“Forward” To Basics
When people say,”back to basics” it sounds as if you are going to the elementary stuff, and that you are not progressing but going back. Actually, it doesn’t sound that way, people explicitly say it!
I strongly believe that practicing the basics is in no way going “back”, on the contrary you are going forward, more than you know it.
On the drum set, you have two sticks in your hands and your feet are pressing against a pedal each. That’s how it was when you first started, and that’s how it’s like for the world’s top professionals. Even if you add one or two pedals and you alternate between them, it’s still pretty much the same, and some of the greatest performances have been played with the “basic” four.
Therefore, since you are always producing your music by hitting the same sticks and pressing the same pedals, it makes perfect sense to me that improving the way we hold the sticks, the rolls, the doubles, the bounces, etc. gives us mastery over the basic frame of playing, and therefore frees our creativity to explode spontaneously. The more basics we master, the more freedom we have to focus on dynamics and musicality.
My experience in teaching ballroom dancing shows a similar thing. Most of my time was spent teaching basic and intermediate classes (since very few people ever continue!) and that gave me the chance to practice with the “beginner” students on the simplest things. Since each student is different, I’d have to teach the step in a different way, different students find different things difficult, so I had to spend more time on these things. As an end result, I had the privilege of focusing on each aspect and part of each step and that helped me master the basic steps, and move “forward” with my own dancing.
My current strategy is spend 60 – 70% of my practice time on basics and the rest to learning something new. Since I need to warm up anyway, this is really helping. The thing is that my performance in the basics is usually not as good as I think it is, so I need to practice and review them.
Never go back to basics, go forward…
