With the prospect of live music returning soon I’ve been playing the drums a lot lately, so in the spirit of this blog, I thought I’d share the 5 Life Lessons I’ve Learnt From Playing The Drums. I’ve been playing for over nine years now and I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good. During this time I’ve played amazing gigs and festivals, been on tour around the UK, and spent countless hours practising.
Drumming is my life, and it has taught me so much about myself. Without the drums, I’d have no idea who I’d be, nor do I care to find out. It’s a fantastic instrument that is simply different to other musical disciplines. Don’t ask me why, no one really knows, but drummers are just different. Perhaps some of the reasons lie within the health benefits below:
Health Benefits
I can say from experience that all of these benefits are true. Playing the drums has lifted my mood on bad days and it’s boosted my energy when I’m feeling tired. I’ve even left a practice session dripping with sweat thinking I’ve burnt as many calories as an intense run.
There are lots of articles online stating how drumming is great exercise. To be honest, it’s not really. Yes, it burns calories, yes it increases your heart rate, but to consider it a workout, you’d have to hit those drums extremely hard for hours on end just to burn off a couple of bags of crisps. Simply put, if you think you can just play the drums and not exercise in any other form, you’re going to be let down. If you want to start regularly exercising you can read my article on “5 Tips On How To Build A Routine”.
Life Lessons
1. Goal Setting And Tracking
One of the main ways drummers track their progress is through BPM (beats per minute). We aim for a target tempo and practice until we reach it. Quite often this can take days, and depending on the exercise/topic, it can take months, if not years. Over the past nine years, I’ve had plenty of mind-numbing and tedious sessions playing the same thing over and over again in attempts to reach a goal.
This discipline has spread over into my everyday life. I appreciate the value of setting long term goals and having a target to strive towards. Its become a common practice for me to set goals whenever I start a new project or when I’m trying to develop a new habit. Perfect examples of this can be read in “Monthly Progress: March” as well as “How SMART Goals Gave My Lockdown Purpose”.
2. Patience Is Key
As I previously stated, I’ve had many days where I’ve been in my practice room for hours trying to get a new groove perfect. The thing about drums is that they will drive you crazy when learning something new, but once it’s down, it’s one of the most satisfying feelings you’ll ever have. To be able to play something you previously couldn’t is proof that we can all achieve our goals.
This life lesson has been crucial in my understanding of self-development and personal growth. Results don’t always come quickly and we can easily let this get us down. Understanding that real growth takes time and effort is a fundamental factor in our success. The classic saying “no pain, no gain” perfectly sums this up.
3. The Importance Of Relationships
This life lesson has come to me relatively recently, in fact, it’s been brought to light by the lockdowns and the halting of live music. I’ve often thought of myself as an independent person, perhaps to the extreme. Funnily enough, the meaning of the name Connor is “lone wolf”.
As a teenager, I would spend a lot of my time by myself either practising the drums, playing Xbox or looking in the fridge for the fifteenth time that day, and I was okay with that. But over the year, when I haven’t been able to play the drums with other musicians, I’ve realised the importance of contribution and sharing, both in music and daily life.
Having spent over a year only practising by myself and not playing with any other musicians at all, I’ve come to realise how crucial it is to spend life with people who value you and vice versa. In a musical sense, this means getting into a room with other musicians and having a good time playing songs we love. In a more general sense, this means being grateful for those you have around you, and never taking them for granted.
4. Mindfulness
Only recently have I been taking meditation seriously, but its shown me that I learnt this life lesson a long time ago. Being present and mindful of what we are doing can relieve stress, anxiety and depression. In fact, THIS ARTICLE on mindfulness shares a lot of the same benefits as the ones from the picture above.
Perhaps this is the reason why I think drummers think and behave differently. When we drummers are truly engaged with the instrument or the music, we find ourselves in a meditative state, living in the moment of the groove or the song. This is mindfulness at its core, being completely focused on one thing and being in a state of flow.
Being mindful has had tremendous effects on my everyday life from resolving anger, letting go of irritations and calming my anxiety. These are all things that I would struggle with if it wasn’t for the drums.
5. No One Can Be Me
All musicians will eventually learn this life lesson if they stick to their instrument long enough. There’s a commonly discussed topic around the drumming community which is “finding your sound and discovering your voice on the instrument”. Anyone who has reached the point of knowing their sound will always tell you that it comes down to being yourself. When you play like yourself, no one else can play like you because they are not you.
While I can’t say I’m a seasoned enough player to know for sure what “my sound” is, I do know that I won’t find it by trying to be like another drummer. This mindset transfers directly into my everyday life. It’s impossible to find out who I am by trying to be like other people. I can only be myself. Luckily, I can embrace that and be unapologetically confident in who I am because I know that no one can sound/be like me.
Final Thoughts
All of these life lessons have come over time and I’m sure I will learn plenty more as the years keep coming. Drumming can be incredibly trying at times, but the fact that I’m still playing after all these years is proof that no matter how hard times get, we can always find the opportunity in every difficulty. I touched a bit more on that in my post “Dealing With Failure”.
If you happen to be a drummer and you enjoyed this post then I can’t recommend enough the “DRUM With Mike and Eddy” podcast. They’ve described it as a “life podcast with a backdrop of drums” and it is exactly that. I’ve learnt a lot from it and I’m sure every drummer will be able to relate to the topics they discuss.
I hope you enjoyed this post, it was a little different I know, but this is my blog and drumming is a huge part of my life. If you did like this article then consider signing up for my weekly newsletter where you can get notified every week when I post, along with extra insights into self-development, personal growth and habit change.
Until next week, stay safe everybody.
Connor McCorkindale.
