Effective Learning

Clipped from the Modern Drummer Article:

There Are No Shortcuts Learning is an acquired skill, and we can all become better at it. Successful learning and effective practice is intentional—not just the result of putting in the time.

It’s important to understand that this research hasn’t produced any shortcuts. Acquiring skills and developing ability still require time, a plan, commitment, desire, consistency, perseverance, and patience.

And effective practice should be deliberate and effortful, in the “learning zone” (more on that in a moment), and organized but variable, and it should incorporate constant feedback.

Practice is deliberate and effortful when we coordinate the “what” and the “how.”

First, select specific aspects of your playing that you want to improve, and then make your practice session focused, directed, creative, conscious, dedicated, contextualized, repetitive but interleaved (divided into varied segments of short chunks of time for each idea), and broken into small components.

Practice is never automatic and should always include our own input, imagination, and creativity.

To contrast, a more typical but less effective form of practicing, called massed practice, is when you spend hours playing one or a few specific things. This approach is similar to cramming for a test. You feel like you’ve attained some mastery, but it’s short-lived.

Most drum method books are filled with exercises and patterns, some of which can be extremely valuable to learn. But if we just practice the exercises and overlook the underlying concepts, our learning may be illusory. It’s easy to mistake fluency in playing specific examples with mastery of the fundamental ideas.

When using books and other printed materials, make certain to incorporate your own ideas and interpretations.

The Learning Zone

It’s important to practice in the learning zone by dividing your time at a ratio of about three-to-one between development and maintenance (comfort zone). This ratio is ideal for rapid growth.

You know you’re in the learning zone when you feel challenged, but not frustrated, with what you’re practicing. These are things that we can’t yet do fluently but that we understand.

Feedback Is Your Friend

In order to incorporate constant feedback into your practice routine, you need to spend time listening to recordings of the masters, to the advice of your teachers, and to recordings of yourself playing along with albums, play-along tracks, loops, your band, and so on. Make it a habit to record audio and video of your playing