[drumming diary] Back In The Saddle

It's been a bad year for actually practicing my drums, but I think a lot of that had to do with external factors making me extremely unmotivated. If you've been reading the main blog, you know what I'm talking about.

As a result, I sat down at my practice kit a few weeks ago in order to kick off a new regimen of at least three days of drumming per week, and couldn't do shit. It was a little bit unnerving, but after shedding on just the fundamentals since then, I'm starting to get some chops back.

Not only that, I took another stab at the "three plus one" hand and foot combinations, only with eighth notes in the "off" hand as the ostinato. When I'm switched up to right hand/right foot, keeping the ride pattern on my left hand, there are some really peculiar blind spots that totally throw me for a loop. It may sound odd, but I'm sort of jazzed that there's a fairly simple concept that my body just refuses to do, because it's a pretty clear goal to work toward.

The next step, both with the three-plus-one and the paradiddle variations, is to start fucking with the ostinato. Since time immemorial, I've been doing these things against quarter notes, but the next step after simply bumping it up to eighth notes is to start experimenting with all the two- and three-note combinations.

We'll see how all of this newfound motivation affects Friday's gig.