Patch Dennis C.E.P

If only I had more time for this CEP. If only I had 6 more months to practice and evolve into this ‘machine’ I keep researching about. I spent 5 1/2 weeks in a room for 10 hours a day and maybe I only scratched the surface?…
I have been avoiding this issue for 2 weeks now, but really I should embrace it. The reason for this is that I HAVE evolved. My out-look on this context is 100% more efficient, educated and crafted than before I began. I started as a ‘player of drums’ and I am now a Player Of Drums. I am full of things to say about this project, the most important being the experience of it all, and the excitement of finally being a musician who understands what must be done.

Today I made completed the first 7 pages of my documentation. This is 1 section of my portfolio and it ties in the meeting I had with the world-leading Arup Group in London. This meeting was inspirational to me, as it taught me so much about the effect sound has on practice. I was lucky enough to meet with an accomplished acoustic engineer who guided me through the importance of acoustics in sound and outcome. If only pall practitioners were aware of these issues and how to solve them, it would open up the practice session in a whole new light. 
This section of my project is entitled ‘sound in practice’ and promises to be the first of several sections to make up my final portfolio of this study, which will be on sale from the 2nd of january on www.howtopracticelikeamachineandnotsoundlikeawankyartist.com…maybe I’m joking.or not?

Ta. 

It has been 13 days since my last post…I am sorry for this. I have had a week off to re-kinde and reflect on my studio marathon and to prepare for the second half of project mayhem.

I have now successfully completed 6 weeks in the studio of 10 hours a day practice. This was amazingly, fantastic-ly nice. I can’t really describe how fucking great it want to play ALL the time now: feeling very anxious with a knife and fork in my hands. I feel bad for exiting the studio, but after speaking with my ‘advisor’ and thinking it all over, I figured I need more research based material to really justify this CEP. This has a broad meaning, but what I mean is that I am eager to delve deeper into the hole of what it means to master practice.I have ordered some books including ‘The art of practice’ by Howard Snell. This looks amusing, as it promises to give you ‘A great self-help guide’. I am interested to read different views on practice, to compare to the opinion I have built from my own work. 

I am going to be carrying with hours of pad work, as well as extensive transcription and sight ready work, as I cannot stop this. I will be recording some technique-based videos and making a log of all my notation work to share with you lovely followers.

“Many people want to be a musician but who wants to practice?” - Well Howard, I will be telling you who.

I am back, so watch this space. 

I have to make one thing clear; yesterdays blog was defiantly not a pity vote or a ‘cop out’. I was simply expressing my feelings towards a hard part of my progress. I am absolutely carrying on with this, and I will be working 100% harder now I have brought some significant things to light. I am not a quitter, let alone a half way man. 

On an exiting note; I am going up to London, into Arup Engineering HQ on Friday the 18th to meet with the acoustics team about studio sounds and perfect practice sounds. This will be fucking thrilling, as I am a keen admirer of good sound and how to acquire it. I will hopefully get a glimpse (and a few seconds) in their ‘Sound Lab’; one of the most silent places you can be on this earth. It is used to test sounds and acoustic vibrations to decide correct measures for such buildings as The Royal Albert Hall. FAB.  
I will be putting this directly into my CEP, using the knowledge I gain to play with sounds in the practice studio and how it affects the overall process.

Have a great weekend,
P.  

It’s official; I have hit the wall. It is not a writers block, so I’m not gonna tell you that I need to go and stare at nature and get inspired by all things beautiful, oh no. It is neither a ‘wall’ hit by most athletes, pending more steroids and pasta.(sorry Dwayne). 
I have hit a practice wall, which basically means I need to re-evaluate my practice method and take everything to the next level. This is not as simple as I had previously planned, as I new this point would come eventually. My CEP has opened the kind of doors that need to be stripped off the hinges for me as a evolutional player. I have taken today and tomorrow as days out of the studio to research and email various sources for assistance. This is already paying off, as I stumbled across an article with Vinnie Colaiuta in which he explains what practice is typically about for a drummer with world-wide ambition: 

Enjoy the process and realize that if you have good form and you’re not doing anything really physiologically twisted, the way you do something technically should service your concept. Not the other way around. It should service your concept and so you should strive to conceptually understand why you’re doing something on the instrument and have your technique develop around that . Otherwise, quantitative skills are a measurable amount of speed and flexibility to an extent after which doesn’t serve a pragmatic purpose in situations. It could be a point of diminishing returns. 

I am on board with this, I know what he is saying. I have to admit though, I am as guilty as they come for letting my concept of the drums ‘service’ my technicality. Well, I did in the first weeks of this CEP. I need to start think a lot more about my contributions to music, and how important my technique is to this factor. I feel that a practitioner MUST know the beneficial set of skills to develop for a particular discipline. I think that one way of looking at a scenario of this kind is to be singular in you’re thinking for a second.
I.e, when you don’t know how something will taste, you’re going to keep cooking it until your sure it will be stunning. If you’re doubting how it will taste, don’t serve it to the industry. 
This is one way of seeing things, not the only way. There are places to take your mouldy matter; the practice room, the teacher. I know people will disagree, but you just need to by the ticket to my train of thought. 

Lets get one thing straight, I want to be a session musician; a whore of a musician, a call guy for the cool guys, a contributor to music in it’s most basic form. I don’t intend on breaking the system and telling people how to practice with perfection after this project, this is not what my CEP is about. I guess when i signed up for this, I new I would hit difficulty in justifying my actions. It turns out, I am just trying to work as hard as my development lets me to please as many people as possible.

Watch this space for more breakthroughs…..

P. 

Bit of a breakdown today. I somehow got myself all wound up over nothing. I was frustrated with jazz, which in result made me play the worst I’ve played in this whole CEP. I don’t know why I was so heated, but I was not in a position to carry on. Luckily, it was coming to the end of the day, so I warmed down and sat in silence for a while…
This was calming, but strange. Maybe I’m finally loosing it? Moments like this make me realise the importance of keeping a practice environment free of negative emotion. If you find yourself shouting and using your instrument with anger; stop playing and walk away. I am not going to fallout with my instrument because I’m tired or hungry or weak; these things are MY issues and it has a direct consequence to my on practice and how I interpret my progress. 

Lets see what tomorrow brings,

Ta. 

Monday = worst day of the week?or just an easy way to get away with slacking?
I’ve thought a lot about this today, while slacking. I have done 4 weeks now, and I cannot remember any specific day from another. When you spend all day, everyday in a room working on an activity, it seems to all morph into one long, sweaty session. (stop thinking what I know your thinking). It makes me realise that if I didn’t keep a dairy, I would actually forget what day it is, let alone the date. I am half way through, with 4 weeks to go; is this going to be enough to get the information/experience I need?or is it too much time?I think it’s in the middle, I would have plenty to say now, without any interviews or surveys, etc. At the same time, I would happily do this for the next year. Swings and roundabouts. 

Over the weekend I was introduced to a man called Marcus Gladwell. This man believes that to master an activity to the point of complete success, one must spend no less than 10,000 hours on it…Think about that for a minute, then tell me what activity you have spent 10,000 hours on.
If I were to carry on with my practice for 10 hours a day/5 days a week, I would be in the room for 4.1 years until I reached this number (including christmas day and every other ‘special day’ you may think consider). I am beginning to reading his book on this theory, and I find myself noticing things that I have myself experienced in the last weeks. I love the theory, but I cant help but wonder if it’s just another success story to make us all feel bad about not coming out of the womb with a book and a calculator?

Have i done 10,000 of drumming since I started at 8 years old?who knows. Who the fuck is counting?

Ta. 

I spent 4 1/2 hours working on a flam-based Latin groove today. I got about three quarters of a bar completed. I could not make the transition into the beat 1 of the next bar without slipping and screaming at my drums like its their fault and they needed to be told this by me;their master. I accepted defeat for today and after I was done getting a headache from this non-stop agony I decided to turn my attention to another piece of Latin; ‘I’m in love with a Granddad’. Those of you who have been reading this blog will know that that it, those who don’t: read it.
It was also a great test of independence, but in a more interesting fashion. I set myself up with the task of completing my pattern for the intro section to the piece; this was not as simple as I had hoped:

I was splitting 8th notes up between my left foot and my right hand on a cowbell, passing them to and from to create 2 limbs playing the quarter note at the opposite end of the beat. On top of this played the bass drum/snare drum rhythm I had started with, in a 5/8 measure; this is where it gets a little tricky. I nailed it at around 90BPM (quarter note click) and then realised my goal tempo: 140-160. You can imagine how the rest of the day went on. But i did get there. Eventually. 

Now I look back, I’m so relived I have found things to challenge me in this CEP and make an hour feel like a day. Sounds mental, and it is, but its’ about time I went mental and felt relaxed about doing so…Thank you complex notation and 4-way coordination, it is in you I trust. 

Working on some really flam work this morning, got a lovely fill nailed and I’m about to finish a nice flam-groove then get them both online for y’all!!

A great quote of the day: 

“I don’t think it serves a purpose of replacing drummers or the purpose of creating new jokes about drummers, like, “What happens if your drummer doesn’t show up or if he shows up an hour late … ” Come on! You gotta program the machine and if the thing messes up and fries a chip or something, then you’re out of luck. And it only plays what you programmed into it; it doesn’t have a mind and it can’t jam.”

Vinnie Colaiuta on programmed drum. Put that in your production-pipe and smoke it Mutt Lang.

Ta.