Amy Lu's View

This week I successfully played a drum groove that I’ve been working on learning since the Before Times–so over two years. 

This could be an inspiring story of perseverance. Or, it could be a rather sad story of lackadaisicalness. 

I think it’s somewhere in-between. 

I have NOT been working on this groove steadily for the last two years, but I have kept coming back to it–whenever I got around to it. I wasn’t on a mission, working determinedly toward a goal, but yet, I didn’t give up. 

There isn’t a special reason why I decided to try and learn this groove (enticingly entitled “Rock Beat #20.”) At some point, and the details are murky, I decided to stretch myself a bit when it came to my drumming. So of course, I turned to the internet, and came across the Drumeo website. I think I chose this lesson from instructor Jared Falk because it focused on sixteenth notes. 

This groove didn’t require physically strenuously drumming (I wasn’t pushed to the limit like the woman in the recent deodorant commercial). It wasn’t hard because of what I was trying to play, but because of what I was trying to NOT play.

This groove was hard for me because my typical drumming is so ingrained. I don’t mix things up very much. I generally play the same basic rock beat with any rock song. It may not be exciting, but it works, at least for our garage band purposes. It’s not flashy, but my role is to support the band, right? I’m pretty sure that at least two out of my three fellow bandmates don’t notice that my drumming repertoire is pretty limited (as long as I keep the beat and don’t pass out or spontaneously combust at the drumset). 

Yes, to be Captain Obvious once again, this is a spot-on metaphor for life: breaking out of our habits, and NOT doing something we’re used to doing, can be as hard as, if not harder, than doing something new. 

I also got in my head a bit about learning this groove and that definitely made it harder. I relatively quickly learned Beats 11-19 (I started with 11) and then, #20 loomed out of the page at me. “Okay, here it is, the groove I CAN NOT PLAY.” And then, of course, I couldn’t play it.

I still have a long way to go before I can play this groove comfortably, without thinking. (I also don’t like thinking that the difficulty level for this groove is ONLY 2, according to Drumeo. I’m not sure what the scale is…2/5? Heaven forbid, 2/10? But this doesn’t say a lot for my drumming prowess, or ego). I definitely don’t feel it’s accurate to call this a victory in the annals of drumming or learning or dedication, but I do think it’s a small win to celebrate, and I’m all about the small wins. 

I don’t know if I will ever be able to play this groove with a band as part of a song–unless I can get someone to write a song specifically to make use of this. Surely a songwriter out there must be inspired by the number 20?