I remember when I started practicing the drums, I was very very bad. What I mean by that is that not only I didn’t know anything and was very bad at playing, I also discovered that I was not good at all at learning the craft. “Me Donkey” kind of thing. Any exercise I tried would take me an awful long time to understand, then to play, then to make it flow, then to put it into a musical context, then to play it in a band, then on stage, then on recording. Hours and hours piled up on top of each other to get the simplest concept I see my students get in five minutes flat. Isn’t that spit-in-the-neck-kick-in-the-crotch fantastic?
You already know the end of the story since I’m here as a drum and piano teacher. It means I didn’t give up. “Me Donkey, but me stubborn Donkey! Very stubborn!”
As I was desperately trying to mold my mind and body to the constraint of the drum kit, I sometimes got some light filtering through the misery. I’ll explain. Let’s suppose I was working on a pretty fast bass-drum pattern in shuffle, something that obliged me to stomp my foot repeatedly. I did feel the strain and pain of the exercise for sure, but I did get a nice surprise as I could use my speed and control in Samba. That was a glimpse into me being fluent with the right foot.
Let’s suppose (I’ll give you two “For instance” today, I’m feeling generous, it’s the Christmas season), let’s suppose that I worked like a mad man on reading. I would read the syncopation in all sorts of Jazz concepts. Then I would discover that I could use the same reading skills for Rock, or Shuffle, or Latin, or triplet accents. I was getting a huge freebee with the reading.
After many years of experiencing glimpses of all sorts, I am happy to report that they all came together to make me the drummer I am today. Do I get nostalgic and look fondly at the struggles of yesteryears? No. I don’t like pain. And not being gifted for music, an art I absolutely love, is a wicked form of torture, let me tell you.
But I wanted to impart with all the people studying an instrument that yes, you do get glimpses and that, as you keep practicing, those glimpses come faster and more often. Do not despair, you will get to learn the instrument at a pretty good clip. The joy is the journey, they say. I hanged on to that sentence like a man lost at sea clings to a dead piece of wood.
