Practice Plan
Four weeks, twenty minutes a day. The plan is deliberately small: the limiting factor early on is not how many grooves you know, it is how evenly you can play one.
Every session, in this order. Two minutes of single strokes
to warm up, twelve minutes on the week's work, six minutes playing along with
actual music. The last six are not optional — a groove that only works alone
is not finished.
Week 1 — the skeleton
- The kit and reading a groove: know the marks well enough not to think about them.
- Kick and snare alone, then the hat on quarters, then eighths.
- The basic rock beat at 60 BPM for one minute without a stumble. Then 65.
- Say the count out loud the whole time. Out loud, not in your head.
Week 2 — dividing the beat
- Eighths and sixteenths: switch the hat between the three densities while the backbeat holds.
- Kick on the “&” of 2 and the “&” of 3, with the pattern click on.
- Four on the floor, and switching between it and the rock beat mid-loop.
- Target: 80 BPM, clean, rather than 100 BPM, nearly.
Week 3 — loud and soft
- Ghost notes and accents: accent each beat on sixteenth hats, then move the accent to the “&”.
- Snare ghosts that are unmistakably quieter than the backbeat.
- Open hat on the last “&”, closing exactly on 1.
- Record yourself once this week. Listen for whether the soft notes are actually soft.
Week 4 — going somewhere
- Fills: a one-beat fill on beat 4 that lands beat 1 on time.
- Three bars of groove, one bar with a fill, round and round without stopping.
- One groove from styles that is not a rock beat — shuffle or half-time.
- Play a whole song through, fills and all, mistakes included. Finishing matters more than tidiness here.
If you are stuck
| Symptom | Usually | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Speeds up through the bar | Not hearing the beat, only the notes | Turn on the pattern click and play four bars at a time |
| Beat 1 arrives late after a fill | The fill has too many notes | Remove a note; do not play the same fill faster |
| Hat and snare land together unevenly | Two limbs, one habit | Play the pair alone, no kick, at half the tempo |
| Ghost notes as loud as the backbeat | Both hands at the same stick height | Exaggerate: ghosts almost inaudible, then bring them up |
| Everything falls apart at speed | Practised unevenly and then sped up | Go back to the tempo where it is even and add 5 BPM a day |