In my 12 years of playing the drums, I’ve had to work on a lot of things. Whether it was technique, coordination, timing, or any of those essential basics, I’ve had to do lots of practicing.

But when I started to go beyond those things and ask questions like “what’s the key to recording well?” or “what’s the key to playing the right parts?”, simply practicing was no longer the answer. This is where some additional strategies had to come into play...

The thing that helped me grow the most musically as a drummer was hearing recordings of myself playing with a band. The first time I ever heard such a recording of myself, I instantly knew everything I was doing wrong. I was hearing sections in a song where I knew that groove wasn’t quite right, that fill wasn’t the best fill, and I shouldn’t have gone to open hats at that spot in the song yet. More importantly, I was hearing what I sounded like in...