Best Practices (Please No Jokes About The Name)

My last name is low-hanging fruit for schoolyard-style teasing (still is) so it can sometimes be a challenge for me to untangle what is meant by 'best.' But identifying and learning what we call best practices is pretty straight forward, and it can apply to everything we do.

You have your own best practices, honed over a lifetime of experience: how to load the dishwasher, which way the toilet roll goes, etc. It's the procedures you’ve adopted to get the job done quickly and economically without compromising quality and possibly safety. In short, best practices are the most efficient and practical way to do things as well as possible and with no more effort than necessary. Those are the habits you want to develop.

The way to determine a best practice is to try different approaches and then compare. It sounds like a huge task, but in the case of drums, the options are not that extensive and are usually well defined. Analyzing just a few prominent techniques can help you identify which practices have been adequately field tested and were found to reliably deliver the desired result.

Testing and comparing are important tools in making progress. I'm a stickler for field testing. I want to get it out on the job where I can apply some pressure and see how it fares. No matter what quality I may be assessing -- technique, hardware or whatever --  a good field trial will quickly tell me what I need to know. 

I don’t think I’ve seen a top player with a questionable grip, poor technique, inappropriate tuning, or an awkward set-up. They know what’s what. Want to work on your traditional grip? Then study Joe Morello, JoJo Meyer, Dave Weckl. Need to develop your right hand? Check out John Bonham, Tony Williams and Steve Smith. For whatever aspect of your playing you want to work on, there are great players who will show you exactly how they do it every time they play.

Best practices can refine existing practices, make playing easier, prevent injury, and broaden horizons. At the very least, best practices can help to avoid wasting time and following blind alleys. Best practices also tend to be easier to master and usually require less effort overall.

We are all individuals, and what works best for one may not work for another. But in general, you can assume that the techniques you see the better players using are some of best practices available. You just need to find the ones that work best for you.

Photo credit:  Konstantin32 | Dreamstime.com