In this essay, I want to talk about consistency in my playing and the many practices that are necessary to achieve my goal. Hello my name is Thomas Merriden-Colman and i play drums. Iv been playing for as long as i can remember and to be honest, i cant imagine ever not playing drums! I started playing when i was about 7 years old and i haven’t stopped now being 19 years old. Playing drums for me was initially a steep learning curve considering my age but i always persevered with getting better and never stopped practicing. My modern day goal now is to improve my consistency with things like dynamics, timing, fills, groove and general feel so that when i play with a band, weather that be just in rehearsal when I’m playing at a gig, i can improve my sound ultimately feel more confident. By practicing this, i can reach my end term goal of being in a band playing the funk music i love to play and hopefully make it within the creative industry!

I also want to talk about a learning technique that i am applying to my practice and rehearsals called “Kolb’s learning cycle.” In this learning cycle, there are 4 stages to it and each stage explains a new way of thinking about your brain and how you can process not only what you are doing, but how you are doing it and how you can even think about it so you can efficiently learn your skill. The 4 stages are;

1. Concrete Experience – Learning starts with doing the activity, therefore the key to learning is active involvement. In Kolb’s cycle someone cant learn by simply watching or reading about it, they have to involve themselves. This is important to me because i can relate to it, doing a activity is much better than watching. Don’t get me wrong, as stated, watching or reading is important because you can pick up on certain things but actually doing the activity is where it starts.
2. Reflective Observation – This means taking time out from doing the activity and stepping back from it so you can review what you did and what you experienced. You can talk to other people about your experiences of your creative activity for advise or for feedback, consider the words that you use and how they reveal your emotional relationship to the task so you can improve. This is also very important as reflecting on your actions can help you cognitively think about how to improve.
3. Abstract Conceptualisation – This the process of making sense of what has happened in the practical stage, your creative activity involves interpreting the events and understanding the relationships between them. You might want to look at theory from textbooks for framing and explaining the creative activity, models you already know, ideas from people around you, previous observations or any other knowledge that you have developed. This point in the cycle is especially interesting to me because the word “Conceptualisation” means, “the action or process of forming a concept or idea of something.” This means that after the previous stages, you now have the ability to form a “idea of something” which will enable you to improve.
4. Active Experimentation – Think about how you are going to put what you have learnt back into practice. For learning to be useful, most people need to place what has been learned into a context that is relevant or relatable to them. If someone cannot see how the learning is useful to them, then it is likely to be forgotten very quickly, which means repeating the cycle again. Buy by repeating the cycle again it is likely the person would be less motivated because they are repeating something they thought they already have done. This section is interesting because it really zooms in on the psychological aspects of the end learning point. If a person does not keep on top of their chosen practice then what they have practiced is likely to be forgotten and lost. I think all musicians can relate to this because we have all been out of practice for a bit, weather that be a fault of our own or not. This is something i have also personally straggled with, which is why the last bit really relates to me. Its hard to re learn something again because you feel like you have done t before, which you have but haven’t retained it. This very much explains how important it is to maintain a constant learning cycle and stick to it, or you will fall out of practice.

I will now explain how and why each of these stages has recently helped me in my practices and rehearsals. Il begin with the first section of the learning cycle, Concrete experience. my experience with staying consistent was always something i knew i needed to work on because its one of the most important aspects of being a musician, especially on drums because I’m the person who has to keep everyone tight and in time. I began to take this learning experience when i joined LCon because i learned about “Kolb’s learning cycle” and applied it to my practice. During my initial practice sessions i would practice what i knew about what i was practicing. To be more specific, i would work on my; single stroke roles, double stroke roles, paradiddles, double paradiddles, six stroke roles and playing along to a metronome. This was my initial concrete experience with starting to improve. As i said before, timing is one of the biggest parts of being a drummer, holding the whole band together. So i even had the idea to not only play songs along to a metronome, but to play my rudiments along to a metronome. This helped a lot because i knew in the future it would help me keep tighter when i played. There is also another benefit to doing this, which is that when playing these rudiments, i can gradually up the tempo higher and higher so i can get faster to be able to keep up with faster tempo songs. This also makes me feel more conformable playing at lower tempo speeds because I’m building stamina and muscle memory.

I now want to talk about Reflective Observation and how that’s helped me through out my practice. When i reflected on my practice i would think about what’s helping me and what’s not helping me. Like what i said before, coming up with the tempo idea from just playing with it during a song, to also playing with a tempo with my rudiments was a good idea that helped a lot. I realised that the physical side of playing drums can provoke various emotions. A example of this could be how loud or soft i am playing (dynamics). I found as i changed my dynamics while playing, it changes my mood. When i was playing soft it made me more open and sensitive to what other instruments were playing making me more aware. Playing loud would make me feel not anger but a similar emotion. I’m not angry just in the mood to hit a part of the kit hard or aggressively. When i thought about this it made me realise how much emotion i put into my playing, and it also depends on what other instruments are playing. The rhythm section has to obviously be tight meaning focus is necessary but when it works really well its so rewarding. So this is also another thing i realised just by thinking and reflecting about my playing in my practice. This rewarding feeling also comes when you get a rudiment right. You end up thinking how bad you were playing before and how much better you are at playing that specific rudiment now. I think its really interesting how much psychology plays into music and how it effects how you think about and play your instrument. In terms of talking to others about my practice, both my parents are musicians so getting there opinion has always been very valued. My parents would always voice their opinions about what they think i could improve on. Neither of them play drums unfortunately so its nice to get someone’s opinion of what i sound like to them so i can get a idea of what a general audience might hear. This leads on to what i can think about more and what i think i can improve on to sound better. Another good opinion to get, is my drum teachers. Whenever i come in to play something i struggle with she always helps me sound better or make my playing technique better depending on what i need to work on. Its sort of the opposite to getting my parents opinion because this time its from someone who knows the instrument better than me.

Abstract Conceptualisation. My actions such as; rudiments, practicing grooves, practicing to a metronome and playing songs, have made me realise that practicing is a very repetitive experience until you get it right and as i said before, its very rewarding when it does go right because you can now play the thing you were practicing in context. What i also realised is that how i might look when I’m playing and how i can improve that. Thinking about how i can how i might appear playing drums made me think about how i want to look while I’m playing, which is confident, happy, passionate, exited and at some points concentrated. All these different versions of myself playing depend on the music and what I’m actually playing. Thinking about this has made me also realise how much creative activities like drumming require complete and utter immersion into what’s being played, its also apart of the skill and also needs to be practiced. To practice this i would play Infront of a mirror so i can see what i look like playing and what i can improve on to make myself look how i want to while playing. In saying this, i already knew how repetition effects practice and how necessary it is to keep practicing this as well as everything else that needs to be practiced so i can keep my skills.

This brings me to Active Experimentation. With all this knowledge, i have decided to make a proper routine to my practicing. My plan is to be consistent without my practice from start to finish making sure i cover all the necessary steps to keep my skill. At the start of every practice session i will start by doing my rudiments in this specific order; singles for 3 minuets making sure i switch with hand i lead with and make sure i change the dynamic volume i play at to improve multiple skills in 1, then i will practice my doubles in the same way for 3 minuets, then my paradiddles in the same way and then my six stroke roles. This will help improve my fluidity and consistency. I will then try and combine all of these rudiments around the kit playing it in grooves and in fills to create new ideas for new things to play. Il do this while playing along to a metronome at 100bpm and in the future once i get more confident, i can gradually make the tempo faster improving my speed. As i have different things to practice in the future i will apply these same rules to the different exercises i get.

To conclude, iv learned how complicated practicing can be and the importance of doing it. Not only does it effect how i play, but it also effects the way i think while performing and practicing. There are so many different aspects to practicing with so many different ways of doing them. I feel like i have come up with a good plan that suites me in my practice to be able to become better.

Thank you for reading my essay!