D.I.P. Kickoff!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Drummer Improvement Program (D.I.P.) has officially begun!

I'm on a mission to improve my skills as a drummer.  In order to ensure this happens and keep myself on track, I'm dedicating myself to the following:  For a time period of (at least) six months, beginning October 1st 2009, I will spend a portion of every single day working on my education/proficiency as a drummer.

I'll use this web site to record my progress, but more importantly to report back things I've learned along the way.  I'm starting this out with little of it planned; my "plan" is to develop things as I go along each day.  So it may seem a bit chaotic in the beginning, but hopefully that will change as time goes by.  That also applies to the web site design- for now, I just want a place to post my thoughts; I'll pretty it up later!

Okay... Here we go!

Yesterday was October 1st, the first day of the D.I.P. and ironically, I was unable to play drums at all because I recently pulled a muscle in my shoulder.  D'OH!  Not to worry, though, I had plenty of other work to do to get myself rolling on this.

For starters, I listened to a drumming podcast appropriately titled "Drummer Talk".  I've been subscribed to this podcast for a while, but lately I've fallen many episodes behind because I spend most of my time listening to tech podcasts.  I'm pretty sure I'll have to cut back on my diet of tech talk to make room for more drum talk- but that's okay!

I chose to listen to the 08/13/2009 episode, because the topic of it was Rehearsing and I thought it might give me some ideas for planning out my drumming rehearsal regimen (currently it is not very structured and I'd like to change that).  The discussion ended up being more about rehearsing with a group than as an individual, but the hosts did spend the majority of the show talking about drumming, as expected.  They also brought up some interesting points concerning group practice, one of which is the physical positioning of band members during rehearsal - typically facing each other.  This is incongruent with the way the band stands during performance on stage.  As a result, the band doesn't rehearse communication in the same manner in which they use it at show time.

In addition to listening to Drummer Talk, I prepared a backpack of drummer goodies for this weekend, since Sunspot will be out of town and I won't have accePacked up & ready to do the DIP anywhere!ss to my practice kit.  I dug through a big stack of drum set sheet music, books, and old Modern Drummer magazines and selected one of the magazines to read in the van while we head North.  I also threw in a couple of practice books to peruse, a general "rock drumming" book, a notepad for jotting down notes/ideas, and a practice pad and some sticks in case I have some downtime and a place where I won't drive people around me insane.

Tonight I will be playing a show in Mosinee, WI... hopefully my shoulder will survive the 4 hour performance!  :o