Drum Status

I haven't been putting in the time on the drums that I ought to. There was a little rush in October and November to learn The Drain set...and now I've settled into laziness. I rarely practice SSW songs anymore either. We're two years into existance and the tunes weren't complicated to begin with...and so I've felt it enough to play them with the band once a week at rehearsal. I've started to slip into that with The Drain too...and I'm really not ready to do that yet. I ought to be playing these songs every day...or at least every day that I don't have another band rehearsal...so about 4 days a week outside of rehearsal. And I ought to be working out the kinks in some of them. There's a few that I'm still barely flying by the seat of my pants to pull off and that isn't acceptable. And there's a handful yet to learn too.

And beyond band stuff, I haven't been practice general skills at all. Just total laziness. I found out that there's an audition for the Drummer Collective 5 day intensive and I immediately fell into despair. The audition requires the following:
1. Technique: Single stroke roll, double stroke roll, paradiddles: start each slowly and evenly and increase speed to fastest point.
2. Styles: Maximum of two minutes for each example: rock - funk - swing.
3. Reading: placed in integrated reading program based on a day-one evaluation by a faculty member
It's a good slap in the face. I'm not ready for that kind of audition. And so I should keep my $800 in my pocket until I AM ready. And so that presents a goal...be ready for a real audition.

Last night I took the Tommy Igoe Groove Essentials Vic Firth poster down off the band space wall and put it up on the living room wall...directly across from where I sit to watch tv. I have my fancy HQ Real Feel practice pad and a bass pedal set up here as well along with a metronome. I have another Vic Firth poster with rudiments already set up in this room and have found that, while I haven't been practicing them religiously, I stare at it enough that I've picked things up from it. It's a conversation piece anyway...which gets me talking and thinking about it and attempting the more obscure rudiments from time to time. It's far past time when I ought to have learned the basic styles of drumming. EN certainly gave me an introduction to all of them...but I never REALLY sat down and burned it all into my brain. The repositioning of the poster is a subtle step in the right direction.

I feel my confidence slipping...and the only cure for that in the past has been steady, hard work. It's not unlike how the only way to feel better about your body is to eat right and exercise...but feeling bad about yourself prevents you from doing those things. It's self sabotage. It's your own fault. And the only cure is to press through the discomfort and put the hours in. You can't force yourself to feel better about these things...but if you put in the work you turn around and one day you just DO feel better. I need to get my head back in the game.