If you want to improve your drumming and expand your abilities then it is important to play and practice to different feels and different time signatures on your drum or percussion instrument.

Get out of your comfort zone of the same time signatures and speed all the time. If you just play to the same rhythm all the time at the same speed it’s hard to grow. Many people are stuck and don’t even realize there is a endless world of rhythmic possibilities out there.

I have noticed that sometimes people who only practice and play to fast rhythms can not play to slow rhythms and vice versa. Some folks can only play loud and others only soft. But training for dynamics can change this.

When you practice it is important to not get stuck playing to rhythms that you are super comfortable with. Practice to rhythms you are not comfortable with as well. Anything uncomfortable at first can often later become your best friend. It’s the unfamiliarity that feels weird most of the time.

Most people using a metronome or drum application will find a comfortable tempo and play there. But if you speed up (or slow down) a rhythm incrementally playing for a little while in each spot you can really find and learn to play differently and in interesting ways you may have not thought possible before.

A lot of it is getting your body and mind to relax into it. Speed can be intimidating until you understand that there are different ways to play to rhythms when they speed up. There are different phrases and spacing we can use as soloists. There are ways for the body and mind to relax into it.

There are various feels we can apply. Playing fast is not just physical there is a huge mental side to it as well. There is also dynamics that come into play. If you play slightly softer when you speed up it helps the muscles relax into it for example.

There is nothing wrong with drum circles. However, if you want to improve musicaly, if you want your drumming to improve its very difficult for most people to improve only playing at the drum circle.

If you only pay at drum circles then you will only be able to play to drum circle rhythms, which are generally 90% 4/4. It’s hard to play to the intricacies of a rhythm arrangement when there is no arrangement and very little space with all the spaces filled.

There can be so much going on at the same time and no space, so most people tune out or only tune into whoever is near them. More often then not, soloists play over the top of the rhythm. That’s fine, but it is only one way to play.

I was playing with some good musicians the other day. People who I have heard sound really good at large jam sessions (drum circles).

We were playing in a session away from the drum circle and I was playing dunun. I was playing a variety of rhythms and all they could play to was the simplest of 4/4 rhythms. They could not play to other feels. They could not play to 6/8, 9/8 or swing feels for Yankadi or other Susu rhythms.

I was surprised and then I realized that this is all they practice to. They dont get together and work on different feels or rhythm compositions and in this way they remain very limited.

For me much of drumming and percussion is not just about the feel and energy of rhythms it is also equally about fundamental rhythm concepts. It does not mean you have to get heady, or spend your life studying math.

You just need to learn the basic principals of drumming and time. Be it straight time or odd time or various different types of swing there ar basic underlying principles that apply to all types of drumming.