Playing along

Day 3, I think…the last two days I have done an hour of rudiments and playing along with songs. I find that I hate rudiments and ideally enjoy playing along with actual songs.

I chose a couple tunes from the Old 97’s to butcher this week. “W-I-F-E” and also “Bel Air”. Not sure if you call these shuffles or whatever but they are fun to play and makes me do something other than kick on 1 and 3.

Came upstairs last night and took a mortal blow when the W-I-F-E asked if that was Ryan(7 year old)playing drums. Ah, no…sadly that was me. 😦

More practice is clearly needed.

Best friends 40th tonight. Hoping to see the Nadas at the Fineline after the dinner bit. Might study the drummer instead of the guitarist.

Lesson 1

1.2.3.4…

Did lesson one last night using the cute little FreeDrumLessons app on the iPhone. Pretty basic quarter notes on the kick, snare and hi hat. At 80bpm. For a half hour. Fairly mind numbing stuff but I found playing to the metronome to be more difficult than I first imagined as I moved it up to 100bpm and added 8th notes to the hi hat.

Trying not to “read ahead” and/or skim over stuff that I think I know already…too easy to do.

Overall, the session sounded a bit like a soundcheck, minus the toolbox sound tech.

The Land of 10,000 hours…

Recently I have become a fan of a blog and endeavor entitled the Dan Plan. I encourage you to take a look and support Dan in his effort. As a really bad golfer, his story is intriguing to me.

10,000 hours of deliberate practice. To complete something like this in 5 years and reach a level of “excellence” as deemed possible by this article would take something like 5.5 hours a day, every day. For five years. As much as I would like to say I can do that, the fact is that 5.5 hours a day would cut into a lot of different areas of my currently pleasant little existence. Moreover, I would probably be a newly divorced dude living in one of those apartments with really thin walls and not able to bash on a set of drums at all without a visit from the local police. So…bad plan for someone like me.

But…what about 1,000 hours? Over two years?? It at least reads as much more doable. Now we are talking like 1.37 hours a day. Could I reach a level of half-assed competence in 1,000 hours? 10% of excellence? Could I play like, I dunno, Chris Mars with 1,000 hours of “deliberate” practice?

If you can’t beat ’em

Still waiting on that First Act endorsement deal

33 years. Forever. That’s how long I feel like I have been looking for a drummer. We all know one or more people who play…guitar. Dime a dozen, one on every street corner. But a drummer? A drummer who you can count on, stand to be around and doesn’t have designs on your significant other? As rare as they come, it seems.

So, after the most frustrating year of my life with regard to the time keeping species I have decided to chuck it from the cheap seats and learn to play the stupid kit myself and just BE one of the divas. Sorry, was I projecting already?

Armed with my funky little First Act kit that I got at Target for $30 as a joke, some online lessons and inspiration from sweet liquor I begin the count off…because I read somewhere that if you can count to 4 you can play the drums.

I vaguely recall a quote from “The Commitments” about learning the drums…”takes control and skill so you’re fucked for starters.”

I may be.