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.