To be an effective leader and teacher, you first need to be a good follower, or student.

Or at least have been one at some point in your journey. This foundation is critical as it shapes your ability to connect with others and understand the difficulties they may be having,. You have to remember your own difficulties you had when you teach or share with others.

Being a good follower or student involves surrender, patience, time, perseverance, and, most importantly, letting go of your ego. It requires a level of humility that often pushes you to do things that may not be enjoyable or that may feel counterintuitive to your instincts.

Instead of taking the easy route, you might find yourself taking on difficult tasks, incurring costs—whether they be financial, emotional, or physical—or even enduring hardship, all of which serve to humble you and open you up to receiving invaluable knowledge.

Let go of this. Being humbled and challenged is essential for genuine learning; if you believe you already possess all the knowledge there is, you’ll inadvertently block yourself from absorbing new, valuable insights.

When you remain open and receptive, you truly can soak up and understand what you’re being taught, allowing those teachings to sink deep into your being.

From my own experience, I can say that genuine and vital musical insights flow from and through the teacher, not from their ego. Not from being great, the best, the fastest or the most knowing. Something has to be transmitted through them,

The educational process is a partnership, and learning requires significant time and effort from both the teacher and the student. Time in=time out. There is no getting around this. It takes time.

Once you grasp what it takes to study and understand the fine art of hand drumming—or any discipline—you begin to recognize that you will always be a student in some form or another. This realization is important as it supersedes the ego. “I am a student exploring and learning” is my moto!

The most significant achievement, perhaps, is learning how to learn itself. This is something most of us ultimately have to navigate on our own. There are many ways to learn to drum, and they must all be looked at if you want to be well rounded and also, to find your own best methods.

Everyone’s methods are different, which adds to the richness of the learning experience. You can’t truly learn drumming and drum language and technique from a book; while it may provide a wealth of information, it lacks the nuances of experience and understanding. Books serve to inform; they provide data and context, but they can only take you so far.

Furthermore, although videos allow for what I call “copying and repetition”, they often don’t foster the deep, transformative learning that comes from engaging with the material in a more profound way.

Group classes and teachers act as guides, helping illuminate the path, or a sign or signal on the path if you will. you can gather there, you can share you can get things.

However, the real learning must come from within you. It’s an experience, an internal experience; when you finally grasp something profound, you know you’ve ventured beyond surface-level understanding, and you’ll experience that exhilarating “Aha!” moment.

I call these “breakthroughs” or “mini breakthroughs”. This can happen, when you practice and get something difficult that was challenging and you thought you might never get.

But the question remains: who really knows everything? In truth, nobody does. There are masters and grand master drummers but all are different and different styles and areas they excel at.

The pursuit of knowledge for me, is an ever-evolving journey, and when we embrace that, we open ourselves to a lifetime of learning and growth.

I believe that true wisdom lies not in claiming to know it all but in recognizing the vastness of what there is to learn—and in being comfortable with that uncertainty.

The drummers path, from what I can see, from my personal experience and from all that has been told to me is one that is always about learning.

So, when it comes to hand drumming, no matter what type or style you play, let’s remain curious, humble, and ever eager to grow.