Thursday

When I was a teenager and didn't have a set of drums yet I used to go find it difficult getting to sleep because there was always music going on in my head and I was so excited about the prospect of going to school the next day and practising or working on tunes I was writing. Although I sometimes go through periods where I lose my motivation a little it usually comes back stronger than ever. I feel really inspired to work at things at the moment and I'm hoping this will translate into improved performace.

In conversation with my friend John the other day we discussed an idea based on one of Mike Mangini's theories. John claimed that he once practised a particlar lick for 1000 repetitions non-stop and that he has never needed to work on it since but has pretty much mastery of it at a variety of tempos. It seemed to work for him so in the interests of science I gave it a try. I selected a lick that I can play but have never felt 100% comfortable with - the Steve Gadd ratamacue. I managed 500 repetitions but got interrupted when my first student walked in! It took about half an hour but it definately did some good.

I stumbled across an interesting video last night too: