James Demlow, How to Practice: Setting Goals

2 years ago

How to Practice: Setting Goals

In order to be able to acquire, polish, or even master any techniques on the drum set, you must begin with practice. This is a pretty obvious, if not totally obvious statement. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? I’ll give you a hint, it is not a plane and then a taxi. There is however one exception that I take with the above statement, and that is that you must BEGIN with practice. Practice is a crucial element to any musician’s development, but I feel like many drummers of varying backgrounds and levels of development miss another critical element that I feel needs to exist before a person even picks up a pair of sticks.

Goals

In order for any practice, even the most basic practice, to have a truly positive and propelling effect, you have to have goals. Even one teenie, tiny goal gives a person enough direction to accomplish amazing things in a short amount of time. I know this may all seem very obvious, but many people come in to my lesson studio with what they think are goals:

“I want to be a better drummer”

“I want to play faster fills”

“I want to play an awesome solo”

“I want to impress chicks”

That last one by the way requires switching instruments from drums to guitar. All of the sentences above are fine statements and even worthwhile pursuits, but they ARE NOT goals. They are wishes, hopes, maybe even dreams, but not goals. A goal is something specific, tangible, it can be measured, and above all else, it can be clearly pictured by the goal setter.

“I want to play clean double stroke rolls at 120 bpm”. Now that is a goal.

I don’t want to fall in to the self-help abyss of goal setting and time management in this article, because I might not find my way out. So here is a quick checklist on how to set proper goals, so that you can practice in a way that gets you the best results in the shortest amount of time:

- Do I have a goal?

- Now that I have a goal, is it specific and can it be measured?

- How long do I think it will take me to achieve my goal?

- What benefits will I have gained once this goal is attained?

- Will this goal help me achieve other goals?

Remember, choose goals that will take you where you want to go. If you want to join your high school jazz band, don’t practice blast beats for three hours a day. Also, make sure you re-evaluate as you go. If you need to tweak your goals, that’s ok. The important thing is to keep things concrete, clear, and consistent (and any other alliterative happy phrases that you feel help).

How to Practice: Setting Goals

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