Bart has a short article up on The Fine Art of Practice that's a good start.

outside of telling you what i do, [stretch 10 minutes, hands 15 minutes, rudiment rundown 5 minutes, free-form play 10 minutes, exercises my teachers give me 2 hours, free-form play 15 minutes, rest, band stuff 20 minutes, rest... repeat, depending on how much time i have], this area here:


makes me think this is what's tripping you up. i may be reading into it, but it sounds like you are noodling... playing with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, with no real focus.

rather than lay out a whole bunch of things you want to get better at, lay out 2 or 3 things you want to focus on. it could be your timekeeping, a certain groove, a particular sticking combination, a double bass pattern... whatever.

stick to those things and make a focused effort practicing them, whether you spend 20 minutes on one thing or 2 hours.

when you feel you've made some progress [and it may not happen right away], see if you can chain the things you've practiced together and make some music out of it. this will help you see what you've learned, put it in context, and see how well you 'own' it.

again, things take time...


regarding your other question about maintaining what you've learned while learning new stuff:

you're going to reach a point where you will be able to do certain things very well. that's just a fact. if you keep repeating something, it will become second nature.so don't kill yourself practicing that all over again if you already know it and do it well. think about taking the new stuff you learn and putting it in the context of the old stuff you know instead. because you're probably not going to forget much -- especially if you're young! and if you do, you'll just need a quick refresher.

in general, i think it's good to do a 'holistic' practice -- work on hands, grooves, overall technique, stickings, songs, etc. but i think you have to make each of those areas a focused practice, and make some gains in each area. the areas that you don't make headway in are the ones you have to go back to.

the other thing i think is important is to take rests during practice. you get to points of diminished return, where more practice doesn't serve a purpose. know when to chill and give you brain and body time to absorb everything. i used to go through long stretches of intense practice. sometimes it worked, but lots of times i wound up totally shot or worse, injured.

good luck, and when you get those double bass chops happenin', gimme a shout. i want to learn that!

I stretch everything out for a good 5-10 minutes.

Sit down at the kit and do some hand warm ups and foot warm ups.

Then I will groove out a lot of the time working on double bass and fills and grooves, etc.

I am trying to get into more of a non-jam approach for most sessions and have one day where I just solo it out.

I have fast single strokes, but I can only hold them for so long.
Doubles are ok but I want to be able to do them faster and more precise
My triplets are good on one part of the kit, but when im working on trips around the kit it's not solid, and I want get faster with those around the kit.

On the foot side my single strokes are fast, and I can keep them steady for a good 30 seconds- a minute but I do want to work on better control, the control I have is good, but sometimes i slip up and lose that foot always in one place not moving around on the pedal for maybe a couple strokes around the 30 second mark, etc.

Doubles need improvement.

Triplets I can hold out at a decent tempo for a good 30 seconds, but again, I would like to be able to have the control and hold them out longer.

And then I want to learn sticking patterns, and different grooves from different genres, and work on 4 way cordination.

I don't think these are too much to take on, I was just trying to find the best way to structure it, and thanks for the ideas so far.

If you want to hear some of my drum work from about a year ago listen to www.myspace.com/texasisonfire my old band.

The last three songs I did the drumming on, I quit the band 5 months before they broke up and on the first recording they had a different drummer.