HOW TO USE A PRACTICE PAD

Learn To Use A Practice Pad Effectively

Most drummers own, or have heard of the practice pad. It is basically an imitation drum, designed to play and feel like a drum, without making a lot of noise. They are usually small and light weight, making them very portable and handy to have around the house so you can practice. A practice pad can easily turn into a drummer’s best friend. Any instructor will tell you to practice with a pad, and they are not wrong. Practice pads are very useful, and offer a ton of advantages. However, there are some disadvantages to using them as well. So where do you draw the line between pad practice, and drum kit practice. Or does it even matter?

Advantages Of Using A Practice Pad

We will start out with the pros of using a practice pad. The first obvious pro to using a pad is the convenience. Being able to sit in front of a TV, practicing rudiments on a responsive pad that makes little noise, is very convenient. Using a pad will definitely cut out the loud noise a full drum kit will make. Another big advantage to using the practice pad is the ability to track your progress. Although you can do this with on a kit, it makes it a lot easier to hear a metronome, and gauge what speeds you are performing your rudiments at. Logging your progress is very useful, and should be done by every practicing drummer.

One big benefit to using the practice pad is it is very unforgiving. You will be able to hear and see where you are weak, and where you need improvement. Having a lot quieter tone, it allows you to hear a lot more of your drumming, and you can hear the metronome louder than your practice surface – making it harder to cover up your mistakes by the sound of the drum.

When you are playing on a drum set, you can get very distracted with all the drums in front of you. This can easily hurt your practice session, causing you to lose focus faster. With a practice pad, you are limited to the pad itself, as well as the sound it makes. Having only one drum will force you to focus on the essentials, like drum rudiments and stick control exercises.

Disadvantages Of Using A Practice Pad

There are some cons, however, to using the practice pad. The first obvious con is it is not an instrument! You can practice all you want on the pad, but you will never actually play the pad at a show or in the studio at all! This poses a big problem you spend a lot of time getting used to the feel of the pad, then are forced to play on a totally different surface. A pad is supposed to imitate a drum head right? But what about the cymbals and other drum voices you use. You will not get the same feel at all from these, and therefore will find it more difficult to utilize what you have learnt. Plus, with most toms there is less bounce than a pad. Playing a single stroke roll at 200 BPM may be possible on the practice pad, but when played on a tom, you may not be able to do it. This brings your confidence level down, which discourages you from playing the drums all together!
Unless you have a practice pad drum set, you are limited to one drum. Now I said before this is a pro, it is also a con in some ways. It may force you to practice your rudiments, but it will stop you from practicing had independence, and creativity. Having a whole set in front of you breeds creativity – something that sets you apart from every other drummer. When you only practice on a pad, you will feel more like a technical drummer, and will not have experience of the whole drum set. You will also find moving around the drum set is more difficult. However, if you own a padded drum kit, you will not have to worry about this.

The Practice Pad Is Essential

All in all the practice pad is a must for drummers. Being able to work on your rudiments whenever and wherever you want is perfect. Having the ability to track your progress and see your mistakes is what will allow you to improve that much faster. As long as you do not spend all your time on one, you should be ok.

DRUM HAND SPEED, POWER AND CONTROL

Develop Drum Hand Speed, Power, And Control!

There are three basic ways to play the drum kit with your hands. You can play each stroke using your wrists, your fingers, or combinations of both. In this particular lesson, we're going to go over the wrist technique and the advantages it offers. In the weeks ahead I'll follow this lesson up with two more covering finger techniques and combinations of wrist and finger techniques.

Why Use Wrists For Drumming?

Most people don't rush out of the gate with all sorts of amazing finger-technique, and thus they have to start with the basics. Playing with your wrists comes fairly naturally for most people, so it's an obvious starting point.
However, I would argue that maintaining wrist speed, power, and control is extremely important - even after you have learned to play finger techniques. There are a number of good reasons to develop and eventually combine both methods.
One thing many people overlook is that you get significantly more power when playing with wrists. Playing double stroke rolls on a low floor tom, for example, just doesn't sound right when played with finger-based techniques. Wrists provide the full power, and control necessary to make that roll sound clean.
Developing speed in your wrists also allows you to do more with finger-based techniques when you combine both elements together. I always try to keep my wrist speed as close to my finger speed as possible. Later, when you begin playing advanced techniques like the Moeller method, you will begin to see why this offers such an advantage.

Practicing The Drums With Wrists

Sometimes it can be hard to tell if you are truly playing using only wrists. It's easy to begin bouncing the stick a little in a double stroke roll, or using some finger technique in a simple paradiddle pattern. That's why I would recommend you spend some time practicing on a non-rebound surface. You can use something simple like a pillow, or a professional RTOM workout pad. Either way, as long as you can practice on something that offers very little or no bounce - you're good to go.
Practice playing singles (r,l,r,l,r,l,r,l), doubles (r,r,l,l,r,r,l,l), or paradiddles (r,l,r,r,l,r,l,l) along to a metronome. Set the speed fairly low and just focus on control. This is extremely important. Many drummers that want to develop speed start turning up the metronome way too fast. It is vital that you develop control over speed when first learning. Speed will come automatically once you begin to develop control over your wrists with these various patterns. Trying to shortcut control by focusing on speed will only hold you back. I've seen it over and over. Do NOT make this mistake.
Focus on staying relaxed and playing things perfectly in time with the click. Breathe deeply while you play, and work towards building muscle memorization. Train your muscles to play things right the first time and you will save years of corrective practice down the road.

Building Speed and Endurance

Once you have begun to develop your technique with solid control - then you can begin to develop speed and endurance. This is done best through repetition and controlled "burn through" exercises. Like a trained athlete - you need to push your muscles to the next level without losing control.
Start by playing singles, doubles, or paradiddles as sixteen notes at 100 BPM (or a moderate speed of your choice). Slowly move up in increments of 5 BPM until you are playing at about 50 BPM faster than when you started (in this example - 150 BPM). Spend some quality time at each speed - only increasing the metronome when you have played for a few minutes with complete control.
You may very well be able to play significantly faster than 150 BPM at the time, but that isn't the point. You want to develop control at all speeds, and the ability to play for extended periods of time. When you return to repeat the exercises (a day later perhaps), try starting out about 20 BPM faster than your last start point. Repeat and only progress to 50 BPM faster than the new starting point.
It may seem like a slower method of mastery, but it pays off in the long run. Don't rush through exercises or think that a particular speed offers no value to you. Dedicate two weeks to these exercises and see the results you get with daily improvements. I'm sure you will be pleased.

Advanced Drumming Tips

1. Try setting the metronome to half-speed as often as possible. For example, if you are use to playing sixteenth notes along with a metronome playing quarter notes at 200 BPM - play 32nd notes to quarter notes at 100 BPM. It is the same speed, but will force you to use your own internal clock between the less frequent clicks of the metronome.
2. Try to develop all of your patterns with right and left hand lead. If you haven't done this before - I'm sure you will find it fairly challenging.
3. Take what you've learned here and build a practice system around your drum kit using singles, doubles, and paradiddles and use the same tempo system to develop greater control.