Journal · On Practice
Six Mistakes That Cost You Years
The most common traps I see students fall into — and how to avoid each one.
Learning an instrument is slow enough done right. These six mistakes make it slower — and almost everyone makes at least one.
Learning percussion is not complicated, but it is easy to do badly. Over many years of teaching I have watched the same handful of mistakes cost people months, sometimes years — not because they lacked talent or love, but because no one ever told them. Here are the six I see most.
1. Learning from the wrong people
Study only with people you truly trust. The internet is full of percussion “stars” who teach not just shallow material but — far worse — simply wrong technique: habits that will take you years to unlearn, if you ever do. Before you take a single tip from someone, ask one question: is every word coming out of their mouth backed by hundreds, even thousands, of hours of real playing? If you cannot be sure, do not build your hands on it. A bad source is worse than no source at all.
2. Practicing only technique
I understand the temptation completely. Technique is the easiest thing to practice — it is not truly challenging, it makes you visibly faster and more impressive, and the progress curve is clear and satisfying. So people pour all their time into it. But walk into any serious conservatory or deep musical institution in the world, and you will not find a single one teaching music through technique alone. Not one. It would be a joke — a sad one. You have to play music with the drum. Technique practiced in isolation makes your playing hollow: speed with nothing to say, technique with no context, and it ends badly, musically. Compositions and songs must be the root of your practice — alongside technique and rhythmic exercises, yes, but never instead of music.
3. Practicing with no feedback
The solo, self-taught path works for very few people — and even when it works, it is almost always far slower than it needed to be. When you study with a teacher, you are not only learning from their experience; you are learning from their mistakes, and from their teacher’s mistakes, and their teacher’s teacher’s. That is how knowledge compounds across generations. A good teacher can save you years of wrong turns — and, just as importantly, save you from injuries you would never have seen coming.
A bad source is worse than no source at all.
4. Practicing too much, too fast
This one is so important I gave it its own piece. The short version: do not try to climb the whole staircase in a single stride. Start small, protect the habit, and grow it step by step — the patience is the work. I wrote about exactly how in Discipline Is a Skill.
5. Never playing with others
Playing with other people will teach you things no teacher and no practice session ever can — the dynamics of a real moment, the give and take of a real encounter. It is irreplaceable. Do your best to find a friend, a fellow musician roughly at your level, and spend time simply playing together. You will discover things about your own playing that a metronome can never tell you. And if you live somewhere with no one around — many people do — then insist on playing with music. Put on something you love, imagine you are part of the band, and interact with it: respond to it, answer it, leave space for it. Make it a real conversation, even if you are the only one in the room.
6. Ignoring the relaxation of your hands
This one deserves its own article, and it will get one — but you cannot wait until then to begin. Pay attention to your body while you play, and above all to your hands. Keep your palms soft. Keep your wrist loose. Locking your fingers, your wrist, your elbow is a highway straight to injury — and it quietly caps your speed and your sound the whole way there. Soft hands are not a finishing touch you add later. They are the foundation everything else is built on.
None of these mistakes come from a lack of effort or love — they come from not knowing. Which is exactly what a good teacher, and a little patience, are for. Avoid these six, and you hand yourself back years.
The fastest way to learn the drum is to stop making the slow mistakes.
Explore the Classes →Live online lessons across four instruments — or read Discipline Is a Skill next in the Journal.