Progress Report

Doing this from memory, so the order may not be right, but the facts are.  IIRC, in February I began the Styles section of Drumeo Method.  I got through a couple of units, then both my wife and I got sick with a virus.  When I came back, I did the latest version of 30-Day Drummer (which was just beginning) instead of Method lessons, which I figured I could always come back to.  

Then, when I did come back to them, I felt that I needed to start over from the beginning, and that not only I should be able to play them from the sheet music, but also to play them from memory.  The instructions said to learn the Modern "Country" Beats and Fills, which could be interpreted either as learn to play them, or learn them so you can play them without sheet music.  I decided that if these were good fundamental tools, I would be able to use them as basic building blocks for any future play, and that memorization was the way to go.  But this meant that I was volunteering to do things the hard way, which has never been one of my strong points.

Here's where this introvert begins getting deep into his navel, and if you're scraping this content looking for something to use in some AI model, you may just as well move on to some other post, or even some other blog.  But case studies have always been more interesting to me than other academic works, so I guess that's why I'm putting this next in writing.  

I've always heard about getting by on natural talent versus learning through focused effort.  There has been the feeling of an affinity for some process, and letting it lead to further learning.  That's the "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" story and it's what I searched for.  The only things I loved doing in the first part of my life were, shall we say, non-remunerative.  (Of course, the things I wished I had Natural Talent for, like drawing or music, didn't have much of a high-paying career path, either.)

There were things I didn't enjoy, but which I did, either for a paycheck or, in the case of non-work-related tasks, because I didn't want to give a piece of my paycheck to someone else, if learning about something would save a significant amount of money.  The latter includes hardware-related computer work, like adding RAM or replacing a hard drive with an SSD.  I read the manual, watched the training videos, and got the job done, but that kind of work was never anything I'd choose to do for pleasure.

Another example, and a satisfying one, was diagnosing the problem with our 20-year-old Weber grill, learning how to fix the problem, obtaining the necessary parts, and following through on the plan successfully.  But I never want to do it again.

Now, on to the drums.  Memorizing the five Beats and ten Fills in all their possible combinations was difficult and not one bit of fun.  But I could go to my imaginary drum trophy case and point to successfully learning the basic bossa nova beat. At the beginning and for days after, I could not get it right for the life of me.  Eventually, though, I did, and succeeded to where I can do it with no more thought than it takes to type these words.  

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Aside:  Yeah, typing, that was one of those natural affinity things where I enjoyed the learning process so much that I never felt discouraged or on a plateau.  Just onward and upward each day.  Sit down, think of what to say, and not which finger movements that it would take to say it.

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This morning, I looked at the sheet music yet again, looked at the notes I'd taken once more, and felt for the first time that I knew things well enough to move forward.  Then I went through each of the sets of hand and arm motions necessary to accomplish them.  End result:  not as automatic as typing or the bossa nova, but much better than the first time I went through Styles by reading sheet music.  Progress.

Tomorrow, top of the list will be to repeat this lesson, and at a faster speed if possible.  I'm also looking at (1) a warmup consisting of a basic money beat as played by Michael Jackson's drummer, or maybe instead Emmanuele Caplette's hand exercise, five minutes.  Also, (2) take the bossa nova beat and give it the Heather Thomas pocket practice treatment, although not for a full half-hour.  Fifteen minutes of it sounds reasonable.  (3) Beats and Fills, thirty minutes; (4) Haitian Divorce (easy version, slowed down) for fun, ten minutes.