Oftentimes when I’m sitting with a student, I have to remind them – and usually this serves as a good reminder for me – about the importance of patience when it comes to learning technique.
I can recall so many moments in my own development when this rang true for me.
Everything changed when I met Joe Morello. Joe didn’t just teach me how to hold the sticks or about paradiddles – he changed my whole concept of practicing and playing.
In passing along the methods of his teacher, the great George L. Stone, author of Stick Control (how is this book still under $10?!), Joe made it simple to understand how easy it is to develop control, endurance and speed.
The idea was to pursue these elements from a steady, unforced angle, constantly paying attention to things such as accuracy and relaxation, instead of how fast you can go. In fact, you need to practice slowly to play fast.
Pretty interesting, huh?
I get a lot of inspiration for this from a favorite quote of mine, which I read in a biography of Wayne Shorter. “The long way is the short way,” he says.
Over the years, I’ve tried several times to play something really fast, right away. I toiled and sweated and blisters broke out on my hands, and yet it never really got me anywhere.
Picture those guys you see at the gym with pencils for arms trying to lift three times their body weight. Don’t you feel sorry for them?
After beginning my studies with Joe, I would revisit these same exercises and restart practicing them, often at a speed that was much slower than I’d tried months or years before that.
Now what if I had just started at the right speed originally? It may have seemed that it was going to take forever to reach my goal, but wouldn’t it have been faster than what I ended up doing: starting wrong and then restarting again?
Like Wayne said, the long way is the short way.
If you are patient and reasonable with yourself from the get-go, you will take the path of least resistance and build technique in a painless fashion.
You will start at a tempo at which you can truly play the exercise, and then gradually increase speed from there. You might be taking the “long way,” but in the end… well, you get the idea.
*** Of course, the aid of a good teacher will always help to guide you, since none of us are born with this kind of knowledge.
great stuff matt! =)
looking forward to more!
Great stuff bro. Your blog looks awesome.
I 100% agree with you, Matt!!
I always learn a lot of things from you and I’m proud of being your student for a long time! Maybe am I your oldest student?haha
See you at next lesson!!
Hi Matt,
Remember the discussion that we had about the book called “Outliers”? The author, Malcolm Gladwell, claims that it takes 10 000 hours of practice to master a skill. Probably not a scientific fact but an interesting theory nevertheless.
I was reading a biography of Charlie Parker (“Bird Lives!” by Ross Russell) and there’s an estimate that Parker had put in 15 000 hours by 1940. That’s only an estimate of course but 15 000 hours by the age of 19… Talk about paying the dues!
People talk about Parker, Miles, Coltrane (and others) as people that changed the music. By reading about them I was reminded that these guys were not X-Men. They spent serious time in the woodshed.
John Riley is well-spoken man and this is what he has to say about “The Gift”:
“Occasionally I hear some people say that they will never be able to play as well as their idols do because they are not gifted as their idols are.
To that I respond: “What’s the gift that those people have and you don’t?”
Sure, some people are born with superior reflexes or perfect pitch, but those things are meaningless if not cultivated. I think the gift our idols possess is really more a matter of disposition than physical attributes.
The gifted are the lucky few who have found something that they are passionate about. So passionate in fact, that they are compelled to investigate it whether anyone else is interested or not. Their temperament allows them to spend countless hours and years refining their craft by practicing the things that they can’t do simply because that process is the thing they find most enjoyable in life.
That is the gift.”
I sure hope John is right.
Olli,
I definitely agree with John his points.
I’m not so sure about quantifying practice like Malcolm Gladwell. I think it’s missing the point to sit there and say, “I’ve practiced 10,122 hours 26 minutes and 15 seconds.” But the idea of putting in as many hours as it takes is bang on. And nobody is born with it. Morello told me it was a total myth that Buddy Rich never practiced. Apparently, he even had neighbors that complained about his incessant banging. Dig that!
Follow your heart and let your passion guide you. Oh… and realize that it won’t always be fun either. Sometimes it’s just hard work.
Onward.
Matt