I always like the turning over of one year to the next... 2010 brings about new resolutions, goals, and a renewed enthusiasm from me for this project!

I've been doing some more research, practicing a lot, and working on tons of other things which I should be sharing with you.  So, I will do so this year.

Best wishes to you with all of your goals and resolutions!

Last night I returned to the "Day 1" exercise and it was remarkably easier than the day before.  It's as if the exercise itself got into my head on Sunday night, and stayed in there practicing on its own for 24 hours, so when I tried it again it wasn't difficult.

Granted, I'm not up to the recommended tempo in the book just yet, but compared to my initial attempt last night's improvement was staggering.  This is encouraging and makes me even more excited to practice tonight.

I'm still unsure of what I'll do over the Thanksgiving holiday, since I'll be short on time and won't necessarily have access to a drum set every day.  I'll bring the practice pad and continue doing hand exercises, for sure, but I may have to substitute something else (reading, research, etc.) for the kit exercises.

I stuck to my plan last week and practiced each day for 45-60 minutes.  I spent most of my time continuing to work on sticking and full set warm-ups.  After seven solid days of much repetition, I am now very comfortable with the warm-up exercises and I have them almost completely memorized.

With twelve total warm-ups, I realize that I'm going to have to restrict myself to a minute or two per warm-up.  Otherwise I will continue to live in warm-up land forever, and I'm very eager to move on to the "fun stuff"!  The warm-ups do serve an important purpose, though, and even over the short course of seven days, I already notice a marked improvement in my consistency.

Last night I tackled the first official Exercise in the 30-Day Drum Workout.  Each day begins with a sticking-only exercise, followed by a full kit exercise that is based off of the pattern defined in the sticking routine.  I love this approach, as working on the basic stick-only exercise ingrains the pattern in your mind, preparing you for the next step which adds more.

The first exercise followed on the single-stroke roll theme found in the warm-ups, but added some interesting accents to various notes within each measure.  I found the exercise challenging enough (and one can always increase the tempo to add challenge) to keep me engaged, but not so overwhelming as to be daunting.  However, during the drum set portion of the exercise, I discovered a major weakness of mine that definitely needs work: my left foot.  The pattern had a hi-hat foot on each quarter note- which sounds simple, but with the bass drum hitting on different sixteenths of the beat, it's not so easy.  I had to slow the tempo waaaaaaaay down before all of my limbs would cooperate on this one.

I may spend another session on the Day 1 exercise before moving on to Day 2.  Baby steps!  I'm getting into the rhythm (ahhh... another pun... they're everywhere) of practicing every night and I'm really enjoying the extra time behind the kit.

As promised, I hopped on to the wagon this week and got back into the daily practice routine.

Following the instructions in one of my drum books (and the advice of many), I've been beginning each practice session with some standard hand warm-ups.  These primarily consist of repeating eighth notes on a drum or practice pad many, many times, in a variety of sticking patterns.

The first exercise, for example, instructs to do a single-stroke roll (R-L-R-L-R-L-R-L), beginning at 70 bpm, with full strokes, for three minutes straight.  Then you increase the tempo a little, etc., until you finally reach a tempo at which you can't keep the notes consistent sounding.

Observation:  70 bpm feels very, very, VERY slow when you're playing eighth notes with no accents.  And three minutes of hitting this humdrum pattern feels like forever.  At first, I found myself wondering, "Is it really necessary to begin at this tediously slow tempo?", however after forging through the exercises and cycling through tempo from slow to fast, I began to appreciate its value.  When playing through the range of tempos from min to max, the middle tempos are very easy to keep consistent.  However both the slow end and the fast end present challenges.  So, although it is boring at the time, it's good to force oneself to go through the full three minutes at 70 bpm to kick things off.

Added bonus: After about 30 seconds, my mind effortlessly wandered into a "zone", wherein I stopped thinking about the notes, but still noticed and adjusted things if any of them stood out.  It was almost a meditative state- Perhaps not ideal for my improvement as a drummer, but kind of nice for my general well-being.  :)

While playing at the slow, slow tempo I also paid very careful attention to my full strokes (particularly during the first go-through of this exercise).  The book I'm working from emphasizes to "play off the drum, not into the drum", encouraging the drummer to "drop" the stick and let it naturally rebound- not to use any effort to raise the stick back up.  During the dozens of iterations of tediously repeating full stroke after full stroke, I noticed that this technique comes quite natural with my right hand, but is not natural at all with my left hand.  In fact, I find it quite difficult, even when I'm really focusing on it.  I don't know if this is because right is my dominant hand, or if it's the result of years of throwing my left stick at the snare and purposely keeping it from rebounding so it doesn't interfere with my hi-hat or right hand/stick.  It's definitely something for me to work on.

The subsequent warm-ups were variations on a theme of single-stroke and double-stroke rolls, again at increasing tempo.  Unfortunately, I only got through three of them in the course of an hour, probably because of my severe/neurotic attention to acute detail for everything that was going on during the warm-ups.  I might be reading too much into what I'm doing, but I think it's okay until I get really comfortable with these exercises.  In the future I'd like to spend about 10-15 minutes warming up and then proceed to work on other things, hehe.  All in good time (pun intended)!

Just kidding. I would never be so bold as to imply something I did wrong was not my own responsibility!

Things have been really busy lately with the band and at work, and I seem to have let the DIP just kind of hang out in cyberspace, all alone.  That is not cool, was not my intention, and quite frankly I am ashamed that it's gotten to this point.

But, no sense in dwelling on the past.  Let's get back to the present.  How can I make sure I stay on track?

That's where you get to participate!  If you don't see any updates or progress, I want you to keep me in check.  Send a message, leave a comment, just (kindly) let me know I'm a slacker!  You've been very nice about encouraging me to do this and sending me tips, links, etc., and I appreciate it... But I also need to be held accountable when I don't do what I say I'm going to do.

I'll be getting back on the wagon this afternoon, doing some of the exercises I discussed before, and updating my practice log.  There, I said it!  And if I don't report back with results, you have the right to be upset.

On that note, I'll leave you with a little peek at what Sunspot's been up to.  Here's a song from our Halloween show at the Annex: