Erm...by that you mean you go take a cigarette break, right? 


IMO, if you haven't done so already, you really need to sit down with Kenny Werner's book, Effortless Mastery.


While I'm certainly not as "advanced" as many here at the Cafe, I have found that if anything, it gets tougher for me to improve, the more advanced I get as a player - or at least, it seems that way sometimes.  It's the old law of diminishing returns.  I don't know if it has to do with my age, how advanced I am as a player (whatever level that may be), or what, but the sense of "instant gratification" that we drummers experience when we achieve some benchmark of growth as a player ("Hey!  I can finally play a samba groove for more than sixteen measures before it falls apart!") doesn't seem to come as easily for me now, compared to when I was in high school.

Probably the most valuable lesson that I've learned is that learning itself doesn't always take place within prescribed time frames, and we don't always see improvement from day to day.  Sometimes, we don't play as well on Tuesday as we did on Monday - it happens.  Sometimes, it takes days or weeks of practice, with no visible improvement in our playing, before ("overnight") the improvement makes itself evident in our playing.  Being aware of this helped me to cultivate the patience and determination I need to overcome those times when I "hit the wall" in my deveopment.


Good for her!  That's the "teacher as coach" aspect of teaching, knowing when the student might need a bit of a push.  I have to do that with my students sometimes. 

Whenever I start feeling that way, I become the king of reductionism. I reduce everything -- EVERYTHING -- to its most simple form.

For example, it has taken me forever ... 10 years ... to get my left foot to the point where I can play the hi hats the way I first imagined they could be played. I wanted to free up my right hand, and the only way to do that was to be able to play the "chicks" and the "splashes" with my left foot. I'd learn one thing and think it was starting to come around, then I would permutate to the next obvious challenge and it would be like I was learning it from scratch. The problem really wasn't being able to play it. I could do it by itself. But incorporating it into my normal playing was like severing my brain in half. Both sides would fall apart.

After years and years of this, I finally decided that the problem was I just didn't have enough basic strength and conditioning in my left foot to try all the stuff I was attempting. So I just went straight back to basics and played eighth notes until I puked. I played them at very slow tempos, making sure every "chick" was articulated and at desired volume (loud, because that's half the challenge). Then I would move the tempo bar up and it become something of an anaerobic exercise. *lightbulb* I needed to find a more relaxed way of playing. I moved my butt check a little to the left of the throne, experimented with various foot techniques you might use on the bass drum pedal, and worked it up to speed.

Man, that made all the difference.

It's the same way I learned rudiments and hybrid rudiments. I had the basic 40 down pat and clean in about a year. The next gaggle of hybrids did not come as easily, and flam drags and flam accent roles were my arch nemisis for four years. I simply could not pull them off. I finally broke it down and found I had never practiced the clean exchange from double-stroke to grace note leading into the flam. So I practiced (as accurately as I could at very slow tempos) doing a double stroke leading into a grace note on each hand. After doing this perfectly a hundred times, I would practice adding the accent in the flam a hundred times. I probably had to do this a couple hours a day for three months before everything started coming into place.

Mostly, I would never stop practicing until whatever I was attempting to accomplish, big or small, was played perfectly many, many times.

I don't know how other people practice, and I think this kind of reductionism doesn't work for everyone. Some people need to hear the whole thing to feel like it's a real accomplishment. But I do know that you should feel proud and accomplished for every little thing you learn in each practice session. And short of some great mental breakthrough, it's the only way I know to forge ahead!

Good topic, Smogg--I'm kinda going thru this too. And I get the same thing from my teacher--"DON'T SAY THAT WORD!!!"  So now I say, "I can't do that yet."  
 My issue as of late has been a perfectionist attitude: as I improve I expect more of myself, and as a result I get more frustrated w/ smaller mistakes.
 However, I don't try to "control" the sticks the way I'm reading from your post. I think of it like improvisation and let things happen. Oftentimes I get a very nice result if I don't think about what I'm doing. Makes me think of speaking German: I understand the language pretty well, but when it comes to speaking it, I have to: decide what I want to say, translate it to German, and then say it. But when you get to the point that you just understand the language enough to respond properly w/o thinking about how to respond, then there's no break in the communication process.
 Slowing things down also works well for me. I always think of the recent thread about "I can't play slow!" so I work on getting things right at a slow tempo.
 Finally, I'm always careful to stop when I get something right, and leave it and go on to something else. Without fail, when I come back to that thing the next day, I'm at least as good as when I worked on that particular thing the day before, and oftentimes a bit better at it for having given myself some "soak time." I find that if I continue to drill on something, I'll start making mistakes at it and then start going downhill w/ it. Better for me if I have 2 shorter practices during the day.

robyn

My high school chemistry teacher swore up and down the human brain could only absorb 20 minutes of new information before tuning everything out. He believed you study for 20 minutes and take 20 minute breaks.

I should note I failed chemistry and never would have made it through one semester of college with that pattern, but it might be interesting to try for someone who has a lot of time and an interest to experiment.

I'm not sure what this technique is called, but I have a buddy who was a Marine Corps drummer (jazz band, show band, etc).  This is the way he explained their musical training.  When it came to playing the swing beat, for instance, the drummers would sit in a room with a hihat and a ride cymbal and play the swing beat and hats on 2/4 over and over at various tempos.  Eventually, it becomes second nature.  I've tried this on a much smaller scale for other grooves, and find that it sort of works for me.  However, I don't have 8 hours a day to sit around to drive a beat into my subconcious like this 

Also, are you sure it was 20 minutes that your teacher stated?  I've had countless professors, teachers etc. state that 50 minutes was the limit, which is why most educators recommend taking a break on the hour.  Even in my career field now, when I attend training, they break every 50 minutes for 10 to get a refresher.

I have that same attitude sometimes, but it's still fun to play in the end. Every so often I have to force myself into playing with a metronome or do exercises.

When I was talking about one of my favorite drummers (Will Goodyear from the first Between the Buried and Me album), one of my friends told me "Well, to be that you good have to start early." I have no doubt that the man did start playing earlier than I did, but that doesn't mean I can't try to emulate some of his work.

Honestly, I think that what it really comes down to is how dedicated you are to getting better. I haven't gotten much better because I only have sporadic lessons and never really have a strict practice session, and I know this. With practice, though, I know I could improve.