"You're an amazing drummer. I wish I had your talent and natural ability." I've heard these words many times and I disagree with them in more ways than one.There are two statements being made. The first one is in reference to being "amazing" and the second in reference to the "talent" and "natural ability" which produced the "amazing"-ness. Reading between the lines of this statement you get the true message which is "I'm not going to even bother trying to learn the drums. I've had a few tries and I'm rubbish. I just don't have that natural feel for the instrument." It's basically an excuse, but one that's believed by the person uttering the words. Usually, the statement comes from a non-drummer. That's the first part of the problem. What does it mean to be "a drummer"? Well, it basically means that you've played the drums regularly over a period of time. Anybody who's done that would realise that you can become relatively impressive to a non-drummer with just a few weeks of practice. It basically comes down to being able to do something that someone else can't - and that just takes a bit of dedicated practice and persistence. How good you become in a set amount of time is a function of how many hours you put in, and how you spend those hours. Let's say it takes approximately 100 hours of practice to go from non-drummer to being able to play something that sounds really impressive. If you practice for 10 hours a day, then you'll get there in 10 days. If you practice only 30 minutes a day it'll take you 200 days. If you practice an hour a week it'll take you nearly 2 years. I believe practice time is what people mistake for talent. The thing is, you can't know how good you could be without putting in the time, and you have to put in a certain minimum amount of time before you can even begin to get an idea of how good you could become. The reason people generally give up is that they don't feel rewarded for the effort they put in. That's simply a case of either not having a plan, or of setting their goals too high. Of course I'm simplifying things here. However, I'd be willing to bet my life savings with anyone who tells me I'm amazing and they have no hope of ever being able to drum, that if they 'tried' playing the drums 10 hours a day, for 10 days, then at the end of that period they'd be a significantly better drummer than they ever imagined was within their capability. In fact, that's probably all it would take for them to be able to play in your average pub band and have people come up to them and tell them that they're amazing! In his book 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell refers to a study which suggests that becoming an expert at something requires about 10,000 hours of practice. That's 1 hour a day for 27 years! That's a long time, and I can see how that figure could be off putting, but that's 10,000 hours to become an expert. To be perceived as an expert by a layperson takes significantly less than that. Besides, if you put in 3 hours a day it would only take you 9 years, and if you were dedicated enough to put in 8 hours a day then you could get there in less than 4! That's the reason you can find a 10 year old drummer who can do what most 50 year old drummers can't do - Putting in that much practice time requires a lot of dedication, and most people just don't want to do this. I certainly am not dedicated enough to practice that much. That's the second reason I disagree with the opening statement. I'm far from amazing. If playing the drums is like climbing Everest I'm barely even at base camp. Two main reasons for giving up are that you're not feeling rewarded for the effort you put in, or that you can't even seem to get started. To a non-drummer who's never even thought about drums, sitting behind a kit for the first time can seem kind of daunting. They don't know what anything is, or what it's supposed to do. They don't even know what kind of sound they're supposed to be trying to make. They'll probably hit a few drums and cymbals a few times, then decide that they don't have the talent for it. If you show them a basic rock beat and explain that they just have to play 1,2,3,4 with the right hand, 1 and 3 with the right foot and 2 and 4 with the left hand, then they might think that looks quite simple. But, when they try to play it like you just showed them, they may find the coordination to be a challenge. Again, they might decide they're not cut out for it and give up. The trick is to know that it's difficult to begin with, but also to realise that it can be made simpler. It's important to remember that drumming is not a function of intelligence. If you think that you 'should' be able to do something with your body because your brain knows what has to be done, then you're setting yourself up for failure. Just remember that there is no natural ability. Keep breaking down the puzzle until you find the simplest thing that you can't do, then work on that. The basic ways to simplify something are to reduce the number of limbs involved (just focus on the hands for example), and to slow things down so you have more time to think about what you have to do. That's it. The trouble is that it looks so simple that most people don't want to slow it down enough to be able to conquer it. Secretly, they base their self worth on being able to pick it up quickly at a decent tempo. Nobody wants to feel inadequate. If they can't do it after a few tries then, to save their self worth and avoid classing themselves as incompetent, they put it down to genetics and say they're just not cut out to be a drummer. The same things can apply even once you're advanced on your instrument. At that point you might feel that you should be good enough to learn a new thing pretty quickly. If that doesn't happen then you might come up with the same argument. The trick is to catch yourself doing it and just make the problem simpler. Failure is your friend. It tells you when you need to break things down and try a different approach. Don't let it dent your self confidence, just take the information and use it to successfully accomplish the simpler task. Using that approach you'll leave every practice session feeling good that you've made progress, and you'll associate practicing with good feelings instead of bad ones.
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