Wow, a whole week has already zoomed by. Today's email is divided into two messages - one for those of you on track, and one for those of you falling behind. If you're on track - Think back through last week and remember one thing you did to improve your ability to practice. Maybe you practiced first thing in the morning, or you put the sticks and pad next to the TV remote. Maybe you told yourself you couldn't eat dinner until you did your drills. Whatever it was, hold on to that thing, because you'll almost certainly use it this week. Week two is sort-of the hump week... once you get past week two, you'll have a bit of momentum behind you. You've made it this far, don't let week two trip you up! Think how proud of yourself you'll be when you make it to the end! Great work thus far! Really! Great, great work! If you're falling behind - You are a bad, bad person... approaching evil. Ha! Of course you're not! I bet some of you didn't practice because you were dealing with something far more important than taiko. You were planning a birthday party for your son, or had a minor emergency that messed up your schedule, or are dealing with a particularly busy time at work. That's fine! You *should* be doing all those things... and I'll be the last person to make you feel guilty for it. But take a moment and think about the following. If you look at all the things you care about in life, your priorities and dreams, taiko is probably situated somewhere in the middle. It's more important to you than cleaning the garage, but less important than finishing that report on time. And ask yourself this -- given where taiko sits in your list of priorities, do you devote an adequate amount of time to practice? The answer is almost always "no". I'm a professional taiko player, and my answer is almost always "no". The reason is that we're on our own with taiko practice. Your husband will bug you about the garage, and your boss will bug you about the report, but no one is bugging you to practice. There are no due dates. And the opposite is true too... no one will pat you on the back when you figure out how to play LRLLRLLL without a glitch at 92bpm. No one, except for me, that is! Right now, during this 30 Days program, you have an opportunity to utilize encouragement and the momentum of others, to help bring taiko practice to its proper place in your life. I know how hard it is! I face the same challenge every day. So here's what you do... Today, you need 30 minutes to get caught up. That's all! It's Saturday, I know you can do it! You can get back into the game in only a half-hour... and a fun half-hour at that! Go back and learn the 16's drill on day 4. Then do today's exercises. Then send me an email and I'll give you that pat on the back. In fact, I'll shower you with love! Kris Q/A, Errata/Suggestions, Thoughts When to move on? Q - On the call and response stuff, I'm getting a LITTLE better, but even after several times through don't have them perfected. Wish there were a "slow" button but I don't have one. If I don't attain perfection on those am I really going to regret it down the line? -- Nozomi A - The short answer is "No!". The long answer is... If you feel you can't quite play it properly, and you're motivated and interested to get it, then stick with that rhythm. The fact that you can't play it tells you it's a good place to focus your energy. But that having been said, I'm usually encouraging my students to move on to the next thing sooner than they would naturally. The first reason is that everything is related, so as you work your way through the 30 Days program, you're generally increasing your dexterity, and this makes you better at *everything*. But more importantly, most taiko players run the risk of holding themselves to too high a standard before moving on. We're diligent and obedient and say, "I can't do the next drill until I can play this one perfectly!" We try to practice the rhythm more, but it's not much fun, we don't see much progress, we get down on ourselves, and eventually we wind up not practicing at all. This is why very few people make it through a whole book of drum exercises (or 30 Days to Better Shime for that matter). So I believe it's much better to do *only what you want*, and to always focus on your mind-set and emotions when practicing. Personally, if I feel any resistance to doing a particular drill, forcing myself to do it is a last resort. I try and find something else I want to practice, or some clever thing to think about that makes a particular drill new and interesting. I hold my love of practice as sacred -- if I am instinctively drawn to practice and genuinely enjoy it, I will eventually be a great taiko player. Cultivating that mind-set is much more important than any particular hand combination drill! -- Kris Q - I am finding that the bpm is to fast for me on some drills (call and response) any suggestions for this? Can ipods or computers play the file slower? Also I wish I had eight counts between your patterns, four to pull it together and four to play. I know that it must be difficult to come up with a one size fits all practice scheme. Thanks for all of your good work. -- Karen A - I love that you're looking for ways to make the practice suit your needs. We should always be adjusting tempos and what we're working on to give our brains just the right amount of challenge. There is no way that I know of to easily play the files more slowly on an ipod. The free software program, Audacity, can do this, but that's probably not the quick solution you're looking for. One suggestion would be to focus on every other pattern in the call and response. Let the audio track play but ignore the even calls. This will give you a little bit longer to ponder and try a particular pattern. Another option is to set the call and response aside for now and simply choose different back-to-back combinations of the hand coordination rhythms from that day's exercises. Set a metronome to what seems like a comfortable tempo for the patterns, then try playing all the patterns one after another, no pauses. Then try starting at the last one and moving to the first. Then every other one. Any combination is fine -- the goal is to improve your brain's ability to deal with these hand combinations as they come. Tweak, re-arrange, and mangle the drills as needed! -- Kris I have more on these topics in my Thoughts on Practice essay: http://onensemble.org/2008/10/essay-thoughts-on-practice/