Extreme learning
One of the drawbacks with acquiring a PhD is that you “lose” around five years of work experience, because you are busy studying. It’s the same with all forms of education a.k.a. sacrificing the present for the future. I felt this very strongly during my first years as an acoustician. My friends who went straight to a private sector employment had several years head start on me, so by the time I was finally ready to start working for real, I was far behind, and I was frustrated by the feeling that colleagues assumed that my experience would be great and not comparable to a fresh recruit. Of course, when you have a good education/toolkit in your mind, it is only a matter of time before you catch up and take the lead, and in my case, I reckon it took around ten years in total (including PhD studies). During my insane quest to learn the drums, I realized something similar the other day with regards to music.
When you know nothing, you can start learning in any direction you want. It does not matter at all what you learn, because you will instantly become 10% better after every training session. After some time, you will need to stop going in all directions and choose your own path. And if you keep specializing in a given domain, the width of your skill tree becomes more and more narrow the higher you climb. The analogy is highly valid for the school system in general and how you specialize further and narrower the higher the tier. I started playing the drums with a complete insane target in mind: To learn Bleed, one of the most difficult songs ever composed for the drums. That means that I have gone for the hyper-narrow, tip-of-the-spear knowledge from day one.
Back during my first ten years as an acoustician, I often said that my skill tree or knowledge profile, is very high and very narrow. There was no broad base, just a very high tower. Ideally, you would probably be better served by a skill tree that is more in the shape of a pyramid. A rock solid, wide and unmovable base, which gets pointier the higher you climb. Consequently, a construct like that takes decades to build. There are two ways to do it: 1) start broad and build the pyramid one story at a time or 2) reach the top ASAP with minimum scaffolds and then after reaching the top, you start creating the lower stories. Both probably work just as well, depending on your personality and learning style.
My approach to learning Bleed is to take the 2nd method to the extreme. To reach the top without prior knowledge in as short of a time as humanly possible. The other day I was contemplating my progress after doubling my efforts to 2x15 min per day 42 days ago from the previous daily 15 minutes. I realized that I may now have reached a point where further attempts for the summit are futile. I need more scaffolding and a wider foundation. The tower I have built is not stable enough to climb higher yet. I have pushed certain skills as a drummer so far that I am unable to proceed without acquiring more general know-how in the playing. And that probably means learning techniques that are not directly used in my specific song, but indirectly. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that I am the only drummer in the world right now who can (almost) play Bleed and still be completely incompetent on certain basic stuff that every drummer “should” now. Do note that today is the 1400th day of consecutive drum practice of One. Single. Song. I find it hard to believe that there is anyone out there who is that crazy. As a side note, I started the project in July 2019 and that does not add up to 1400 days. But the reason is that I took a couple of months break and learned to play the same song on the Guitar, just to understand all the patterns fully. That’s why there are some days missing. If we include those, we are rather at day 1500-1600 by now.
But today, on drum day 1400 I suspect that I must add more scaffolding. And in drum terms, that would mean to learn another song, preferably in another genre. I have been extremely stubborn; in that I have consistently refused to play any other song than Bleed these past years. I didn’t want to lose time by acquiring knowledge that is not directly usable in my current project. You could perhaps make an analogy to the educational system here if you wish. What if you could train someone for 5-10 years to acquire only the skills necessary for the intended job and nothing else? It sounds crazy, I know, but that is one of the points of this project. How else can I find out what really happens if you do this, other than proving it by personal example?
My conclusion is that I have now justified learning something else, another song or two, while still being faithful to my primary goal which is playing Bleed. Obviously, I have done technical exercises for months on end, but when you only get to use a specific technique for about 1 second in each run of Bleed, it might be wiser to practice a song where that fringe thing becomes that primary technique. Then you go back to Bleed, hopefully better equipped to handle that 1 second fill like a samurai.