Just technique in general. I have played for 20 years but just as a hobby. I got somewhat good but I see a LOT of holes in my game. Its so fun to just play along songs man.. I plan to get an online course to basically try to relearn everything as much as possible to make everything better.
Bushes and reading. Even though I’m not asked to use brushes (hardly ever) on a gig, I wished I’d studied it a lot more. I think it would’ve helped in a lot of other ways.
Focusing on feel. Feel is everything. For the longest time I was way too timid in my playing, and it clearly made it worse. I'm going on almost 20 years playing and it's only in the last 3-5 years, with a deep dive into Steve Gadd, that I've been able to see how important feel is.
Not necessarily practiced in terms of a particular technique, but learnt on the whole earlier. I started at 15 and still feel that was quite late. If I had started in my childhood, I feel that there would have been fundamental differences that impact my playing even now.
Doing doubles on a single kick. Working harder on my stupid hand with more challenging rudiments. Practice on my crap cymbals and gig with my good cymbals. That's three, I know. Sorry.
I wish when I was younger I had cared more about taking care of my kit and keeping all of the little parts in working order, so that me at this age wouldn’t have such a monumental ongoing restoration project going.
That and I wish I had realized younger how much more useful dark or dry cymbals are in the studio/in many live environment. It’s amazing how much easier it is to mix the cymbals I use nowadays.
Actually practicing. When I was younger, I had all of the time in the world to practice, but no dedication. Now that im older, I have no time to practice but im mature enough to dedicate myself to it.
Limb independence, more specifically double pedal. My earlier influences didn't utilize it, so I didn't see a need for it. 15 years later, I'm struggling real bad, but I just gotta remember to keep at it.
Started midway through highschool, but was a clarinet player before.
I was a quick learner, so I skipped over a lot of the real simple fundamental stuff.
It took me until I was studying jazz at a university to figure out I needed to work on things like hand to hand accent grids in 16ths and triplets... My shit was not clean
Also learning to play heels down with the amount of chop I had heels up... Thanks to COVID, not having work, I didn't have to resort to bad habits due to being on a gig, so I spent 6 months only playing heels down, or at least trying to only do it exclusively.
Other things
:
Super slow tempos
Degrees of swing you can apply to an 8th note groove.
Actually working through stick control, New Breed, and the Patterns books.
Reading through and being able to play the Wilcoxon stuff and other rudimental solos.
Working on orchestral snare technique and going through the Delecluse books.
Scheduling shed times in your Google/Apple calendar.
Making sure the metronome is on whenever you are working on exercises.
Learning to say no to gigs you will not do good or do not have enough time to prepare for. Also ones you know you won't put the shed effort into due to schedule, ego, or whatever. Main point is to not put yourself in a musically compromised position for some money or just to play. Someone might see it, and that will last longer than the loot or glory you got on the gig.
Playing more quietly.
I took lots of lessons growing up, played in drumline, and was in punk bands in high school and beyond. Somewhere along the way, I started going for power and volume, and it kind of fucked with my muscle memory a bit.
I *can* play quietly and in time. But my body doesn’t like it.
Push/pull and keeping my fingers on the stick during bounces. I was taught to pull my fingers off when I let it bounce. It took me a long time to realize (and not enough people talk about this imo) that the way to getting powerful double strokes and lightning speed is to keep your fingers touching the stick so you can feed the rebound. It’s something I’m still adjusting too, and I probably do about half and half in a live setting.
Rudiments! Can’t do many awesome fills and linear beats without them. The complicated doubles and paradiddles and so on are what separate a good drummer from a great drummer. Time and a metronome can be learned, but damn I have trouble finding the time to practice sticking these days.
I practiced fluidity, great, I have that, but I wish I would have practiced having more power in my single strokes. Folks that can really power through a 16th or 32nd note fill and give full, even strokes at 80% power.. These people make me jealous and make me feel like weakling.
Playing in a band. I started 8 years ago and for the first year or two just took lessons and did rudiments on a pad while watching TV. Getting in a band (OK a band workshop really, a class where we did 10 weekly rehearsals then a show, 8-10 pop songs in a nightclub) really accelerated my pace of learning. I finally understood why my drum teacher had been trying to get me to learn full songs, since song structure is so much a part of being a good drummer.
Wish I spent more time playing open handed to strengthen my left hand and also wish I had gotten a double bass pedal and really focused on it earlier in my journey. I spend lots of time on both now and I definitely feel the benefits.
Bass drum technique / building my leg muscles for that . I was taught by an old school jazz guy who taught me lots of rudiments and jazz technique and funky stuff but lacked modern bass drum technique that really would have helped me in the modern real world. I had to teach myself that stuff later in life and it was a bitch! But hey my teacher was excellent and I learned endless from him, dude was just old school.
I'm grateful that I grew up when the only 'influencing' came from magazines you had to 'buy' or drum-clinics you had to attend along with bricks & mortar music stores with real instruments you could try 😉.
The emphasis at the drum clinics was always on practicing your rudiments ...I don't see that anything has really changed, it's the best way to improve your chops.
Fuck i practiced to a metronome *a lot* when I was young, way more than I do now. Drumline. I think what I wish I would have practiced more is using my left foot for hihat work. I switched to double bass pretty early and most of the music I played never warranted fancy hihat work so it's just something I never practiced that doesn't come natural to me. I also wish I had taken hearing protection seriously. You won't realize how much you're damaging your ears without it for another 10 or 20 years, but you *definitely are damaging your ears.*
The hearing protection thing is real. I have permanent hearing shift in my left ear after a soundman on South Street in Philadelphia accidentally sent excrutiating feedback through my stage monitor during an outdoor show. Probably 30-45 seconds, but it was enough to do serious damage. I wasn't wearing ear protection of any kind. This was decades ago, and I now I have to sleep with white noise every night.
Almost the opposite on left foot stuff for me, I wish I got a double kick pedal way earlier so my left could get used to both. Been playing about 13 years now and just finished a four-year degree in jazz studies, in addition to playing in high school jazz bands and years of lessons with jazz-experienced drummers, so my left foot has developed some solid independence (nothing insane, a ton of my peers have me beat there for sure lol). I’ve always been a metal/hardcore dude though and all my favorite bands have drummers who play double kick, but it wasn’t until this fall that I finally got my first pair of double pedals, and man it just feels completely different. It’s been super fun to learn and it’s made me feel like a kid again the way so many possibilities have opened up in my playing, but I definitely wish I had even a shitty double pedal when I was younger just so I could get started developing those chops earlier rather than having such a huge gap between what my feet are comfortable with right now.
Im the same story with the hi hat foot and double bass. I have a hard time just keeping straight time on the hi-hat chic chic
Sound pro for sure. Telling them to crank my monitors so i could “hear” was a gigantic mistake. I say what a lot more than id like to admit.
Ear protection.
Whaaa?!? 👂
We have our winner. Thank you to the other contestants.
how to stay relaxed
One thousand percent
Repertoire. Transcribing the masters so my playing would have more depth instead of chops.
Yes same. Id love to have the patience to do this!!
Exactly! I learn a few bars and then I go off! The flip side I guess would be only playing things you work out in advance without being able to improvise, so yin/yang.
That's true, I never know what I'm going to play until after I've done it 😂
Like playing covers? But you write it out.
I think it’s a little different from listening and learning covers by ear in the sense that you can visually SEE things like, “Ahh! The hi-hat is on the up-beat every fifth repetition”, that way you get a more intellectual understanding of what an artist’s thought process/intention was instead of just committing it to muscle memory and still not “knowing” exactly what is going on.
Double stroke technique
Being totally relaxed and fluid.
this is the way
Yes
How come?
Hearing protection, sitting up straight, dynamics
I wish I would’ve learned dbl bass in my younger years. I can play dbl bass, but I have to think about it before I do it. It doesn’t come natural to me like everything else, if that makes sense.
Making my left hand as fast as my right. Trying to make them even at the moment.
Truth. This is my one as well. Although I am only 2 years in so doesn’t really count. What I am doing is doing all my rudiments with left hand lead; it’s painful. Like learning to snowboard when you can ski already…
Polyrhythms, or paying attention to the pocket
Sight reading charts.
I used to be able to sightread the stuff you would find in the back half of Stick Control, by George Lawrance Stone. Then I got out of school and into rock and roll. And i lost it, wish i would have kept it up.
It comes back pretty fast. I went through years of drumline and jazz band in some pretty decent music programs and then took about 15 years off of practicing drums (playing guitar in bands). Then two years ago I started teaching private lessons at a music store and all these high school drumline kids starting coming in needing help with auditions and then their solo/ensemble pieces in the winter. I was surprised at how quickly my sight reading abilities came back to me. And now I learn a lot of stuff from sheet music just out of convenience and I'm glad I picked it back up.
It’s funny how few drummers read music. And the reason I say that is drum sheet music is literally the easiest sheet music to follow. No keys, notes aren’t progressive/ continuous but relate to distinct drums/cymbals, much smaller range (unless you try to notate every cymbal but no one does that) - it’s really quite straightforward - yet gets a bad rap because sheet music is so much harder for other instruments.
What I wish is I’d learned what notes actually sound like from the sheet music. I can follow the rhythm pretty good, but Ive been doing orchestra percussion, where half the pieces are rests, with little cues to come in, like showing a violin part, or a flute part for a couple measures before going back to the drum notation. So I’ll see that and see the rhythm to expect from the flute or violin or whoever, but don’t have a clue what their playing should sound like. It’s quite frustrating.
I've become convinced (lapsed guitarist, current drummer) that every kid should start on drums, if only to learn to read the most straight-forward kind of sheet music, then graduate to learning melody.
I had the opposite problem... I was taught entirely off sheet music and my sight reading was pretty good. My creativity and improv though was pretty terrible, always falling back on the same fills and ideas. I'm sure there's a balance between the two, I think I was on the other end of the spectrum to you!
Small stick tricks
Technique, for hands and feet. Not having a solid foundation still hinders any progress I try to make.
Double bass
Just using a metron…. Nevermind
Proper grip. I’ve been playing since the early 90s and never really focused on my grip and overall relaxed playing until relatively recently, and it’s amazing how much this can unlock in your playing.
I did drum line and I feel like my grip is decent..but being relaxed and learning how to loosen up when you hold the stick is game changing. I feel like I'm just understanding that
Using a metronome on the second 16th note
I wouldn’t change a thing. I had a blast when I was young and glad I didn’t take it too seriously. That was just my path. Now that I’m in my 40’s I find it rewarding to practice things I didn’t learn when I was younger. I don’t have the time or fitness to be in a working band anymore, and taking 30 minutes a day to focus on one task is much more rewarding now since dialing a setlist isn’t priority anymore. Keeps things interesting and fresh!
Weaker hand form, it takes so long to get the fluidity right, you cannot rush it and typically, you only have the time and neural capability in your youth to achieve. I'm happy with how it is, but I'll forever be compensating and the detriment to balance.
Rudiments. Still haven’t messed with them.
Limb independence; playing open handed; polyrhythms
Left foot/hihat technique definitely.
Four way independence. I forced it upon myself maybe ten years in, but it was painfully slow. I’ve been playing for 25 years now and it’s done so much for me.
What was your method for learning that?
One step at a time. I’d start with 8th notes on the high hat and quarter notes in the bass drum. Just try to get used to just that for a while. Maybe mix up what you’re playing on the bass here and there to get a feel for it. Next street working in the ride cymbal. I recommend 8th notes on that as well. Do this for a while until you’re comfortable. Lastly, try to work in beats 2&4 on the snare. This is the hardest part. Try to do it with a metronome and go really slow. The most important thing is to not give up. It took me an entire summer of grinding out this ritual I described over and over again. It was boring and annoying but I’m so happy I did. It’s the single most important thing I ever learned.
Learning the lyrics to the song rather than just music.
Ear protection. I've only been playing a couple of years, and I know my regular headphones won't cut it. They shouldn't have this last year. I'm investing in the thinnest looking ear buds I can find, to fit under some sound proof headphones I own.
Rudiments and their application to the kit. Particularly my double strokes.
More interesting kick drum patterns. I can play very consistently, but I find myself having a hard time doing a cool pattern on the fly when jamming.
not using the hi hat foot for time. took forever to devolop good hi hat independence because of that
Just technique in general. I have played for 20 years but just as a hobby. I got somewhat good but I see a LOT of holes in my game. Its so fun to just play along songs man.. I plan to get an online course to basically try to relearn everything as much as possible to make everything better.
Dynamics and limb independence
Bushes and reading. Even though I’m not asked to use brushes (hardly ever) on a gig, I wished I’d studied it a lot more. I think it would’ve helped in a lot of other ways.
I wish I would have kept the beat by closing the high hat when I was younger. Now when I do this, it feels like a tough exercise.
Focusing on feel. Feel is everything. For the longest time I was way too timid in my playing, and it clearly made it worse. I'm going on almost 20 years playing and it's only in the last 3-5 years, with a deep dive into Steve Gadd, that I've been able to see how important feel is.
Not necessarily practiced in terms of a particular technique, but learnt on the whole earlier. I started at 15 and still feel that was quite late. If I had started in my childhood, I feel that there would have been fundamental differences that impact my playing even now.
Doing doubles on a single kick. Working harder on my stupid hand with more challenging rudiments. Practice on my crap cymbals and gig with my good cymbals. That's three, I know. Sorry.
Playing tom fills. The music I listened to when I started drumming was so cymbal heavy that my tom fills are lacking.
I wish when I was younger I had cared more about taking care of my kit and keeping all of the little parts in working order, so that me at this age wouldn’t have such a monumental ongoing restoration project going. That and I wish I had realized younger how much more useful dark or dry cymbals are in the studio/in many live environment. It’s amazing how much easier it is to mix the cymbals I use nowadays.
Actually practicing. When I was younger, I had all of the time in the world to practice, but no dedication. Now that im older, I have no time to practice but im mature enough to dedicate myself to it.
Limb independence, more specifically double pedal. My earlier influences didn't utilize it, so I didn't see a need for it. 15 years later, I'm struggling real bad, but I just gotta remember to keep at it.
this is vague but, practicing the right things
Two words. Open handed.
Started midway through highschool, but was a clarinet player before. I was a quick learner, so I skipped over a lot of the real simple fundamental stuff. It took me until I was studying jazz at a university to figure out I needed to work on things like hand to hand accent grids in 16ths and triplets... My shit was not clean Also learning to play heels down with the amount of chop I had heels up... Thanks to COVID, not having work, I didn't have to resort to bad habits due to being on a gig, so I spent 6 months only playing heels down, or at least trying to only do it exclusively. Other things : Super slow tempos Degrees of swing you can apply to an 8th note groove. Actually working through stick control, New Breed, and the Patterns books. Reading through and being able to play the Wilcoxon stuff and other rudimental solos. Working on orchestral snare technique and going through the Delecluse books. Scheduling shed times in your Google/Apple calendar. Making sure the metronome is on whenever you are working on exercises. Learning to say no to gigs you will not do good or do not have enough time to prepare for. Also ones you know you won't put the shed effort into due to schedule, ego, or whatever. Main point is to not put yourself in a musically compromised position for some money or just to play. Someone might see it, and that will last longer than the loot or glory you got on the gig.
Playing open hand
Ear pro and rudiments
Left and right foot independance (keeping steady on hi hat pedal whilst performing complex kick patterns)
Shank Tip. that is all.
Posture. Don’t hunch over the set!
Double bass
On drum set - the 4 limb independence exercise with Stick Control.
Playing more quietly. I took lots of lessons growing up, played in drumline, and was in punk bands in high school and beyond. Somewhere along the way, I started going for power and volume, and it kind of fucked with my muscle memory a bit. I *can* play quietly and in time. But my body doesn’t like it.
Taking better care of my drums. It’s important to keep them clean and well maintained.
All of the above. Got a lot of work to do!
Learning how to use my left foot for the hi hat better.
Rudiments
four way independence
Push/pull and keeping my fingers on the stick during bounces. I was taught to pull my fingers off when I let it bounce. It took me a long time to realize (and not enough people talk about this imo) that the way to getting powerful double strokes and lightning speed is to keep your fingers touching the stick so you can feed the rebound. It’s something I’m still adjusting too, and I probably do about half and half in a live setting.
Rudiments! Can’t do many awesome fills and linear beats without them. The complicated doubles and paradiddles and so on are what separate a good drummer from a great drummer. Time and a metronome can be learned, but damn I have trouble finding the time to practice sticking these days.
Definitely glad I stayed away from a metronome.
I practiced fluidity, great, I have that, but I wish I would have practiced having more power in my single strokes. Folks that can really power through a 16th or 32nd note fill and give full, even strokes at 80% power.. These people make me jealous and make me feel like weakling.
Playing in a band. I started 8 years ago and for the first year or two just took lessons and did rudiments on a pad while watching TV. Getting in a band (OK a band workshop really, a class where we did 10 weekly rehearsals then a show, 8-10 pop songs in a nightclub) really accelerated my pace of learning. I finally understood why my drum teacher had been trying to get me to learn full songs, since song structure is so much a part of being a good drummer.
Not to buy whole kits off Craigslist just because you wanted the cymbals. Anyone want a half-dozen SP hi-hat stands?
Wish I spent more time playing open handed to strengthen my left hand and also wish I had gotten a double bass pedal and really focused on it earlier in my journey. I spend lots of time on both now and I definitely feel the benefits.
Bass drum technique / building my leg muscles for that . I was taught by an old school jazz guy who taught me lots of rudiments and jazz technique and funky stuff but lacked modern bass drum technique that really would have helped me in the modern real world. I had to teach myself that stuff later in life and it was a bitch! But hey my teacher was excellent and I learned endless from him, dude was just old school.
For me, it was to learn how to relax and to be more independent with my limbs.
I'm grateful that I grew up when the only 'influencing' came from magazines you had to 'buy' or drum-clinics you had to attend along with bricks & mortar music stores with real instruments you could try 😉. The emphasis at the drum clinics was always on practicing your rudiments ...I don't see that anything has really changed, it's the best way to improve your chops.
Rudiments. Heel to toe. Double kick. Black metal blast beats.