Recently, I have spent some time trying to learn how to swing dance (Lindy Hop) and also ballroom. Being a drummer, I thought that it would be fairly easy to feel the rhythm and stay with the beat of the music. Well… sometimes it was and sometimes I had some big problems. I could hear the music and, thus, know where I was supposed to be, but my body didn’t always get there at the “right” time. For me and my dancing partner (my now wife), this was frustrating. She picked up the moves quicker than I did, as well.
I got to thinking about how I learn new things on the drum set, and I started to understand that I seem to need time and repetition for things to settle into place. Dancing, for me, seemed to require a similar approach. Not only did I need some time to “get” a particular move, but I also then needed to practice that move a number of times. I’m not always considered a patient person, but it certainly takes patience for me to learn these types of things – whether it be dancing or drumming.
I’d like to talk more about some of these ideas in other posts, but I wanted to get started on this.
