You've Got Time To Practise (part 2)

Practice is an investment. An investment of time.
Time invested improves your time, hopefully.

Personally I like to get the maximum return on the minimum investment.

Just like with money.

On the investment of time one of the most interesting responses came from a particularly talented and driven student who had made it his aim to complete 10,000 hours of practice in order to achieve his desired level of expertise. My student was not alone in adopting this ever more popular theory of attainment of expertise through extraordinary focus and commitment.

This 10,000 hour rule is generally ascribed to writer Malcolm Gladwell and it is the key tenet of his 2008 book 'Outliers', which profiles a cross section of studies in extraordinary achievement. The most often repeated quote in the context of the 10,000 hour rule is as follows;

“In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours” (John Lennon)

Gladwell then goes on the make the connection between the Beatles' marathon stage sets in Germany to their maturity and success.

Uh oh. 
Problem.

10,000 hours didn't work for Pete Best.

As everyone knows, Best was unceremoniously dumped from the Beatles just as they were on the cusp of fame as producer George Martin felt that his playing was not of an appropriate standard for the newly signed band. Best's successor Ringo Starr had just a single two hour rehearsal with the band prior to his debut performance in the late Summer of 1962.

You know the rest.

A lot of good 10,000 hours did for poor old Pete, and the case can absolutely be made that the Beatles' initial  success probably hinged more on a couple of afternoons spent under the scrutiny of George Martin than any amount of hours spent playing the night spots of the Reeperbhan.

So the 10,000 hour rule although appealing and headline grabbing falls at an early fence. Whatever it was about Best's playing that George Martin disliked, all those hours of playing had made him really, really good at it.

It's worth bearing in mind that if you travel 6,000 miles from London you will get to Hollywood, but only if you head in the right direction.

You could just as easily travel 6,000 miles around the M25 and end up exactly where you started, just older and the worse for wear.

This shattering conclusion raises a number of important points which hark back to part 1 of this post.
What to practice, when to do it and perhaps most importantly of all, why? Time Well Spent?

I get asked questions all the time by my students, at clinics, drum shows and similar industry events and via social media. I'll always endeavour to take the time to answer, and to do so as truthfully as possible. Thankfully this kind of attitude is bordering on universally prevalent among my industry colleagues.

It wasn't always like this however. I remember my late father telling me of a meeting with a popular British modern jazz drummer of the late 1940's called Norman Burns. Eager to know how the visiting big shot had developed certain areas of his playing my Dad was fobbed off with

"Practice, man, practice".

Consequently I have always felt it is incumbent upon us to help and inspire our fellow musicians. Put your insecurity to one side. 

A drummer I admired a great deal, the great Buddy Rich could be notoriously obtuse about his extraordinary musical gifts, but in the short lived British publication Musicians Only he did talk briefly about his 'whole hand' approach to stick technique, which makes an awful lot of sense if you read and then watch some classic video of his playing with this additional insight in mind.

One of the most frequently occurring questions is how do you warm up before a gig. The short answer is I don't. I arrive at the venue in shape and ready to play. You won't find me sitting in the wings with a practice pad. Continuity is far more important. In a perfect world my warm up for tonight's gig is yesterday's gig, and tonight is the warm up for tomorrow. Given the unpredictability of the industry it's not as easy as that though, but playing with records, drum-less backing tracks and such can keep you on top of your game.

A noted USA drum star cut an innocent questioner to pieces at a UK clinic some years ago when he responded to a question something along these lines;

"If you don't put in a least six hours every day you're never going to make it!!".

Absolute complete and utter nonsense.

Also you need to be wise to what motivates much of this in the first place.

Money.

Specifically, your money.

Beware the free webinar about succeeding in the music industry, sooner or later there will be a 'limited offer for the first hundred subscribers'.

The motivational statement to guilt trip you into practising more stuff, and more worryingly raising false levels of expectation will sooner or later steer you in the direction of a book/DVD package and that oh-so tempting, shiny 'buy now' button.

More than ever we are bombarded by epigram and aphorism from the upper echelons of drummer world, guilt tripping us into being diligent, hard working players. 

Let's face it, there have never been more drum tutor books on the market. Next week there will be several more. Very few of them are saying a whole lot that hasn't been said before. In this day and age no one writes drum books to make the world a better place.

That said, there are a great many books out there that are worth every penny. Here's a by no means definitive list:

Stick Control for the Snare Drummer (George Lawrence Stone)
Progressive Steps to Syncopation (Ted Reed)
The Complete Drummer's Vocabulary as Taught by Alan Dawson (John Ramsay)
The Art of Bop Drumming (John Riley)
Brazilian Co ordination for Drumset (Maria Martinez)
Afro Cuban Co ordination for Drumset (Maria Martinez)
Patterns Volume 3, Time Functioning (Gary Chaffee)
Groove Essentials 1.0 The Play Along (Tommy Igoe)
Advanced Funk Studies (Rick Latham)
Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer (Jim Chapin). 

There. That ought to keep you busy for the time being.

Also high ranking is not knowing what to practise.

If in doubt just put the metronome on; a different tempo every day, and keep time in different styles, improvise or whatever. That's a great way of coming back to the instrument after a break and way more valuable than playing slow double strokes and gradually accelerating.

Remember also to practise spontaneity, I know it sounds counter intuitive, but it's a skill we all need on stage, in the rehearsal room and the studio.

The best thing of all that you can practice is thinking for yourself and developing the quiet confidence of a master. Listen to everything and everybody but be your own arbiter and don't merely follow the crowd. Case in point when a well known drummer said in a couple of interviews in the mid 80's the he practised at 40 bpm, drummers all over the world suddenly turned their metronome down to super slow, irrespective of whether this approach had any relevance to their specific needs as players.  Beware the wisdom of crowds, try to avoid slavish, unquestioning adherence to popular trends.


As for Pete Best  is he better than you? Truthfully probably not. He had a relatively undistinguished, minor music career entirely predicated upon having being dumped by the fab four. A career which would not have been afforded him had it not been for his brief association with arguably the most important band in the history of popular music. You could be forgiven for thinking that he is the unluckiest man in the history of showbusiness-right place, right time, wrong guy. 

Alternatively maybe he actually made the best of his talent and saw the advantage which is hidden in adversity, and as someone who made very little impact in the industry of any description until well past age 40 I'll be going into more detail on this subject in a future post.


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