There’s an important practicing truth that is the key to really mastering anything on the drums. Without following this key truth, you’ll never fully learn something to your best ability. What’s interesting, though, is that a percussion piece written for solo gong actually teaches us a lot about this piece of “practice wisdom.”

“Having Never Written a Note for Percussion” by James Tenney is a solo percussion piece consisting of one note:

The instructions are simply to play a roll on any instrument for a “very long" time. Generally the instrument of choice is a gong because of how interesting and complex its tones are. So most of the time, a percussionist will sit down on the floor in front of the hanging gong, poised to play a very, very long single stroke roll with two large mallets on the face of the gong. Here’s a video of a good performance of the piece if you want to check it out.

So what can this piece teach...

A recent survey response I received from one of you guys blew my mind… But it made me realize something interesting.

A few weeks ago I emailed out to you a survey asking you questions about what your struggles and goals are on the drums. Someone’s response read like this:

SURVEY QUESTION: If you could accomplish anything in your drumming in 2021, what would it be? (Your biggest drumming dream!)

RESPONSE: Play live

SURVEY QUESTION: What is your biggest fear that you worry about all the time as you’re learning drums?

RESPONSE: Playing live

Wait a second… you mean the biggest, most exciting, ultimate dream… is also the greatest fear? For a minute I thought this was crazy. Then I looked back at my own life.

In middle school my biggest dream was to play drums in a rock band. I got to high school and had the opportunity to literally play drums in a rock band… and I was terrified. Thankfully I faced my fears and did it....

Time to get real with you guys. The last several emails I’ve sent out have been about dealing with failure - overcoming it and using it to learn. The truth that I’ve tried to reiterate is that you’re never going to avoid failure, no matter how good you are at something. However, you can use the failure to learn and to overcome.

I failed at being a good drummer the other day at a rehearsal, and I’d like to share this story with you since I think it might help you out.

Speaking of avoiding mistakes, check out this video while you're here about the "5 toxic drummer habits you MUST avoid at all cost."

Ok on with today's story!

We were rehearsing this moderate-tempo, four-on-the-floor song that was very long and repetitive. The tune also didn’t have a lot of dynamic contrast throughout…It built up after a minute or so then stayed up the rest of the song. I launched into the first chorus, enjoying the rock ’n roll, driving feel. When the second...

Will reading music make you a better player? Is your playing ability suffering right now because you can’t read music?

Maybe you’ve taken the time to learn, and you’ve been left wondering what all the fuss is about. It’s not like your groove and pocket became better after learning to read. So do we drummers really need to learn to read music? Is this important? Let’s unpack this a little.

Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Chad Smith, and Buddy Rich are just a few famous players who never took lessons - and who most likely never read a musical note. Legend has it Buddy Rich would listen to the band play the tune once, then he’d jump on the kit and play it. No chart, no notation. Each of these drummers were (and are) a force of compelling groove and musicality, and their inability to read sheet music or drum charts didn’t seem to hold them back in any way. What they may have lacked in the book-learning department they made up for with ear...

During several college summers and falls, I worked at a local high school with the marching band. I generally worked with the front ensemble or “pit,” which consisted of all the mallet instruments, synthesizers, and other auxiliary percussion. This was a lot of fun, and a lot of it was right up my alley as a percussion performance major in college. I had never played in marching band myself, but I knew and understood the instruments the kids were playing.

To be honest, though, I always felt a little bit like a fraud in this job. This was classic “imposter syndrome,” where you feel like you don’t really know what you’re doing and you’re going to be “found out” at any moment. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of that cliff the entire time I worked this school job. The kids were great, the instructors were great, and the band director was a great guy to work for. But I always felt like I wasn’t really cut out for doing...

I recently heard a gig horror story involving a drummer who failed at his job in more ways than one. The sad thing is, he may not have realized how badly he was failing and wreaking havoc on the band.

Now my point today actually isn’t to share with you all the details of how this guy failed miserably. It’s really to give you some preface to today’s video, which highlights the “5 Toxic Drummer Habits You MUST Avoid.”

This particular drummer actually excelled at all the usual “drummer skills” that come to mind, like solid timekeeping, appropriate playing (playing for the song), arriving on time prepared, and in general “sounding good” on his instrument.

So what went wrong?

The drummer on this gig had an ego problem, and his lack of respect for the bandleader and overall arrogance led to a whole host of issues that good timekeeping and proper playing couldn’t solve. He failed to have the vocalist's best interest in mind,...

I remember playing a church rehearsal when I was in college where I was struggling to remember what was coming next in the song. I had a chord chart next to me with some notes I’d scribbled, but they weren’t doing me much good. I felt clueless as to what to play at the end of each song section, because I wasn’t really sure what kind of fill should happen. Sometimes I wasn't actually 100% sure what was coming next, so that made it pretty tough to know whether to play a fill. Everything felt like a stressful mess, and I was honestly pretty lost. I was faking my way through the song, but I probably sounded anything but professional.

I remember that particular week when I was in school, and I was so busy that I literally was scrambling to listen to the songs for Sunday in the car on the way to the rehearsal. My phone wouldn’t plug into the radio of my 1997 Honda Accord, so I had it sitting in the cupholder blasting the songs loudly enough to hear while driving. I...

Happy Friday! I’ve dubbed this weekend a "bye-week" on the channel. (Maybe some of you astute viewers happened to notice that a video didn’t go up today!). So instead I’d like to shoot you a sneak peak of an upcoming lesson in the works.

I’ve been getting questions about drum stool height... How do you know what your ideal stool height is? How does this factor into your height, playing style, and foot technique? Let’s dig into this. (Stay tuned to the channel, because the full video on this will be up soon.)

I’m just under 6’4” tall. For you metric folks, that’s roughly 193cm. I measured both drum thrones that I use often and found both to be right at 22” (56cm). If we do the math here, that gives us a 3.45 to 1 ratio - or 29%. My throne height is 29% of my physical height. So take that for what it’s worth, and use this as a starting point if you’d like. But there are other factors to...

Sometimes the most practical, helpful thing you can do to be a better drummer is relax. Literally.

Relaxation is something we’ve learned to appreciate here at the Clark Household since having our baby 2 months ago! Any chance we can get pays off.

But it’s easy for me to say “relax!” while playing the drums, and it’s another to actually do it. Ultimately it comes down to a couple of things…

• Build up your playing from a technical standpoint so that you’re not constantly bumping a ceiling. Here’s a recent video that will help you with that.
• Physically relax while you play. Listening helps a bunch, and here’s a link to today’s video that will help you with exactly that (+ a bunch of additional tips for getting better sounds out of your drums!)

Beyond these two core tips, logging real-world playing experience with actual musicians is the best way to rapidly grow in these skills. But I also...

Nervousness and a little bit of fear hung on me as I walked into my very first drum lesson. I was a young 15 year old who had taken piano lessons for 7 years, but even those 7 years hadn’t prepared me for this new step out of my comfort zone. I liked the familiar, and I even thrived off of habit and consistency. But I’d known deep down inside for a long time that I really wanted to take drum lessons… one day… when I was older… when I was less scared of learning something totally new. One day I’d be more grown up and confident, able to take on a new challenge with ease and proudly join a band and be a great rock drummer. After all, that really had been my ultimate dream for a few years now. But now on this afternoon in May I found myself stumbling directly into this distant and even terrifying dream, and there was no turning back.

Armed with my SD1 drumsticks I’d purchased a few years before for a “junior drumline”...