How to Cure Drummer’s Block

When I was teaching college, I became very aware of something called writers block. It seems that as the due date for a term paper approaches, a number of students experience a brain freeze and will essentially forget how to put sentences together. Fortunately it usually disappears just as mysteriously the night before the paper is due.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that the students who got writers block simply didn't have anything to write about. And the reason they didn't have something to say was because they hadn't thought about the topic, nor had they done any research. It's pretty hard to write knowledgeably about something if you haven't learned anything about it or thought about it analytically and creatively.

Which brings me to creativity. Creativity comes out of synergy. It's the taking of something that is known (your ‘research’) and then doing something with it. A creative soloist will take the melody, the harmony the rhythm, and even timbre and derive something new by adding in some of their accumulated knowledge. A great soloist will also incorporate tradition. This would not be possible if the player has not done the homework: practicing, studying, listening.

Your research also consists of learning the song, its various parts, your part, and perhaps the harmony. Listen for catchy or distinctive ideas. You might also listen to different versions and interpretations of the tune. You can even go the extra step and review the lyrics and perhaps look up a bit of history: What’s the song really about? How did the writer come to write it? What was the context? All of this will give you grist for your creative mill.

The next step, for the writer, is to organize the material and then start writing, and ideally that results in multiple drafts as the ideas and writing evolve. So, we too need to organize, analyse, synthesize, and apply our learning, and develop it further as we gain a better understanding of the music.

A great way to work on creative solutions is through mental practice is. For example, I tend to write my blog articles almost completely in my head, and I'll mentally create two or three drafts before committing anything to paper. I do the same with tunes, mentally trying out parts that I think might work. And I’m always discovering something interesting.

As you build your store of musical knowledge and skill, you’ll find that the opportunities for creativity will explode, and that will cure your drummers block.