Don’t think for a minute that just hard work will get you there uh uh, what you need is a plan and direction and hard work. Imagine if you will sitting down to play the kit every day for an hour without any idea as to what you are going to do, so every time you sit down and play nothing of any substance comes out, just stuff you have done before without direction. Now consider for a moment if you sit on the kit with a definite idea and a plan of what you are going to achieve from each practice session.

Seriously people! What do you think is going to happen, you are going to get better aren’t you? You are going to get better quicker, cleaner and with more understanding of the ideas than you could have ever done without any direction as before. Now I ask you why aren’t the majority of players practising their drums doing this? I’ll tell you why because it’s hard and sometimes boring and monotonous.

But if you really want to hit the level of proficiency that I know we all want to hit then you are going to have to apply yourselves to some of these tasks and do them.

The plan need not be complex just target areas you need to improve, break it down into easy bite size pieces and work out steps to get where you want to be.

It really is so simple it’s a joke.

I’m going to give you your first target.

If you can’t play your singles, doubles and parradiddles in a 1/16th count at more than 150 beats per min then you are not in the zone. It’s not hard to do. Just work out where you are and where you need to be and work out a daily plan on how to get there in small increments.

All my students will be doing this as of next week. I’ll let you know how they go.
Now stop reading and grab your metronome and some paper and work out your plan.

See ya
Dean