Endurance and Consistency

It occurred to me last night that I haven't been playing as much as I should of late. And this is contributing to a general loss of endurance. I used to be able to play for 2-3 hours and not get tired and not start to make mistakes due to fatigue. Not the case at present. I need to build back up.

Being in a punk rock band with songs that only last 2 minutes and a full setlist of only 45 minutes probably doesn't help matters. I need to return to a practice exercises for an hour, play the set for an hour, play along to cds for 1-2 hour regime.

Hopefully it is just the holidays and my pre-holiday coordination spazz out (which I'm still recovering from) that is to blame. And the minor bass distraction of late.

I also think that I'm nailing down that spazz out to (besides the fact that I was tired that night and was playing on a foreign set and my feet were fucked from walking in foot deep snow all that week) a general sudden awareness of my inconsistency. I think that, for a while, I wasn't super aware of what all my limbs were doing. I just played and kind of thought all was well. I think now I've started to think more about consistency...whether I'm hitting every bass drum beat or every bit of a fill...and thinking about it has thrown me off. Ultimately, it is a good thing...because I SHOULD be worried about consistency. But in the short term it has me psyched out. I'm thinking about it too much and at the wrong times. I SHOULD be thinking about it during practice...I should let it go and play during performance.

A real key on the consistency front is playing with a metronome and building independence. The metronome is pretty new to me. I've only really started to use it in the last month. And it is an eye opener. And as to independence...I think I've long taken for granted that I was being consistent on simple beats when I really wasn't. I can play consistently with JUST hands or JUST feet or just this hand or foot or that. But with each layer added the consistency goes out the window.

It's just a hard time right now because I'm kind of having to unlearn some bad habits...poor stick holding technique and inconsistent hits...so it is a little frustrating. And I'm frustrated in my life in general at present...so it gets a little depressing and makes me not want to practice. Which is the exact opposite of what needs to happen to work through this rough patch.