What is your practice routine?

Just curious to see what everyone's daily practice routine is. What do you guys work on when you practice and how long do you spend in total when you are shedding. Just thought it would be cool to hear how everyone gets their chops together.

Well i'm too lazy at the moment to have a set routine, currently it runs..

Stick Control til my mind wanders
Rhythm & Meter patterns ||
New Breed ||
The reading Encyclopedia ||

and i try and repeat that 2 or 3 times throught the day, i try and just play a bit, groove to a click with just snare and bass for 30 mins or so too.

When i'm at PIT, the practice routine is much more strict with about 18 things on the list that get cycled through on a 6 hour+ practice day.. useally much mroe in depth covering many different styles and stuff that pushes my limits

hi,
My practice routine is write on my pc. there is 4 chapter.1 snare technique 2 systems independance 3 coordinations and 4 D bass drumming. All exercices are noted with click tempo, 5 by exercices, and i move up week by week on every exercices. i do that since 1998. Before, i work in differents drums school, and i was just working on the school stuff.
I don't know if it's a good thing, but it's the only i have find to be straight with my work.

In an interview with Vinnie he said he'd go up to his room as a kid and play in seven for hours. I practice playing odd time for long periods because of that. To work on my hands I practice speed and precision on the snare and then break it up among toms and cymbals, especially trying to develop my left hand through some difficult sticking exercizes to strengthen and develop it. Also rolling up the toms as well as down the toms keeps the left to right and right to left motion facilities strong and feeling good. I began playing double bass two years ago so I work on various foot control techniques: using the feet to maintain a clave, attempting tricky ostinatos and alternating my left foot between the hi-hat and left kick pedal while playing double bass patterns. For overall grooving I play along with records I know were recorded with a click which for me is more fun than a metronome. Like when practicing reading it's wise to vary the charts whereas you also have to vary the records you groove with or you'll only be working on those charts/songs. I play as little as five minutes or up to ten hours a day. When it stops being fun, I stop. No need forcing it.

i need to practice my chart-reading for an audition........i was told there would be various "kick" patterns to read as well as snare stuff..........any suggestions?

Egad, Louie, I am not the one to ask chart-reading advice from. My reading's on the level of a first grader with his/her first Dick and Jane book. [img]confused.gif[/img] I would think however that the bass drum and snare parts would not be on separate charts.

Steve Houghton has a bunch of chart reading books and vids. Thats his specialty.

Louie,

Two books that were mentioned by a former music teacher to me on chart reading are:

"Chart Reading Workbook for Drummers" by Bobby Gabriele, Musicians Institute Press

"Studio and Big Band Drumming: Interpretation of Contemporary Studio & Big Band Drum Parts for Today's Ensemble Drummer" by Steve Houghton

Here is a cool thing that one of my teachers had me do for my chart reading, this was for big band jazz stuff. Alan Dawson had him do it when he studied with him. Go through Syncopation exercises 1-8 in the middle of the book, NOT the exercises that are the same one measure repeated the whole page, and play time on the ride and 2&4 on the hi hat. On the long notes (quarter notes) play the bass drum, on the short notes (8th notes) play the snare. The key is to go through and DON'T STOP no matter what. The exercise isn't that hard until you try it without stopping, even if you screw the whole thing up, just keeping your place in the sheet and not losing it. Another thing i do with it is to play the written notes on the Bass drum and fill in the rest of the triplet on the snare, then play the written ones on the snare and fill in the triplet on the bass, the whole time playing just normal time, jazz time. I have found this works wonders for my reading. Just something to try if you want to do something different with a book that everyone has worked through, or should have worked through at least! Hope this helps.

Oh, i forgot to mention, remember to practice it A LOT!!! Perfect practice makes perfect!

Here is how I practice:

15 minutes Stick Control to warm up

15 Minutes exercise around the kit to loosen my old bones

30 Minutes of all the stuff my teacher gave me to do for my next lesson

30 Minutes of groove with click or CD.


That is about it. I try to practice everyday this way or until my wife comes down and says the neighbors called the law again.

Anyway, I just got Steve?s video and being newer to drumming this puts a whole new perspective into things. If I could just squeeze another hour out before my wife stops me!