Drumming - WHAT to practice and HOW to improve

If you're a drummer, and you feel STUCK - let me help you:

In my experience, there's a consistent journey that most drummers go on. I've witnessed it in myself and in 99% of my students.

It goes something like this:

1. You play the drums for the first time and fall in love with the instrument

2. You experience an exciting phase in the beginning where drumming is simply fun. There's no agenda - drumming brings you joy and it fills your spare time.

3. You discover other drummers that impress you. You watch their performances, trying to figure out what they're playing and how they're playing it - and this begins to influence your own style.

Then something happens.

Time passes. Your technical skills improve by some measurable amount, but you begin to feel like you're not making big enough leaps forward.

This feeling compounds.

You feel like you're not where you ought to be as a drummer.

You run out of creative ideas and feel plateaued. You're playing the same ideas over and over.

Drumming is no longer the fun activity it used to be. It now serves to remind you that you're not good enough.

So you give up. Or resign to the fact that you won't ever be good enough.
I cannot tell you how many drummers I've spoken to who are stuck here.

Most of them.

Allow me to dispel this for you.

Firstly, you're listening to fiction. The story you're telling yourself about how little progress you're making is only in your head. This little voice loves to drag us down, telling us what we're not capable or worthy of.

It's 100% fiction.

How to stop this vicious cycle - create a diary to measure your progress - whether you're measuring a clean tempo increase (1 BPM is progress), comfort with a new pattern, being able to play a new song (or part of a song!)... write all of that stuff down next to 'week 1'.

Do the same next week. And the following week, and so on.

Now that you have a system to witness progress, do you still feel like you're not improving?

How about the feeling that you're not good enough?

Good enough for who? You ONLY need to please yourself and hold yourself to your own standards and goals.

Stop looking at other drummers as competition - there will always be another player out there with a set of different abilities to you, some of which are only achievable due to their unique genetics... If you don't believe this, ask yourself: with enough training on the track, could you beat Usain Bolt in a race? Or does he have a genetic advantage?

(Fact: he has a genetic advantage)

Instead of focusing on what others can do, and the idea that others are judging you for what you currently can't do - focus inward.

Learn to identify your next step as a drummer by looking at your own playing. Not by comparing your playing to the skills of others.

What does this do? Over time, it develops your unique sound. Your signature. Your personality as a player.

All of those well-known drummers that you look up to, whose playing is instantly recognizable... it develops THAT.

And if your goal is to make a living from drumming, or at least to stand out in the crowd so that you're chosen for the gig, this is the most crucial thing to practice.

If you're still feeling stuck after hearing this, then reach out to me. If I can help you, I will.

[akimbo.]

+1 for Tomas Haake being a huge inspiration for getting into drumming

[rafaelchavarria]

Man, that first 1:30 hit me hard...Im 47 and that is exactly how I feel...which is why, even though I started playing like 25 years ago but just for fun, not professionally, I recently started lessons again locally with a great drummer here, but also watching all these videos just to practice different stuff and learn something, anything, from beasts like Jay...

[robertmajor]

Inspiring, felt like a therapy session in the best way possible. Appreciated.

[JFBscustomshop]

I love that you are promoting the use of performance improvement science for drumming. Measuring your interventions over time is a tried and true method to understand your performance and progress.

[thisisflojo]

I'm not a drummer but this could apply to all the musicians out there. Thanks man, really love your advice

[cloudwithbright]

Just what I was looking for, thanks soo much man really appreciate it.

[Boxerharvey]

Soooo needed this video, I’ve been stuck in a rut for a while with my playing and I’m forever comparing myself to every drummer I see and feel like I will never be as good as them.

Thanks for this, keep up the awesome work on this channel and I’m looking forward to the new Tesseract album dropping.

[Dreonthedrums]

That's how I feel right now. I'm a church drummer bur I don't plan on giving up

[eatower]

This and your other vids are refining my training and practice more than anything else so far, much appreciated. Can't wait to finally see you and the boys live on Friday. Keep killing it man.

[roloduarte]

Thank you for this great and wise advice.

[Jacko]

I've been doing this for a couple years now, and it does help. Just be patience and you can learn difficult passages of music.

[dave-d]

Yo Jay. Good vibes. Thanks for re-aligning the focus. Ya beaut.

[kevinfromdevon]

You were one of the drummers that have inspired me to buy a kit and seeing you behind an e kit inspired me to look at e kits. I bought an Alesis command and it is a good starting point. It took me a week to start getting to grips with things. But now I am 4 weeks in and I am doing ok. Here is a funny story. I ate a huge amount of shrooms and started playing to Altered state. I wasn't focused on your drum parts or paying much attention to what I was doing, but I appeared to just feel the vibe of the different tracks and flow pretty well. Just autopilot doing my own thing. I hope one day I can be in that flow state without psychedelics 😆

[RichardRed]

Excelente consejo que das Jay, estoy muy de acuerdo contigo, por mas estancado que pueda parecer que estas, siempre hay mas para desarrollar, es un mundo literal, infinito.. siempre hay para sacar provecho bien sea, practicando canciones o ejercicios, pero eso solo depende de la persona que quiera seguir por mas y es el que realmente va a tener un resultado positivo, sino queda solo en la queja y en la frustración, pero para los resultados hay que tomar acción si o si... Saludos!

[LightsOfSkadi]

I am looking for some good examples of fills to use in my own music. Do you have any tutorial of sheet for fills?

[ashwinmogral]

Do you have any recommendations of fills, grooves and rudiments to practice, like the basics for prog drumming? I used to take online classes but kinda got bored during the 2 month mark, mainly because I never ended up learning any songs through the course and they had different instructors for different genres, which was kinda a lot to take in. My aim is to start playing on tracks, so right now I’m taking a song breaking it down and trying to play it out. While also improving my rudiments.

[xTheTrommeL]

I had this phase and this (and other reasons) made me stop playing for about 4 years. Last year I started playing again and since then I have improved so much already I am excited to see where I can get. However, I can´t stop wondering where I could be if I didn´t take that 4 year pause

[boomerwithatumor]

please cover pineal gland optics brother! i gotta at least try and ask

[Thisguylovesfish]

Wow... 0:00 - 1:11 is EXACTLY where I am at and how I feel lol