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There’s that old saying: “knowing the path and walking the path are 2 different things.”
I’m fond of another: “I said simple. Not easy.”
Sometimes the solution to our blockers is in plain sight. We just don’t want to do it.
Today, I’m going to make the case to you that, if you can get over the initial trepidation and bore, yes, you actually do want to do it.
For starters, because agnostic to your level, it’s one of the most powerful exercises to help your playing across-the-board.
But also because, once you get going with this, it’s actually quite meditative.
I’m talking about slow practice. Like, absurdly slow. So slow it feels like an eternity between notes. So slow that when you use a metronome, you have to keep remembering not to rush.
So - why do we do this?
I’ve often said great drummers do 3 things differently from mediocre ones. Taking speed, flashiness, etc totally out of the equation. These are things that the most minimal groove players and Eloy Casagrande have in common.
Control of timing - note placement.
Control of sound - stick height differentiation, “zones” on drums, “vertical spacing”, etc.
Control of ideas - always within the protective “improv bubble” where it feels like they can’t play a wrong idea.
And I’ve complained that, in my travels, the average drummer mostly doesn’t grasp how insanely better than most of us great drummers are at the first 2. (Well, all 3, but this exercise deals primarily with the first 2.)
Timing and sound control are like the “secret gravity” of great drummers. The hidden matrix giving your ideas snap and danceability.
And there’s simply no better way to ingrain these than absurdly-slow practice.
You could make a spreadsheet of all the places your notes are early or late on the grid, and practice them one-by-one, and try to remember “on the 3rd 16th, I’m always 2 milliseconds ahead, so I have to compensate”…
…or you could simply put yourself in a context where you can tell intuitively the difference between on-the-grid and not, and (much easier) just let your subconscious bootstrap all the subtle shifts to get you grooving.
At any rate, this video explores the “why”, “what” and “how” of The Cult of Slow Practice. And I hope you’ll join me out on this branch.
P.S. did you know you can sign up to be the first to hear when we open up new slots for Impossible to Fail, my flagship 1:1 coaching program? Just click here to sign up for the waitlist.