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When you have a handful of ultra-elites standing head and shoulders above everyone else, those ultra-elites tend to gain rarified status, especially when they capture the attention on non-drummers. Now though, there are more ultra-elites than there is attention to go around, and too few are in...

The right will never be exactly as capable as the left either. If you're reasonably advanced, try playing some left hand parts with the right hand and see what happens. Even if you strive to be totally ambidextrous there will always be differences.

As much as I've sparred with toddbishop in the past, I also really like his advice. Maybe for different reasons. You can learn things by focusing on them explicitly. You can also learn things incidentally. You probably didn't explicitly develop the up-down motion on your right so much as you...

Just so there's no confusion, when I mentioned dribbling I was talking about a different concept. I don't think that was misunderstood, but just in case. So... I guess that's another thing. The error bars are even larger on this one, but there's huge benefit to making yourself have as little...

There are error bars doing this over an internet forum compared to actually sitting down with you and watching what you're doing, but I'd be surprised if is actually true. By this I mean, if you slow yourself down enough you can get the left stick to travel in a straight up-down motion...

"Dribble" everything. Singles, diddles, flams, crossovers, etc. Any exercise you're doing with your hands you can add dribbling to. Dribbling is just playing a note with your right (or whatever) foot after you play something with your hands. Many benefits. You develop your foot. You develop...

Not quite. I'm ambidextrous. Independence is one of my strongest areas. What I said was that working on independence is the only practice I have difficulty enjoying. But I agree this debate has run its course.

Well, I thought the neurological example was more or less perfect in showing there are two different phenomena at play. So, I'm not totally sure why you want to disregard that and have me produce a different argument. But, I'll try anyway. To start, I think you're being a bit reductionistic...

Nah, not going to tell you that, at least unless you can find a really great teacher. But I will suggest that you could try shifting your focus away from learning parts to more just, well... improving. Not saying that you can't do the former at all, just that it probably shouldn't be anything...

Couldn't disagree more. Coordination and independence aren't only not the same thing, they're practically opposites: One is the ability for limbs to work together and the other is the ability for limbs to work apart from one another. You know what the role of the Corpus Callosum is? It's the...

Technically true, sure, except: Is also true, for the most part, say whenever you have more than one limb involved and limbs are performing non-identical motions, that's independence. Just putting the notes in the right place isn't the not-fun part of independence for me. At most it's a bit...

For myself at least, independence is the one thing I can think of that falls into that category. Nothing fun about forcing your limbs to do things they are desperately rebelling against until they submit.

Try energy drinks😅 (only half joking) But yeah, I think if at the end of the day you're thinking to yourself "pity I was only able to find an hour to practice. I want to practice more but everyone is in bed now!" you're likely to experience more growth than someone saying "it was hard going and...

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...

You can find "happiness" at any skill level. Drums are fun! I think what you mean is contentedness. But what even is an elite level? Buddy Rich? Nate Smith? Keith Carlock? Vinnie? Sure, of course. How about Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Chad Smith, or Mike Portnoy? Are they elite? Great...

I think we tend to get this one subtly wrong. Relaxation comes from finding motions that feel good and developing muscle memory for them. Tension (the harmful sort at least) happens whenever you operate outside of your comfort zone. It's much more a symptom than it is a disease. Being conscious...

Thing is, I have no idea how well "Bstinay" cones will work... or how poorly. Are they the right size, shape, and density? Replacing cones is not exactly reversible. Even somewhat degraded Roland cones are more of a known quantity. Adding washers is 1/10th the effort of changing a cone...

I'm reminded of some Tony Williams quote about traditional grip, that (to paraphrase) is something like "not wanting to learn traditional grip is like saying you don't want to know everything there is to know about drums." For Tony, this was a completely alien mentality. Obviously, you can be a...

I think pretty much any baseline human can be fast. The counter-intuitive thing about becoming fast is that the best way to go about it is to just play fast... but to play fast slowly. Yeah, sounds like a contradiction. It isn't. It's about the learning curve. You think whatever you're doing...

The sucky phase does really suck. It's not just that you're suddenly terrible on drums again, it's also that as you're developing your weak hand you're screwing up your existing muscle memory and your instincts start becoming confused as to what hand does what. It takes a really long time to...