More Efficient Practice Sessions

WARM UP (30-60 minutes)

Hands
Singles (3-10 minutes)
Doubles(3-10 minutes)
Triples (3-10 minutes)
Rudiment Variations (5-10 minutes)

Feet
Singles (3-10 minutes)
Doubles (3-10 minutes)
Rudiment Variations (5-10 minutes)

Hands and feet together
Singles (3-10 minutes)
Doubles (3-10 minutes)
Rudiment Variations (3-10 minutes)
Careful thought and evaluation should be given to technique each day during the warm up period.

READING - Part I (60-120 minutes)

Focus on the hands (15-30 minutes)
Focus on the feet (15-30 minutes)
Combined Hands and Feet – Short / 1 to 2 measure patterns (15-30 minutes)
Combined Hands and Feet – Long / 8 to 16 measure patterns (15-30 minutes)

Here is where you are learning new concepts and correcting problem spots in old ones. Have a few charts that you are always in the process of working on. Keep track of your tempo for each page. Have specific goals in mind that are determined before beginning to practice. Read through a single pattern 20-30 times at your starting tempo, then move on to the next pattern on the page. If you make it to the bottom of the page kick up the tempo a bit and start at the top again. Remember the goal is to play clean, relaxed, comfortably perfect. Don’t move on to the next pattern or next tempo until you’ve really got it right.

Don't attempt too much in one practice. Take big problems and break them down into a bunch of small problems. then convert them into your short-range goals, and attack them one at a time. It is much better to take a difficult measure and practice it again and again, until played perfectly, than to stop every time that measure is encountered and say, "I always have trouble with this part."

BREAK (5 minutes)

Literally, Take a Break During long practice sessions it is important both mentally and physically to take a short break. Let you mind and body relax a bit. Give yourself a cognitive disconnect from the practice session, physically breaking your practice into distributed sessions will help transfer your learning from short term memory into long term memory more efficiently.

READING - Part II (30 minutes)

Sight-Reading
It is always a good idea to stay on top of your sight-reading skills. Sight-reading skills are among the most underdeveloped musical ability. Daily sight-reading practice will help you in building great technical skills. It is MUCH better when you CAN sight-read, and it is NOT required - than if you CAN’T sight-read, and it IS required.

Keep a small pile of drum books available for you to practice sight-reading. Don't choose material that is too difficult; it become discouraging and also will not carry over to actual situations. On the other hand, don't read music that is too easy, or the skill will not carry over to situations where actual sight-reading is required.


PLAY (30-60 minutes)

Take some structured time during your practice session to just play! Sometimes with, and sometimes without a metronome, just let go and do some beats, fills, and free-form soloing. Try to move melodically through some of the things you have been practicing. You want to reinforce the concepts you’ve been learning, but you also want to remember why you wanted to be a drummer in the first place, it’s fun!

REVIEW (30-60 minutes)

Go back through what you’ve been working on. Read through the short patterns and long patterns, one after the next, all the way through the page, moving as smoothly as possible through them all. This is a place where I like to get into the strange things like reading a variety of time signatures and trying to make odd-time fills fit smoothly into a 4/4 groove. That sort of thing.