{"id":738,"date":"2025-10-28T03:52:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2025-10-28T03:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:52:18","slug":"focused-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/28\/focused-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Focused Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I saw a YouTube video a few days ago that has stayed with me. He spoke about focusing on what’s giving you the most trouble. For example, if there’s a difficult section of a song, stop practicing the whole song and only work on the tricky bit. It stuck with me because this was how I managed to learn to perform songs on guitar for open mic. If I practiced the whole song, I’d hit the hard part and of course screw it up. Then I’d repeat the whole song again, screw it up again, and I would feel like I’ll never get this, I suck, etc. Once I realized to just repeat that section over and over, there was progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not working on any song for learning drums at the moment, but I thought about this concept and decided that my left hand was my bottleneck. So I picked up my practice pad and just started doing left hand strokes. I don’t even need two sticks. Whenever I walked by the pad, I’d pick it up and practice for several minutes. Over the course of a single day, I started to notice improvement already. I even noticed that I can almost twirl the stick with my left hand. Something I couldn’t do before and all of a sudden, I see that I will be able to soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is my new plan for practice. Whenever I’m bored, have a couple of minutes, or just watching YouTube, I’m gonna sit there and work my left hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it reminded me of a conversation I had with a sales rep at Guitar Center when I bought a pedal. He said he has one behind the counter and he kicks on it all day. I had completely forgot about that conversation but now I see how it’s the key to stamina, speed, and control. You need to get your reps in every day. So I’ve ordered a practice pad for kick pedals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tools of the focused drummer…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw a YouTube video a few days ago that has stayed with me. He spoke about focusing on what’s giving you the most trouble. For example, if there’s a difficult section of a song, stop practicing the whole song and only work on the tricky bit. It stuck with me because this was how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drumming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":743,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}