AllTheCoolNamesAreTaken
Silver Member
I started 'seriously' drumming in my 30's - I tried picking it up in my late 20's but after buying a snare, taking it home to my apartment, and hitting it once I knew it was going to be difficult to find time/places to practice. But later things worked out so I had a place to play acoustics occasionally, and I had an e-kit at home to work on as well.
Now I've been taking lessons for 2 years. Each week I get my new exercises, work on them, go back and show my progress, and on and on. For about a year I was head-down into it working diligently on each new exercise, trying to master each new pattern and solo.
But that enthusiasm wore down because it's all I ever seemed to do: finish the last assignment, get the next one, and so on. It seems to me that my teacher has no plan, and he doesn't push me to form my own plan.
And I feel like my actual playing is awful. My technique is okay and if you give me an exercise I can get it pretty quickly. My timing is decent. But my sound is horrible. I still don't know anything about transitioning between the various drums, like going from backbeat to fill and back with any consistency in sound or technical proficiency. I have no fill vocabulary. My crash smacks are weak and inconsistent. I don't have any levels to my playing. My peak tempo is incredibly slow. I have very little stamina.
Some of this can be attributed to sharing a drumset, and a pretty crappy one at that (plus trying to pretend that e-drums are 'real drums' when I'm at home, and the difficulty of drumming on anything in an apartment). But most of it I feel is just lacking direction.
When I went to my teacher I explained that my primary interest was jazz. I've done tons of syncopation (the book and the general idea), worked over samples of trading fours and solos, played along to some songs. But my teacher has never made me use any of it musically. He doesn't trade fours with me in lessons, or ask me to try to improvise. So although I can do say bass-snare-snare triplets and other patterns over the swing pattern, when I'm playing along and try to 'swing' I'm just stuck. I don't know what to play, and I have no idea of musicality.
The jazz thing is a good example of what I see to be the problem - the teacher showed me the ride pattern and I've been playing that thing for two years now, spang-a-lang, spang-a-lang. Yet he _never_ showed me how to play the 'a' with my fingers. I was robotically moving my wrist up and down the whole time until I happened to watch a video online and see another way of doing it.
It's just frustrating. I've started to feel like the teacher just sees me as a weekly paycheck. And he's not a bad guy, and I'm trying to be reasonable and understand that I'm starting late, two years is a drop in the ocean, all that stuff. But really - I just feel like I'm not making any progress in this relationship, and it might be better just to end it.
Generally I'm a pretty self-motivated guy. If there's something I want to know how to do I sit down and learn it. I think if I were to set my own goals - like learning how to play style X, or song Y - and I were to generate my own practice routines from these goals blended with some technical goals, I'd have a more fun time playing. As it is, I feel like I'm using all my time just to keep up with the 'lessons' I get, and I never get time to just play, or experiment - and at peak I was practicing for like 16-20 hours a week (not counting time just on the pad).
Kind of a long rant but I'd appreciate some thoughts.
Now I've been taking lessons for 2 years. Each week I get my new exercises, work on them, go back and show my progress, and on and on. For about a year I was head-down into it working diligently on each new exercise, trying to master each new pattern and solo.
But that enthusiasm wore down because it's all I ever seemed to do: finish the last assignment, get the next one, and so on. It seems to me that my teacher has no plan, and he doesn't push me to form my own plan.
And I feel like my actual playing is awful. My technique is okay and if you give me an exercise I can get it pretty quickly. My timing is decent. But my sound is horrible. I still don't know anything about transitioning between the various drums, like going from backbeat to fill and back with any consistency in sound or technical proficiency. I have no fill vocabulary. My crash smacks are weak and inconsistent. I don't have any levels to my playing. My peak tempo is incredibly slow. I have very little stamina.
Some of this can be attributed to sharing a drumset, and a pretty crappy one at that (plus trying to pretend that e-drums are 'real drums' when I'm at home, and the difficulty of drumming on anything in an apartment). But most of it I feel is just lacking direction.
When I went to my teacher I explained that my primary interest was jazz. I've done tons of syncopation (the book and the general idea), worked over samples of trading fours and solos, played along to some songs. But my teacher has never made me use any of it musically. He doesn't trade fours with me in lessons, or ask me to try to improvise. So although I can do say bass-snare-snare triplets and other patterns over the swing pattern, when I'm playing along and try to 'swing' I'm just stuck. I don't know what to play, and I have no idea of musicality.
The jazz thing is a good example of what I see to be the problem - the teacher showed me the ride pattern and I've been playing that thing for two years now, spang-a-lang, spang-a-lang. Yet he _never_ showed me how to play the 'a' with my fingers. I was robotically moving my wrist up and down the whole time until I happened to watch a video online and see another way of doing it.
It's just frustrating. I've started to feel like the teacher just sees me as a weekly paycheck. And he's not a bad guy, and I'm trying to be reasonable and understand that I'm starting late, two years is a drop in the ocean, all that stuff. But really - I just feel like I'm not making any progress in this relationship, and it might be better just to end it.
Generally I'm a pretty self-motivated guy. If there's something I want to know how to do I sit down and learn it. I think if I were to set my own goals - like learning how to play style X, or song Y - and I were to generate my own practice routines from these goals blended with some technical goals, I'd have a more fun time playing. As it is, I feel like I'm using all my time just to keep up with the 'lessons' I get, and I never get time to just play, or experiment - and at peak I was practicing for like 16-20 hours a week (not counting time just on the pad).
Kind of a long rant but I'd appreciate some thoughts.