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Suppose you were a space alien, dispatched from a highly-advanced-but-distant planet, to report back about the activities and goings-on of Planet Earth, and your particular assignment was humans playing the drums.
Just work with me here.
You might write a dispatch like this:
“Humans who 'play the drums' spend an enormous amount of time on elaborate hand rituals using what they call a 'practice pad', all the while telling each other these are necessary to play the drums, then shame each other from using any of them on the actual drums.”
And further…
"Based on the proportion of practice pad videos compared to everything else, learning these very specific pad exercises must be hugely important to playing what I want on the kit."
Of course I’m being cheeky, but spot the lie.
In this video, I begin with a slightly outrageous conceit - that perhaps the humble pad is popular for some other reason than its pure utility for increasing skill on the drum kit…
…then spend more than 2/3 of the video speaking about why, indeed, I think hand exercises are very important, probably to insulate myself from criticism, because that will work.
Then we delve into a few reasons why practice pad stuff being near-ubiquitous online and in books - instead of a very helpful sector of drum instruction - and I say this with the ultimate delicacy…
…might be out of proportion with its utility to play the drums better, if that was truly the goal.
Learn basic technique and/or drill a technique change: absolutely.
Play in low-volume environments, or when you otherwise can’t access the kit: 100%.
Use as its own fun, related passtime, closely-related to playing the drums, but not 100% the same thing, and sometimes a practice-time cannibal if time is ever scarce, as long as we’re being intellectually honest: definitely.
But use for an hour for warmup in the same room as the kit, when you’re already year into playing drums, and there are other, kit-related things that would probably help more in the same amount of time?
[eyebrow raise]
Anyway, I’m sure if I’m lucky enough for this video to make any impact, it will get me in no shortage of hot-water, and earn me comments like “dude doesn’t have singles like Gianluca Pellerito, and he’s talking about the practice pad.” And to some degree I’m signing up for it with the outrageous title and thumbnail.
I hope people will take the time to consider the arguments, however.
Enjoy this one!