Practicing the Right Things

How many times have you said to yourself “I'm going to go practice” only to get to your drums and play the same thing you've been playing all year. Any “playing” is good whether it's with you band or just by yourself. But to truly get better at our skills we need to practice things that genuinely make us better drummers. By playing the same thing all the time we only get better at playing…………………….. that.

Most of the time, practicing the things we know we need to work on is unmovitvating, to say the least and the biggest reason we don't work on the things we know we need too. I mean, knowing that you can't do something you want to execute really takes its toll on your self-esteem, and that's where the motivation problem comes in. Most questions I get center around playing fast. Well, the reason a lot of drummers can't play as fast as they want comes down to the “weaker” side and lack of control over it. Most of us are able to play faster with our dominant side but do little to get our weaker side up to par. With this in mind I make up exercises for myself, focusing on the weaknesses in my drumming. In my case, left hand and left foot.

O.k. so lets say your left side is what needs work. How are you going to “practice” making that side better? Well, let's start simple. Say, play a basic rock beat with your right foot on kick (1 and 3). And right hand on snare (2 and 4) this leaves the left side free to “practice”. Now what we want to do is to work out muscle memory and to train the left side to work independently from the right side. A couple of my ideas for doing this are:

(While keeping the “rock beat” (2 and 4) with you right side and playing the hi hat with your left hand and foot)

1. Alternating single strokes between left hand and left foot.
2. Alternating double strokes between left hand and left foot.
3. Alternating paradiddles between left hand and left foot.
4. Alternating 4 beats left hand/ 4 beats left foot.


They are really simple exercises but extremely hard to execute. Play these really slow at first to train the sides of the body to work against each other before trying them at full force. It will make it easier for you to become comfortable playing them as well.

The right side in these exercises are doing nothing at all really but keeping time. The left side is doing all the “practicing”. By isolating the right and left side you are really focusing on the weakness of your drumming. Doing these exercises will help many aspects of your playing, including speed, balance and accuracy. As I said, I like to work on my own exercises and not pick something out of a book. You and only you know what you need to work on and it's up to you to bring that to the practice room. If you really want to get crazy…try setting your kit up backwards, leading with your weaker side. I know, it's like starting over from scratch, but you won't believe the overall improvement you'll make in just a short time period. Good luck!