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The 3 Things Monopoly Has Taught Me About Drumming

Photo credit: .A.A.

I usually win at Monopoly. In fact I've only ever lost a couple times in my whole life.

I'm not ashamed to admit that recently I've used Google to find different techniques on how to win. A lot of the techniques I found were ones that I had already used before.

But what surprised me the most was that I don't always use those techniques and I've actually won against people who have used them on me.

So I really got to thinking about why I keeping winning at Monopoly because if I could figure it out then maybe I might be able to figure out how to win at everything else in my life.

Here are the 3 things that I reckon are the most important. Write a comment and let me know if you agree.

Have a plan and stick to it

Sometimes when I'm losing I get tempted to put all my cash into hotels or even to stop buying altogether. But I find that if I just try to build slowly every turn then I gradually build my rental income and keep cash spare to pay other people's rent. Even when things are looking down I just stick to this plan.

For drumming it doesn't need to be a complicated plan... even something like "I want to get faster at single stroke rolls, I will practice single stroke rolls every day for 3 months" If you stick to that plan long enough I guarantee you that you'll get faster at single stroke rolls.

The best way to win at anything is to have some kind of strategy in mind before you start and then stick to it. Even if its just "Buy everything and don't land on the on the last purple square". But how do you stick to your plan? Well make sure that you...

Never give up

Monopoly has taught me that things can turn around very fast. One minute you're on top of the world and the next you're mortgaging all your properties. The same is true in drumming. One minute you can be making progress very fast and the next you get one of those days when things aren't quite working. Just yesterday one of my students was in for a lesson and she was amazed that she couldn't play something that she had been able to play hours before.

Well, supposedly Thomas Edison created over 10,000 prototypes for the light bulb. Only 1 of them worked. That means he "failed" nearly 10,000 times but he kept going. So if a man considered as one of the greatest scientists and inventors of all time failed that often then I reckon it's ok if mortals like us have a bad day on the drums occasionally.

Even when you get days like that, just keep going and watch things swing back into your favour. To win at anything you really need to stick at it long enough to find out what works and what doesn't. How do you stick at drumming even when you're feeling down about it? It helps if you...

Love the game

I love playing Monopoly. I love it whether I win or lose. Don't get me wrong, I always play to win but if I lose then I like that too. Not only do I get to learn more strategies that work but I've just spent the last couple of hours hanging out with my friends and family. Take this same attitude to your drumming. Even if you play a bad gig, you've just had a great time on stage with some of your best friends. Not everyone gets to have that experience.

I've played a lot of gigs. In the early days no one turned up to quite a few of them. After this happened a couple of times I got really disappointed. But I noticed that one of my friends always played a great show no matter who was there. The reason? He loved getting on stage and playing. He said to me "Everyone who comes to your gig deserves to see a great show whether there are 2 or 2,000 of them."

So even if you're only playing to a few people in your hometown, love the game as much as if you were playing your 1st world headline tour.

As drummers, we may not be curing cancer or bringing about world peace but that's ok. We're playing the game that we love the most and no matter what stage you're at, what music you're playing or where you live we're all playing the same game. That's pretty cool!

Are these 3 points helpful to you? Do you have any other points that drummers will find helpful? What have you learned from other people that you've played with?

Write your comment below,
Alex

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