Day Six - Equality

There is certainly such thing as too much of a good thing. I stay up too late (which can be a good thing), but then I get six hours of sleep and go to class tired. I practice too much, I chop out or hurt my wrists. I socialize too much, I don't do well at my lessons. I work on my right hand too much, my left hand suffers. You get the idea.

When I had my lesson with Brian Del Signore from the HSO, the first thing he said was, "you're very right handed." He told me to play what I had just played starting on the left hand. Not so good. The goal is to make your left hand sound identical to your right hand when you're drumming; always maintain a constant sound. So, every exercise and solo you play, take a minute to learn it with opposite stickings. No one cares if you can rip paradiddle-diddles of the right hand if you can barely play them on the left. A bass player doesn't sound better on two of his four strings, a brass player doesn't sound better on certain notes, drummers shouldn't sound better with certain stickings.

I don't practice much, remember? But since I got on my practicing streak yesterday, I got pretty motivated. I worked hard yesterday, and it felt good, but I worked hard today, too hard, and I burnt out. I couldn't improve anymore. I hit a wall. In these situations, you can't keep pushing yourself to improve. Take a break. It's useless to try and push through the wall; the wall's not going anywhere. So I talked to friends, rode my bike, ate dinner, and came back, and the wall was gone. I could improve again. Breaks are great.

Not practicing enough though can be dangerous too, especially if your private lesson teachers are quick to get angry. Mine aren't, but I still feel disappointed when I can't do what they ask me to.

It is important to know when to stop, because if you do overwork yourself, you could be doing more damage than improvement. When you go to the gym and work out for longer than average, and you feel like death afterwards because you pushed yourself beyond your limit, try to do your average workout the next day. It's harder. Your body doesn't like things that hurt it. Don't train your body to dislike things that it should enjoy on accident.

Get some sleep. Writing a blog isn't the most important thing you could be doing at 1:30 in the morning. (ahem. me.)

With that wisdom I'll leave you. Sweet dreams.

M