Basics....

Sometimes it's hard to remember that they best of homes always begins with a strong foundation. And even when we know that it occasionally takes a reminder that even a foundation needs to be maintained.

Case in point, myself.

My reminder came from an article I was reading about Bassist John Myung (Of Dream Theater) where some of his bandmates mentioned that he was one of the only person they knew who warmed DOWN after a show.

Which brought my back to my drum corp days were we both warmed up and warmed down after practices, (but not always after performances) which then took me to the fall I worked as an Drum adviser for a marching band. I came in about halfway through the season on a request from a friend to give them a hand, the kids (I thought of them as kids even then, and I was only a couple years out of high school myself, at the time) were decent, but had no drum instructor to build their foundation and thus were floundering.

Instead of jumping on the music (which is why I was asked to come in the first place, to help them learn their parts better) I jumped on their fundamentals (Discipline! Rudiments! and Warm-ups!) It wasn't that they didn't know their part, quite the opposite actually, it's that they had problems on the performance aspect of it.

Now a part of me wishes I could say after a few weeks with me they turned into a whole new drumline that went on to win a bunch of awards at competitions, sadly that is not the case.

However I did come to find out that my time spent working on their fundamentals wasn't wasted as that helped them And I quote this from someone who had seen their early shows) "They looked and sounded like a real drumline"

So why did I just say all this? Well my point is I know about basics and fundamentals, but like so many of us, after playing set for a while I've slacked off on most (Nearly all) of said basics. So yesterday I began a regiment for getting this drummer's fundamentals back up to par.

So what does that entail?
1) Ear training, (this is the one part of my fundamentals that I can honestly say that I haven't stopped doing ever.
2) Arm strength/power/endurance, Jojo Mayer covers this one on his dvd but this is a delicate balance, because of the nature of the human body, build up more power, and you won't be able to access higher speeds.
3) Foot training, for those funky syncopated kick patterns (not something you normally run into in worship music, but you never know!)
4) Coordination/limb interdependence, the abilty to play different beats with different limbs (arms, legs, etc) at the same time. Sounds easy? here's a simple warm-up. Try tapping triplets with your left hand, eighth notes with your right foot, quarters with your left foot, and sixteenths with your right hand. (Try it slow, if you manage that, try speeding it up).
5) Warm-up/Cool-down routine, if I had professional drum instructions I'd probably have a slew of fancy exercises, (well maybe, shrug, it's not something I've had the luxury of having), I do have my rudimental listings and a handful of exercises for that, having played quads in drumline I'm used to adapting said exercises, of course my favorite exercise? (This sounds odd, I know) is eight on a hand, (plus the adaptations 1-xx on a hand, countdown on a hand etc).

So that's it, getting back to basics all around, remember that the house you live in is only as strong as it's foundations, (Read Matthew Chapter 7).