So, it’s been a few months since I last posted. It’s not that I’ve been slacking off on my blogging, it’s that I haven’t been playing drums due to a shoulder injury. I ended up with what my doctor told me was bursitis in the shoulder and had to rest it as well as get a cortisone shot to clear it up. Thankfully, I’m now back to playing and I’ve started stretching out for 5 minutes or so before I sit down to play so I avoid reinjuring my shoulder. It’s also important to not overdue things which I think is what caused the problem to begin with (3 hours of Enter Sandman when I wasn’t used to drumming was a recipe for disaster). Anyhow, I’ll be back to updating the blog with my progress regularly now. I had to sort of relearn some stuff but was happy to see I had retained the general skills I had developed. I’ve got Back In Black, Enter Sandman, and My Friend Of Misery down and will be jumping into the rest of Metallica’s Black Album starting with Don’t Tread On Me. I’ll also of course be getting back to working on more exercises from Michael Michalkow’s Drumming System (by the way, if you want to read my review of this drumming system, you can check it out here).
More kit repositioning…this time I was messing around with the height of my drum throne. What I had read online indicated that the throne should be at a height that made your thighs parallel to the floor with your knees at about a 90 degree angle or perhaps a bit larger than a 90 degree angle. I think part of the problem I was having was that I was too low so I was finding myself having to hold my shoulders up in a bit of a shrugging position when playing. Now, I’ve moved the drum throne height up so I’m more on top of the kit and looking down on it. As with the general kit repositioning I mentioned in my last post, this has seemed to help my shoulder pain but I still don’t think it’s perfect…perhaps the throne’s a bit too high now. I’ll keep experimenting…I definitely am more convinced than ever that it’s vitally important to have the kit arranged perfectly for your body to facilitate better playing and avoid muscle and joint injuries.
After rehabbing my shoulder for a few weeks, I decided that perhaps the injury I incurred was caused by the positioning and setup of the drum kit. Since the Alesis DM6 is an electronic kit, the setup is a bit different than an acoustic kit. The main thing I found is that the snare seems to be placed a bit more off to the side since the drum pad actually has to connect to the left support bar as opposed to sitting on the floor. In any case, I moved things around a bit to place the snare a bit more between my legs and started sitting further back from the kit itself while moving the kick drum closer towards me. That, and looking up some drum posture videos on YouTube, has seemed to help with the pain. Too bad I didn’t discover this before the initial injury though. Anyhow, if you’re new to drumming and are having some pain in any part of your body I’d suggest making sure your kit it properly positioned around you. It might make all the difference.
Well, after a brief vacation, I’m back behind the drum kit and ready to start playing again. I’m currently working on My Friend of Misery by Metallica and Cry Tough by Poison but I still run through Back In Black and Enter Sandman when I play. Sandman still hurts my shoulders so I’m trying not to aggravate the problem until it totally heals. I received that Drumming System I mentioned in my last post and I’ll try to write a better review of it in the near future. I’ll hopefully be back to posting regularly now so stay tuned.
My shoulder is still bothering me but I’m too addicted to the drums now to stop playing entirely so I’ve been spending my time slowly learning drum beats from the Rock Drum Basics book
So, my wrist/hand pain cleared up just a few days after it started (and I’ve now got a bitchin’ callous on my right hand to boot) but I’ve developed some shoulder pain over the past couple days so I think I’m going to take a couple days off from drumming. I workout a lot as well so I think the weights and the pounding on drums for hours a day was causing a problem. Hopefully, this’ll clear up as quickly as my wrist issues. Status report thus far is basically the same: Back In Black is down though I run through it a few times each time I sit down and play; Enter Sandman is complete except for the last 20 seconds or so of the tom outro; I’ve learned My Friend of Misery up through the first chorus but it’s still shaky on some parts. Once I get back to playing I’m going to add in some of the more “boring” technical stuff like rudiments and playing various beats to a metronome in addition to continuing to work on the songs. ‘Til then…
, it's the exact same drum kit that I am teaching myself to play on. Check it out if you want to learn to play drums at home too...it's awesome and Amazon always has the lowest price for it. I did a ton of research before I bought it.