Is it a bad sign that I had drum withdrawal after I only had them for a few weeks? We put new carpet in the living room, during which the drums were buried behind heaps of other things in the basement and I couldn’t get to them for over a week.
But now most of the furniture—drums included—have been moved out of the basement. I’m revelling in the vast space available in the living room now (and avoiding the basement, because all the work I did de-crapping the basement over the last few years was completely undone when we moved all the crap from the living room and den down into the space I’d cleared out). The drums, my spouse’s guitars, and our badly-out-of-tune little piano now have a room for themselves, and you can actually walk all the way across it without once turning sideways to get through.
So I’m back to whacking on the drums during the day. My drum instructor has me doing exercises to improve stick control and learn to keep regular time. I practice these during the day when nobody is around, because while they actually involve various left-right patterns with the sticks, they sound like I should be sitting on the kitchen floor whacking on pots with a spoon. Still, I’m getting a little better at whacking on the pots drums; I think I’m more consistent at following the metronome and I’m not flailing my arms around any more. It’s all in the wrist, baby.
And there’s also some exercises I can practice at night, because they involve rhythms with quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes in various permutations, so I almost sound like I’m playing something.
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