Hope you enjoy,
Daniel
Another rambling thought about practicing: someone (I forget who) commented about Matt Chamberlain when he was at North Texas State University. "While the rest of us were trying to play advanced co-ordination exercises and get into the 1:00 lab band, Matt was playing backbeats with a metronome." Now look at where Matt is! you might want to think about skills that might be required of you in the real world and focus your energy accordingly.
I had the good fortune to get to hang out with jazz trumpet player Bobby Shew for a couple of days back when I was in college. He has a lot to say about practice time and to this day a lot of his comments echo in my head every time I sit down to practice. Here are a few gems:
PRACTICE ON GOAL TIME, NOT CLOCK TIME
In college a lot of kids talk about the number of hours that they practice: "I practiced 6 hours yesterday!" "It only took me one hour to get that part down." "Next semester, I'm gonna free up my schedule so that I can practice 8 hours every day..." etc etc. Bobby Shew pointed out that being concerned with the clock doesn't accomplish anything. If you have goals and desires then you need to let those lead your practice schedule--not an arbitrary schedule.
If you can accomplish what you want/need in 1 hour that's fine. If it takes you 8 hours, that's fine too. In the real world, no one is keeping track. There are no medals given out for logging the most or the least hours in the practice room. Nobody asks how many hours you practiced back in 2007, they just tell you whether you are hired to play the gig or not.
Billy mentions above that he spent a lot of time practicing but it sounds like it was driven by his desire to play on the same level as his heroes. It doesn't sound like he was too concerned with punching a clock.
So if you want to get on goal time, you are going to have to feed your ears and your mind more than your eyes. It's hard to be passionate about exercise 37 on page 53 unless you really hear it (or imagine it) in an inspiring musical context. Listen to great music at every chance you get. Play with other great musicians as often as you can.
FORGET ABOUT BEING "SERIOUS" ABOUT PRACTICING
Bobby Shew said that when he was in school there were lots of aspiring classical trumpet players that would hear him playing jazz in the practice room. "Improvising is just goofing around," they would tell him. "That's not serious music." He told us that he never wanted to be serious. He always wanted music to be exciting and fun. He never wanted his practice time to feel serious but he always wanted it to be SINCERE.
Bobby Shew's point it in Navin's anecdote is very true. Moreover, the inside scoop on Matt Chamberlain speaks volumes.
I recall speaking briefly with a professor who did his perc. undergrad at Eastman when Steve Gadd was there. Allegedly, Steve would practice about eight hours a day with the metronome often set to about 40 bpms! His peers thought he was nuts for playing everything so slowly for such long periods of time, but his ability to establish a groove has never been doubted. Naturally, he practiced rudiments etc...but his employment history is due to his groove chop and not his ability to distribute a ratamacue around the drum set.
Steve Jordan may be among the most frequently hired drummers in the business. Why, becuase he can play a groove that can make an avarage song sound great and also because he plays different instruments and has consequently taught himself more about the inner workings of what it takes to produce a strong song. His keen sense of musical awareness combined with a really strong groove is what keeps him on the top of producers' phone lists.
Billy made a terrific point by indicating that listening was half the battle - music is like speaking a language...you must listen to others speak it in order to develop in your mind the types of sounds you want to produce. So listen and study a wide variety of styles, especially during times when you're in a practicing rut. Listen to more things that excite you and you'll be inspired to practice.
One of the others here suggested practicing piano. You will gain a much deeper understanding of what other players want in a drummer if you learn to play from their point of view. Further more, you will gain a greater understanding of the musical line and of composition by studying piano or guitar or even the vibes. You also become more marketable as a multi-percussionist. Jack Dejohnette, Peter Erskine, Phil Collins, Marvin Gaye (house drummer at Motown prior to Benny Benjamin) range in ability from working knowledge to down-right-dangerous on the piano.
The Matt Chamberlain/Steve Gadd references perhaps warrant the most thought because of what they've accomplished in their careers. Their ultimate chops are GROOVE and PERSONALITY. That's why they're hired as much as they are.
Personally, I often look to the three Steves...Gadd, Jordan and Ferrone. Why are they working so much in an age dominated by technical gymnasts and tradeshow "circus acts" (excluding Billy and a few others)? Because these guys, Keltner, Porcaro, Gordon, Blaine, Jackson, Hawkins, Palmer etc...groove/d they're a$$es off no matter what the tempo or style.
Devote more time to what drummer Maurice White (founder of Earth Wind & Fire and drummer on Fantella Bass' "Rescue Me") refers to as the Almighty Groove because that's the one chop that song writers and band leaders look for most in a drummer. It's as Billy said in his first DVD, "at the audition/s, the guy that didn't play the fill will likely get the gig". It's hard not to invest the majority of your time into technique because your ego will want differently but you have to "fight the groove-dragon" a bit and make technique the means to and end rather than THE end by devoting more time to practicing everything slowly. Gadd is quoted as saying "it's not where you place the notes, it's how you manage the space in between the notes that matters. Like learning to wait for beat '1'". To master that space, you MUST practice slowly...and do it often.
