HOW TO REACH YOUR DRUMMING GOALS

2d ago

• be a better drummer
• best drum technique
• drum lessons
• drum teacher
• Gifted six powerful steps to live the most incredible life you can imagine

There has NEVER been a better time in history to get better at playing the drums! What are your drumming goals? Do you have drumming goals? How about improving your coordination, speed or dynamics? Or, what about fixing that weak hand? In this blog post, I’m going to teach you the anatomy of a goal and how use it to supercharge your practice!

Drumming goals guarantee success

When I was starting out on drums, my only goal was to become a professional drummer, period. What I didn’t know is that there would be thousands of smaller goals I would achieve along the way. Things like learning:

• Clean double stroke rolls
• 8th-note drum beats
• 16th-note drum beats
• Jazz Swing feel
• Jazz coordination
• Brushes
• Brazilian grooves
• etc…

This is a partial list. Obviously, there were so many more, and all of those achieved goals have made me into the drummer I am today. I had great drum teachers along the way, who created drumming goals for me. As I achieved each goal, I felt successful and motivated to learn more. If we don’t have goals, we’re like a leaf blowing in the wind. We’ll skip from one thing to the next and probably not finish most of what we start. Progress will be minimal at best.

First and foremost, if you don’t have a teacher, get one! See my blog on how to choose the right drum teacher. Next, grab some paper and a pencil. Write down your top 3 styles of music you want to learn. Rank them by How motivated you are to learn them. These are mine, for example:

1. Jazz (Super excited to learn)
2. Brazilian (Excited to learn)
3. Hip-Hop (Happy to learn)

In this blog post, we’re going to take your #1 style and write a drumming goal for it. You can do this for the other 2 styles or any number of styles you want to learn. For now, let’s focus on just one so I can teach you how to supercharge your practicing.

Setting goals in 2 easy steps

I teach goal setting to people of all walks of life through my book Gifted, 6 Powerful Steps to Live the Most Incredible Life You Can Imagine. Goal setting will work great for changing any aspect of your life. It will also work for helping you get better on the drums.

Writing out your drumming goals will focus your practice time on only the things that will help you improve. When we write things down, ideas become more real. Our path to be a better drummer becomes clearer with goals. So, it’s time to get those ideas out of your head and onto your paper.

The anatomy of a focused, powerful goal is: I AM POSITIVE AND S.M.A.R.T.

SETTING GOALS STEP 1

“I Am Positive” spelled out simply means:

• “I” = You are the most important person needed to accomplish each goal.
• “Am” = You are accomplishing your goal right now in the present.
• “Positive” = You are clearly focused on what you want to accomplish.

Every time you write a drumming goal, it will begin with the letter “I.” You are the one who wants to get better at drumming.

Always write your goal as if you are already achieving it. This is the “Am.” If you keep your goal focused on the present tense, you will program your mind to get things done faster. It also helps you to stay focused on what you want to achieve. Here are some examples:

• I practice
• I learn
• I search for
• I buy
• I play
• I contact
• etc…

Lastly, Use only positive words in your goals. Always focus 100% of your goal on what you want to achieve and 0% on what you don’t want. For example:

WRITE THIS: I play clean double stroke rolls…

DON’T WRITE THIS: I no longer play messy double stroke rolls…

Write the words that create an image of what you want in your mind. This is very powerful in helping you stay motivated. Words really make a difference.

SETTING GOALS STEP 2

Next, let’s learn about the S.M.A.R.T. part of your drumming goals. S.M.A.R.T goals make you crystal clear about what you want to accomplish with your drum practice. They also help you know what action you need to take to achieve your goals the fastest. Let’s break down the acronym S.M.A.R.T. for you now.

• S = Specific: This is the What, Who and sometimes Where of your goal. Be very specific with your wording. Make it abundantly clear to yourself, exactly what you want to accomplish. Paint a future picture in your mind about what you are doing on the drums.
• M = Measurable: Measurable simply means that you need to write numbers into your goals to help you see your progress. Things like BPM (Beats Per Minute) and the number of minutes you practice a specific skill (i.e. double stroke rolls) are good examples.
• A = Attainable: This means you want to and believe that you can, achieve your goal. Sometimes people say they don’t have enough time. This is where you decide if you will MAKE the time.
• R = Realistic: Here, you have to be really honest with yourself and figure out if you have the necessary skills to accomplish your goal. Even if you don’t have the necessary skills now, you can develop them. For example, maybe you want to play your drums like Jazz drummer Tony Williams. If you have never played Jazz before, you may want to learn some Jazz coordination exercises.
• T = Time Sensitive: This is the When of your goal. Be sure to write a specific date for your goal to be achieved. Add the month, day and year if you can. This will help you to get it done!

EXAMPLE GOAL

Let’s write a goal for your #1 style from your list of styles you want to learn. We’re going to focus on getting better at our double-stroke rolls. We use them all the time in every style of drumming so this is a good one. We’ll use reverse rolls as a goal to achieve this.

I start each drum practice session with 10-minutes of clean reverse double-stroke rolls by 07/01/20. (Check this video out for how to make your doubles clean!)

I

start

clean

Each drum practice/reverse double-stroke rolls

10 minutes

I believe I can do it!

Yes. I know how to hold drumsticks

07/01/20

I

am

positive

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time Sensitivehttps://www.youtube.com/embed/mKCpltmgKjo?feature=oembed

Plan your practice time

Once you’ve written 5-10 practice goals of things you want to learn for a specific style of music, use them to plan out your practice time. For example, the first 10-minutes of each practice will be playing reverse doubles. If you’re practicing for 1 hour then you still have 50 minutes remaining to plan. Fill in the rest of the practice time with your remaining goals. If you’ve still got some time left, just have some free bashing time on the drums!

Concluding thoughts

I’m sure you can see how specific your practice will become using goals. Write your goals everyday for best results! You can remove goals from your list as you accomplish them. Write new ones as you improve. You may also find that the some goals have to wait until a later time because you’re not ready to tackle them. That’s what I call Goal Shuffling and is a natural part of the process.

Just keep writing and reading your drumming goals every day and they will soon become a part of your thoughts and actions. Get ready for your drumming skills to explode!

I can help

If you’re not sure what things you should be working on and which goals are appropriate for your drumming improvement, find a teacher. If you are interested in learning Jazz drumming, I would be more than happy ever if you’d like to schedule a private lesson. You send an email to danayo321@gmail.com, will we back to as soon as possible🎶🎶

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