Drumming Goals
Jared Falk of Drumeo.com fame had a video about effective practice. One of the key elements was creating a list of 5 medium range (1 week to 3 months) goals for our drumming and then commit to it by announcing it on social media. Since this is technically social media, I'm committing to it here. No one in the world at large besides Aeyong and my dogs knows I'm a "drummer" now, and I'm not quite ready to announce that yet. My preference to announce that is after I'm able to record a video of me playing a complete song of at least intermediate difficulty. My medium range goals for the next 3 months would be
1. Get my 32nd note playing up to 80 BPM (I'm struggling at 60, so this is a fairly lofty goal).
2. Get my 16th note triplets up to 80 bpm (if I can do the 32nd note, I should be able to do this as well, I'm currently at 70-75 right now).
3. Finish learning "When the Levee Breaks" - I'm pretty close to locking down the basic beat, but I will have to work hard on the fills, especially the fast ones near the end, this may be too lofty. It will probably take years before anyone thinks I'm starting to sound like Bonham (not that anyone truly can sound like him).
4. Learn Smells Like Teen Spirit (not necessarily at full speed, but who knows? I haven't really started learning it yet, only the triplet opening so far).
5. Make progress on some Neil Peart part, preferably YYZ or Xanadu. I haven't really started on anything by him yet, but one of my "milestone" goals as a musician is to be able to perform all 3 parts from a Rush song like YYZ and record a video of me doing it. In a way this is just a means of measuring progress for my goals, but it will also hopefully provide a good example of my level of proficiency when trying out for bands or at least demonstrating to potential recording clients that I am competent musically.
NOTE: He wants them ranked in order of difficulty - 1 is probably the most difficult since it's very specific, 3. is also specific and most likely fairly difficult, 2, 4&5 would be more difficult if I had a specific benchmark with either one, but I just want to work on these (as long range playing goals) and I don't have a real specific goal yet since I have to actually start working on them. I may post a specific BMP or % of full speed goal for 3 months after I've practice them enough to know where I stand.