Instrumental practice is a serious business and making the time to get it done, presents a range of different challenges depending on individual circumstances. The school pupil, college or university student, full-time employee, and parent, all have a different itinerary to negotiate. With drums and drumming, even working on a practice pad can be disruptive to the people around you, particularly in a home setting. Playing an acoustic drum kit outwith a dedicated rehearsal space or practice room presents a challenge on another level.
To get started, the most important things to organise are when, where and how often you will practice. This may seem obvious, but taking time to think this through carefully to ensure these three factors are absolutely consistent and always achievable, will make an enormous difference to your progress. At this point in the proceedings – the planning stage, a plethora of amazing excuses can emerge. ‘I don’t have time’ is a classic, and that is quite right of course – as things stand, you don’t have time because you have not made time.
Making time in essence is not difficult, have you tried getting out of bed 10 minuets earlier in the morning? By definition, if you get up 10 minuets earlier then your day is unarguably 10 minuets longer. Let’s imagine you use that time for concentrated practice and let’s imagine you do this three times a week. Suddenly, with one relatively small change, you are practicing for two hours a month – every month. It will make a big difference because you have quite literally made the time to practice. The key is where in your day you place the 10 minuets you have made.
When you practice matters because it needs to be an unchanging time slot. You are simply modifying the established order to your daily life; you get up, you dress, brush your teeth, eat breakfast and so on… Once you factor in your 10-minuet practice slot, then on practice days; you get up, you dress, brush your teeth, you practice, eat breakfast… It is at this point, the second wave of excuses arrives, and it often begins with a phrase like ‘I can’t do that because…’ and off we go down the rabbit-hole of invented barriers to practice. It is certainly true that practicing can be difficult, but doing something difficult in an organised way often leads to achieving something worthwhile.
When you first attempt something you cannot do and engage in the necessary learning-process to turn that into something you can, a combination of effort, patience and tenacity are required. It is worth recognising that new skills are difficult first and easy second, that is the natural order of things. Provided you place your practice slot somewhere repeatable during the course of your day, it will very quickly become an established norm, but you must choose with care.
Where you practice may seem an arbitrary factor but if you always practice at the same time, in the same environment, it will quickly become established as your practice space and make it easier to adopt a suitable mindset at the beginning of each practice session. How often you practice should be considered in combination with how long you practice for. The important thing to know is that practicing one thing for too long can mean that concentration is more easily lost. For most people, 10 minuets of focused practice on one thing is achievable and is certainly a good starting point. Once this is extended to 15 minuets and beyond, you should consider how may different things you are planning to cover during a single practice session in order to maintain focus and maximise progress.
The truth is, the thought of practice is often far less appealing than actually doing the practice, the same goes for any kind of study, and this is why creating practice time at the same time, in the same place, for the same amount of time will help you create an effective, regular practice habit. The next thing to investigate is perhaps what to practice and how best to structure your practice sessions to maximise progress. Wherever you are in this process, good luck with getting it organised and if at all possible, enjoy your practice!