How to Develop Practice Habits
When I was younger, I would always marvel at the astounding abilities of my favorite drummers and dreamed of being able to play with the confidence, fluidity, and musicality of the pros. As with all skills, there’s only one tried and true path to mastery: practice.
Whether it’s musicians, athletes, or artists, we’ve all heard the answer to the question, “How did you get so good?” Practice. A lot of practice. It’s such a simple concept. If you do something a lot, you generally get pretty good at whatever that thing is, right? But playing the drums, or any instrument, requires the development of many skills, each of which requires practice. The more you think about it, you may realize that simply “practicing” the drums isn’t as straight forward as playing a lot. So how does someone practice practicing?
As I mentioned in our last blog post about comparing private drum lessons vs. online tutorials, I think the most valuable thing I got from years of private instruction is learning how to practice. There are so many drummers that sit down and play along with their favorite music for hours, but never progress past a certain point because they lack the necessary tools to take their skills to the next level.
Simply put, practicing the drums is playing with the intention to improve. That’s a pretty wide definition and leaves some room for interpretation. Since playing an instrument requires multiple skills, we can establish certain categories of practice, and then explore how to develop habits to improve each category.
The Practice Hierarchy
In my own playing and practice, I like to think of things in the following broad categories: technique, vocabulary, and ear training. Each category overlaps with the others and it’s possible to practice more than one (or all three) at the same time. But the hardest part is turning practice into a habit and something that you WANT to do.
Technique
Image by Fiona Art
Technique can refer to many things in drumming, but specifically includes how we hold and control the sticks, hit the drums, and keep time. Too many drummers neglect their technique, which ultimately stunts growth and could lead to injury (particularly tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome). But a total beginner drum student can develop solid technique with only a pair of sticks, a practice pad, and as little as 5 - 10 minutes of focused practice a day.
If you’re just starting out, the best thing you can do for yourself is to make sure you hold the sticks properly and play with a relaxed grip. Throw the sticks at the pad instead of hammering them down. They should pivot in your fulcrum (the point where you pinch the stick between your thumb and index/middle finger) and bounce back up if done properly. Getting the feel for the appropriate amount of pressure to place on your grip and how to allow the sticks to bounce back requires lots of repetition and trial and error. Ideally, you’ll take some drum lessons under the guidance of a professional to make sure you’re doing things properly. But the real key is to practice enough days in a row that it becomes a habit, even if it’s only a few minutes a day. A few minutes a day will yield better results than a two-hour practice session once a week, but any amount of practice is better than no practice at all.
As you gain better control over the sticks, you’ll start accessing more advanced forms of technique. The fundamentals will get baked into muscle memory, allowing you to focus more on things such as rebound strokes, timekeeping, endurance, and speed. Good technique is often the barrier to more advanced drumming. Establishing a solid foundation is crucial since everything moving forward stems from your ability to get the sticks to behave the way you want them to. If you’re able to play with smooth, relaxed movements, your specific goals and tastes will determine what exactly to focus on next.
Vocabulary
That technique of yours that you spent so much time developing doesn’t do much good without some vocabulary to back it up. Vocabulary includes rudiments, sticking patterns, and grooves; it’s the “what” behind drumming, whereas technique is the “how.”
For a total beginner, learning vocabulary consists of learning basic rudiments and some simple beats (if a drum set is available). Taking drum lessons is the best way to know specifically which rudiments to begin with, but I usually start my students with the most basic patterns: single strokes, double strokes, and a few paradiddle variations. Just like before, devoting 5 - 10 minutes a day to memorizing a new rudiment or pattern is enough to encode patterns into longterm and muscle memory. Ideally, you’ll also pay careful attention to your technique as you play through rudiments and patterns.
For more advanced players, vocabulary takes the form of grooves and combinations that require the use of all limbs to perform. Certain concepts, patterns, and styles of music require a higher level of coordination and control so some things may feel “off limits” until your technique further improves. Ultimately, good technique grants access to a wider set of vocabulary.
Ear Training
While physically playing the drums is obviously important, we also need to train our ears to listen to music more critically, which ultimately grants the ability to learn music by ear, and helps improve musical sensibilities (what to play vs. what to avoid playing in a certain setting). Ear training is something that will naturally develop to some degree as a consequence of practicing technique and vocabulary, but identifying patterns by sound is a skill on its own.
Thankfully, there are lots of common threads involved with drumming that we can use to make educated guesses when it comes to learning parts by ear. Learning the fundamentals of a few different styles can give you access to playing a surprising amount of music. The most basic rock grooves are the foundation of thousands of songs. A basic swing pattern between the ride cymbal and hihats is enough to play along with many classic jazz standards. Understanding some of the basic elements of different styles of music makes it easier to listen for them in recordings and videos.
The next time you sit down to try to learn something by ear, try to listen for individual parts of the drum set instead of listening for the drums as a whole. What’s the bass drum playing? How about the snare? What’s the hihat pattern? Listening for individual sounds, coupled with your knowledge of drumming, it’s possible to reverse engineer practically any recording you hear. To practice, try to analyze and learn simple beats from bands like AC/DC, The Beatles, or the White Stripes. You may be surprised to find how similar some beats are between each band!
As for learning the form of a song by ear, we also want to be able to listen to everything else surrounding the drums (all the other instruments in the band). Learning to take cues from other instruments or vocal parts is incredibly helpful for keeping yourself oriented in a song. When I’m playing along with a recording, I often try to listen to everything else EXCEPT the drums. That extends to playing live with a band, too. I primarily listen to the other musicians on stage and then make adjustments to my volume and intensity to better blend in and support the group. We don’t want to be a selfish drummer!
As your technique improves and your vocabulary expands, you begin memorizing what certain patterns and grooves sound like. Pretty soon, you’ll start recognizing them in the music you listen to, making learning specific parts by ear much easier. All of the skills mentioned above are tightly intermingled - you can’t master one without the support of the others!
Scaling Up
Nobody woke up one day and said, “Starting today, I’m going to practice for 8 hours a day every single day.” Practice is its own skill to develop. It’s mostly a matter of discovering the ways you best learn. The more regularly you practice, the longer you’ll be able to practice in a given session since you’ll likely have a larger amount of material to select from, and the technique to facilitate playing for potentially hours at a time (including some breaks) without damaging your hands and arms. Ideally, you’ll also learn to focus for longer periods of time before mental fatigue sets in. But it all stems from those 5 - 10 minute daily practice sessions. After a month or two, they might develop into 15 - 20 minute routines, or 20 - 30 minute routines. Before you know it, you’re practicing an hour every day out of habit.
However, most people can’t devote their entire lives to drumming. Everyone needs to scale their practice habits to their individual situation. Life circumstances may render daily hour-long practice sessions impossible, but practice can be segmented over the course of a day. Maybe 10 minutes of technique practice before work, 5 minutes of vocabulary practice on a lunch break, and 15 minutes of focused listening just before bed becomes your practice routine. That’s still 30 minutes a day - not bad! Fit in what you can, when you can.
Fair Warning...
You’ll encounter days where you DO NOT WANT to practice. Those days are rough, but developing and maintaining a habit requires discipline. No professional drummer got to where they are without pushing through those rough days. There are also some days where anything you play just feels kind of bad. THAT IS NORMAL. I still occasionally have “off” days where nothing flows out the way I hear it in my head, or my hands move faster than my brain can keep up with. It’s frustrating in the moment, but the next practice session almost always feels much better. And of course, leading a healthy lifestyle consisting of eating well, staying hydrated, and sleeping enough (all much easier said than done) will keep your brain and body in peak drumming condition.
By practicing regularly, you should start to develop a sort of positive feedback loop. For me, the feeling following the success of learning something new motivates me to continue pushing my own limits. I constantly feel a sense of competition against myself, which I use as motivation to perpetuate sharpening my skills. And the best part is, it’s impossible to lose! There is always room for improvement. But just because that mindset works for me, doesn’t mean it’ll work the same for you. You’ll need to find your own driving force through, well, practice. A lot of practice.
Learning to play an instrument is a lifelong endeavor that ultimately comes down to gaining better control of your mind and body. Taking drum lessons near Malden from a professional is the best way to learn how to practice with proper technique, which will help you improve faster and get more enjoyment out of playing sooner. Schedule a trial lesson at Loudlands Music Lab to get closer to your goals!