Practice Playing the Drums Quietly

Image : http://www.flickr.com

Drumming is a great art to master. Not only does it require a great deal of dexterity and coordination, but it also requires the drummer to really feel and get into the music that he is playing. The drum set is a great musical instrument that takes a lot of practice in order to become great at.

Sometimes, however, practicing may become a little bit of a problem if you do not have a music studio at your convenience. If you live in an apartment or close to neighbors, your practice sessions will make a great deal of noise and you may potentially become a nuisance and an annoyance to you neighbors and the people that you live with as well. In addition, you may have a busy schedule which only affords you to practice your drumming at night. Being noisy at night will upset the sleeping patterns of your neighbors and you may even be justly fined with a ticket from your local police department for disturbing the peace.

Do not fret too much. There are a couple of solutions that can afford you the ability to practice your drumming just about any time you want without disturbing anyone.

Drum Pad Silencers

Drum pad silencers are simple pads made out of a rubber-like material that you apply onto the top of your drums. These drum pad silencers absorb the sound that hitting the drums with your drumsticks make while at the same time still preserving a good amount of the same natural stick bounce and feel of your drum set. They even make these great silencer pads for the bass drum and cymbals.

Do not get me wrong, you will still create some noise while you are practicing with the drum pad silencers on. However, if you close your room door, your family will hardly hear a thing, and your neighbors will not hear a thing at all. So, with drum pad silencers, you can rock out on your drum set at any time of the day that you wish without disturbing the peace of anyone.

Rock Band

Have you heard of the video game Rock Band? Well, if you are a musician, than you should familiarize yourself with Rock Band. Granted, playing this video game is not really like playing in an actual rock band, the drum set in Rock Band comes pretty close to the real thing. The drum sequences in the video game are pretty awesome, and will test your drumming skills. These things are fairly quiet, but if you want it even quieter, they make drum pad silencers for the drum set made for Rock Band.

If you have got a set of headphones for your television and you have drum silencer pads, you are good to practice drumming with Rock Band almost at any time that you would like. It is a fun way to practice and test your coordination and dexterity.

So, these are just a couple of examples that should get you started with practicing your drumming quietly or as quietly as possible at the least. Rock on!

The Top 10 Reasons Why You Suck At Playing Guitar

Image : http://www.flickr.com

You don't 'need' to play guitar enough.

If you desire to become a great guitarist, you have to want it badly enough to sacrifice other parts of your life to devote to practice.

This doesn't mean you have to give up your social life and never take the guitar out of your hands until your Jimi Hendrix...

But it does mean you need to set aside time to practice and commit to actually it.

If you really want to learn guitar then you shouldn't feel the need to put it off till later to make time for some television!

You have limiting beliefs about your ability.

Believe it or not, many people have hidden limiting beliefs which stop them from progressing into the guitarists they want to be.

Do your friends/spouse/parents knock you and think you're wasting your time?
Don't let anyone put you off from doing something that's important to you.

Even the greatest players had to start somewhere! There is no such thing as 'natural ability'. Nobody was born playing guitar, they had to learn too. So don't be hard on yourself if you can't play as well as you'd like just yet - and don't let anyone stop you from trying.

Don't listen to anyone's negativity!

You don't know how to practice.

Practice just isn't as simple as you have been led to believe. Many people just get their guitar and run through some exercises, a song, or a guitar tab the same way they have done it hundreds of times before, and they just aren't getting any benefit or improvement from doing that. So you need to know how to practice effectively.

You don't put enough time aside for practice.

If you want to get really good on guitar, then you need to be setting a side a set period of time each day or each week for practice.

It's okay to vary it from week to week if you like, but you have to commit to actually practicing regularly otherwise it's going to take you much more time to improve.

You don't set goals.

It's important to have some kind of goal in your practice. How can you get anywhere without first knowing where you're going? By setting yourself targets to aim for in your practice, you will get their much faster.

You Don't focus on one thing at a Time.

You need to have some focus when you practice. You need to be aware of what you're trying to do, and not trying to learn too many things at once.

Many people try to learn too many songs, too many tabs, or too many guitar method books all at the same time and suffer from information overload.

How many songs can you play a part of, but not the whole thing? You need to focus on one thing at a time!

You Don't Play Slowly Enough At First

It's important not to just play something as fast as possible, or as fast as you have heard some other guy play it on the radio. You need to take things slow - and play slowly enough so you don't keep making mistakes.

You Try To Learn Things You Aren't Ready For

It's important that you know you're capabilities. This isn't to say you shouldn't strive to improve, but you must remember to start at the beginning.

You can't take any short-cuts without having to pay for it in the long-run.

You're Taking Lessons From Someone Who Can't Teach

You may have a friend who can play guitar, or some guy down the road used to give lessons 25 years ago - but just because someone can play guitar, doesn't actually mean they have the skills to teach guitar.

The two things are actually very different. And if you're not learning from someone who knows how to teach, you could be causing yourself more problems than your solving by having lessons from this person.

You Don't Have A Good Guitar

You don't need to break the bank by getting that $1000 guitar just yet, but you at least need a fairly decent guitar that will inspire you to pick it up and play it!

Many of the cheap starter packs for beginners just aren't up to scratch, and cause many budding guitar players to give up in frustration without giving it a fair chance.