Best way to practice?

Hey, drum people.

I'm a sophomore in high school, and I joined band last year. I was in F.E. last year, and now I'm on the school's cymbal line for this upcoming.

I want to get your opinion on a few things...

1) Best way to practice cymbals at home? (implying you don't have cymbals at home)

2) Best way to practice in general? (For drumline in general, and my instructor has talked about keeping a journal and logging in information, and I don't really know what I'd write down in it.)

So, overall, a practice-related thread.

I wouldn't crash cymbals at home. I'd take them to a school yard and practice there.

I like the journal idea. I think I'll try that with my drum studies.

For the 1) I don't have much advice but.
2) keeping track is a great tool, my teacher told me to do so, if you would see my drumming books with all the annotation you would think Im crazy (mostly black dots, stars, almost everywhere lol)

Journalling works for some (it's a great method if it's for you), I don't bother because I know I'd do it for 3-4 days and stop, which is a motivation killer.

However, tracking progress is very important to learning. So if journalling isn't your thing, what you can do is everyday increase the speed of something you are practicing. It can be just at 1bpm, it doesn't matter. So this one thing I do on toms, every time I practice it (for about 10min), I increase the speed by 1. Since I started it at 110bpm, I know how far I've come.

Another thing, commit yourself to practicing a certain amount per week. Feel bad about not meeting that goal, because you've broken that commitment to yourself. Also, that number you set should give you an idea of how much improvement you can expect from yourself. If you set 5 hours per week, then you can expect to make steady but slower progress.

Final piece of advice, forget video games and tv, if I had spent the amount of time playing drums as I had with either of those, I'd be playing music professionally right now...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jgziegler

Journalling works for some (it's a great method if it's for you), I don't bother because I know I'd do it for 3-4 days and stop, which is a motivation killer.

However, tracking progress is very important to learning. So if journalling isn't your thing, what you can do is everyday increase the speed of something you are practicing. It can be just at 1bpm, it doesn't matter. So this one thing I do on toms, every time I practice it (for about 10min), I increase the speed by 1. Since I started it at 110bpm, I know how far I've come.

Another thing, commit yourself to practicing a certain amount per week. Feel bad about not meeting that goal, because you've broken that commitment to yourself. Also, that number you set should give you an idea of how much improvement you can expect from yourself. If you set 5 hours per week, then you can expect to make steady but slower progress.

Final piece of advice, forget video games and tv, if I had spent the amount of time playing drums as I had with either of those, I'd be playing music professionally right now...

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Totally agree on the video games point :)
Could you share with us how you track you practice work ?