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Why You Will Never Be A Good Drummer Unless You Cheat At The Lottery

Cheaters always win

You've played the lottery before. If not, then you know what it is. But do you know how cheating at it can help your drumming? Obviously, you can use the money you win to buy new gear, build your own studio, quit your job and spend all your time drumming. But this article has nothing to do with money. It's about practising. Stay with me on this, it will all make sense soon.

What practising is

Let's say you want to show off a new fill at band practise or at your next gig. You have to practise that fill first before you can do it. You need to completely ingraine that fill, not just in your mind but in your central nervous system. This is what people mean when they say that something is stored in your "muscle memory".

When you get to this stage you can play the fill on automatic pilot, you can play it without having to concentrate, you can play it while thinking about something else entirely and, most importantly, you can play it under any kind of pressure. This is the final stage in learning something on the drums.

What I'm saying here is that it's going to take a lot of work for you to be able to play that fill as well as you want. In fact, Wikipedia's article on Muscle Memory tells us that it takes around 740 repetitions "...of the same motion for your muscles to "memorize" the movements almost perfectly." Wow, 740.

As if that isn't enough

When you play live you have so much more to think about outside of what you're doing on the drums. So it's best if you don't think about what you're playing at all. You should be focusing just on HOW you're playing. Am I fitting in with the music? Is my audience enjoying this? How is my stage presence? Do I look cool enough? etc. On top of that you've also got to pay attention to your band, so the last thing you need is to be worrying about the next fill coming up. You know, the one that you almost managed last week?

Here's where practising helps. By practising you are effectively loading the fill into your system. You're programming it into yourself. You're hacking into your body. However you want to look at it you are fundamentally altering yourself. So that when the time comes for you to play the fill, it will flow right out of you with no effort on your part at all. If you practise enough, I guarantee it will happen.

Why is this like playing the lottery?

Imagine the picture: You're sitting at home with your lottery numbers hoping, praying that this time will be different. This time your numbers will come up. This time you'll win big. But do you? No! (you wouldn't be reading this if you did!) What are the chances that you'll win? For the UK lottery it's about 1 in 14 million. That means if you play the lottery 14 million times, you will win once.

Ouch.

I don't know about you but I don't like those odds. If you don't practise, what are the chances that you'll play the fill you want perfectly? Probably better than 1 in 14 million but they're still not good. How can you increase the chance that you'll win? Well there are 2 strategies: The 1st is to buy lots of tickets (in drumming terms, play lots of fills that you haven't practised. You're bound to get one right eventually...) But the 2nd and better way is to...

Cheat the lottery

Imagine the picture: You're sitting at home with your lottery numbers. You are cool, confident and composed. You are already opening the champagne because you know for sure that your numbers will come up. Why? Because you cheated. You stacked the odds in your favour. You made sure that your numbers were the only ones loaded into the machine.

In drumming terms, you loaded the fill into your muscle memory. So when the time comes to play live you are totally confident that you can pull it off. You actually have no choice but to play it right, in the same way that once you cheat the lottery you have no choice but to win.

Now those are the kind of odds that I like!

So can you be a good drummer without cheating at the lottery? Without practising? Well there is always a chance that somehow, someway, someday you'll manage it. But do I recommend it? No. Why leave it to chance? Instead, why not guarantee your success? All it takes is a little bit of hard work.

So get out, get practising, get cheating and win!

Alexander

What do you think? Do you like this article? Does it make sense? What would you do if you won the lottery? Maybe you HAVE won it?

Leave your questions, thoughts and wisdom in the comments. If you liked this article and want to see more like it, let me know by hitting the "Tweet This" button.

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