The OffBeat #29: Drum Rudiments for Your Professional Life
What are your career essential truths?
Like a lot of drummers, I started out on a practice pad. For my first few months of lessons in middle school, before I’d ever sat behind a drum kit, my teacher drilled me on sticking exercises using a pair of chunky Vic Firth sticks and a pad screwed flat onto a cymbal stand. He’d hand-write rudiments in a lined notebook, set it on a wire music stand, and have me bang out paradiddle after paradiddle. R-L-R-R, L-R-L-L, over and over again.
Drum rudiments like the paradiddle, or the flam, or the single stroke roll (or 6th grade Allison’s favorite: the pataflafla), are the building blocks for all drumming. Beats, fills, and grooves are made up of rudiments. Rudiments are like the ABCs of the drumming language, or like scales for melodic instruments.
There’s an interesting history to how rudiments serve as a shared vocabulary among a broader audience than just fellow drummers:
“Drum rudiments have been in existence since ancient militaries used snare drummers to communicate important information across battle lines.
On the battlefield, a military snare drummer would play various patterns of rudiments to tell commanders where enemies were advancing from—essentially turning the drummer into an ancient walkie-talkie.”
As you gain knowledge and skill, rudiments are still important to practice. But most of the time, you’re using them subconsciously and they form the foundation for your playing that just sort of sits behind the scenes. You also, over time, make them your own; you figure out the weight and rhythm of each note that feels most comfortable, the perfect grip on the stick, the precise angle against the drum head.
There’s a nice parallel here with professional life. The drum rudiment equivalent for the working world is the set of sticky truths that comprise your professional philosophy and guide you day-to-day. It’s the intellectual companion to your more existential personal values.
You might find it worthwhile to crystallize what this list of essential truths are for you, and house them somewhere you can reference. Like drum rudiments, your career equivalents may not be unique or even remarkable; but as a set they make up the repertoire you use to navigate work. You’ll likely discover new ones as your career experiences broaden.
Here are some of mine:
Before you make a big career decision, get clear on your must-haves and your nice-to-haves; don’t move forward if any must-haves are not met
Letting go of the need to be liked as a leader does not mean you won’t be liked
In any conflict, you’re at least 20% at fault
Send me yours.
Have a great week,
Allison
P.S. If you’re in the mood for more brain systematization, also try identifying your career “jazz standards.”