SKF NOTE: Solid thoughts from Smashing Pumpkins‘s Jimmy Chamberlin on learning to communicate through drumming.

Jimmy Chamberlin: [A] lot of people…don’t give themselves enough time to master something, even something as simple as a paradiddle or a single stroke roll. I continue to work on that stuff today and try to make it better, you never really master it. You might master it to a certain degree, but everyone’s single strokes are different.

You need to realise that throughout your life drumming will remain a long arc of practise, completion and some type of resolution. Realising that allows us to continue to learn with patience.”

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[T]here are many levels of success. Letting people know that the destination of music is self expression is important, and that the reason…we practise the drums is for us to get what is in our heart out onto the canvas. That should be the only reason that we practise.

There’s a lot of people out there who can do it with very few brush strokes. Charlie Watts is one of the most recognisable drummers out there…. Then you have someone like Vinnie [Colaiuta] who obviously articulates in a very different manner, but the destination is the same. They both have feelings they need to articulate and get out onto the drumset, they just have a different mechanism. It’s all self expression.”

Source: Jimmy Chamberlin on drum education, developing your style and the mechanics of drumming, by Rich Chamberlain, MusicRadar.com 12/4/17