Source
r/drums•
Locavore

Four months?

Hi!

I was looking for some advice! I actually have about four months until I leave to join the military and am unemployed and am not going to school. I will not be leaving for four months. Thing is I have a goal. I would really like to be a proficient jazz drummer/marching drummer. I know both of those are completely different beasts to tackle, but I figured I could start with becoming a proficient marching drummer and then taking that to a kit and then learning the separation of limbs in order to jazz it up.''

Any recommendations on books and or practice routines, Or just advice on how to efficiently use my time?

I LITERALLY HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD.

Posted Jan 18, 2012, 5:56 AM UTC

313
EriktheRed•

I'd recommend practicing out of Stone's Stick Control and Reed's Syncopation.

5
propellerphant•

Both of these. All day every day. Look up some systems online for doing syncopation, namely pg 39 and the next few I want to say (whatever the classic ones are I don't remember off the top of my head). Basically you can do a million things with those few pages. Keep swing time on the ride and play the written figure on the snare, then move it to the bass drum, then the hi hat. Then play 8ths on the snare and quarters on the bass, and vice versa. Do the same between snare/hats and bass/hats. Then play the written figure on the bass drum and fill in the "empty" 8th note triplets on the snare as ghost notes. It goes on and on...

1
Tiki_Lamp•

This.

1
LocavoreOP•

I will also check out these books too!

1
[deleted]•

Joel Rothman's Basic Drumming has a list of 40 international drum rudiments which include a whole bunch of marching stuff you can practise. I don't really have a huge interest in doing actual marching type stuff, but I practised that a bunch and it helped with my jazz chops.

Syncopation, as EriktheRed mentioned, is a massive resource for stuff to practise; you could spend years on that one book alone. Another great jazz book is The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley.

1
LocavoreOP•

Thanks for the advice! I will check out those books soon.

2
skesisfunk•

I've heard it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill. If you define proficient as 80% of mastery and your accumulation of knowledge is approximately linear then you would need to practice about 333 days straight. Looks like your out of luck, but by all means practice hard and you will be well on your way.

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SUPREMINATOR•

I believe the study for this was on musicians chances of becoming among the top of their field based on how many hours they had practiced before the age of 18.

If you practice 10,000 hours before you start college, you have a high chance of being among the top of your field in your life career. The study showed it has more to do with how much you practice than a persons natural ability or talent.

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skesisfunk•

source? I am interested, I got this from essentially hearsay.

1
SUPREMINATOR•

http://neuromonitoring.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/does-practice-make-perfect-with-the-10000-hour-rule-in-iom/

Not the best source, but it has the source listed, hah.

1
LocavoreOP•

ಠ_ಠ

1
TheMaskedHamster•

The fortunate thing with almost any skill is that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.

1
GeneralMillss•

You can be like this guy!

1