Documenting what you practice

Jeff Graw said:

Never.

Recording yourself is great, but documenting? As in a notebook or excel spreadsheet? I'm not sure I see point.

Laying out a "practice plan" ahead of time inevitably turns practice into more of a chore. You learn faster, potentially *much* faster when you're enjoying yourself. What I'm practicing at any moment is based on the waxing and waning of various physical and mental properties. I try to "feel" what I should be practicing, for how long, at what tempo, and with what modifiers. That doesn't really work when you're following a document.

Keeping a log of progress? The problem with that is you *will* have bad days, and your tempo dropping 5bpm for seemingly no reason can be heavily discouraging. It can cause you to give up too early, or push yourself too hard. It's better to feel out the sweet spot where improvement is maximized than to pick some number that "looks" like where you should be it. Sure, it's possible to put yourself in a headspace where you can avoid that trap, but even then I'm not sure what logging progress actually gives you.

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^^^ this

I don't practice anything in particular (the rare times when I play drums, I just play), but if you were to ask how I measure my progress... I would say I hear a song that was hard for me to play because I didn't have the chops Then learn to play it, when I play it correctly, I know I achieved my goal. Then I set a new goal but not formally just a slightly harder level from the previous song I played.

The second question then would be how do you acquire the chops if you don't practice EVER?. And that second question is hard for me to answer because even though I never practice I am still improving significantly to the point where songs that seemed impossible for me to play (at that level or at all) a year ago are now easy or much easier for example the song below, a year ago I would have said that I would never be able to play it at all because of the double bass. Then around that time (A year ago) Something clicked and I was immediately able to play decently steady double bass which allows me to play those songs. My hands have always been ok with most anything drumming so I never had a problem there.
So, if I can play something that I wasn't able to before then that to me is how I measure my progress.

Now about the not practicing.. well I don't need to touch a drum set or a practice pad (never owned one) to practice. My practice is listening to the song (usually songs) about 300 of them, while I drive and since I keep that playlist on repeat, I am learning all of those songs to the very minute detail so by the time I decide to make a drum cover, I know the songs even though I have never play them before. That has worked for me since I started drumming.
Of course what works for me probably won't work for most others and vice versa, what works for others (practicing rudiments and such) just doesn't work for me.

The song in question:

toddbishop said:

Never done anything like that. I've always written a lot of my own materials.

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same....i try to "fill in the gaps" that I think a lot of the famous method books miss...esp focused towards younger drummers using them, since I was a younger drummer going through those books and not always understanding why

I've been keeping a practice log since 2012. It's just become part of my routine. I write down everything I work on and the tempos at which I practice them, and songs I play along to. I just like to look back at things that I used to struggle with and don't anymore, or watch the tempos go up, or whatever. Also, I sometimes get decision fatigue. If I ever feel unsure of what to practice I just look back at the last few sessions and pick up where I left off. When I'm working on my own material, be it creative or educational, I jot my ideas down there to flesh them out later.

I don't usually document anything, but sometimes I want to find out how some of the things I play sound "from the outside", so I film or record them to get "a view from another angle."

For example, I did this yesterday with a few phrases...: