Table of contents

  1. Drumming Update
  2. Stats
  3. Wear & Tear
  4. Upgrades
  5. Future Plans
Drumming Update Drumming Update

Drumming Update

11/24/2025 / 3 minutes to read / Tags: learning, stories

It has been almost exactly 1 year since I bought an electric drum set.

Stats

According to my Clone Hero profiles, this year I have:

  • 767 Songs Played
  • 1805 Unique Plays

At an average of 3 mins per song, that is ~90 hours of playing. Almost 200 of those songs are at least 97%.

I’ve also tried a little bit of sight reading sheet music and playing along to drumless tracks on Youtube. I’m still struggling to memorize anything, but my skill at sight reading Clone Hero has greatly improved. The songs I’ve ended up liking to play the most are classic rock and what I listened to in High School.

My Top Three most played are:

  1. The Used - Taste of Ink
  2. Emarosa - Heads or Tails? Real or Not
  3. The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

Wear & Tear

I had started getting some blisters and callouses on my fingers and thought that might just come with all the playing, but after a bit of research I found that it might be due to my stick choice.

I’ve been trying different stick types and sizes to see what feels best, and I think I’ve settled on a pair of Vic Firth American Classic 2B’s for now. I still drop them occasionally, but the blisters and callouses and completely gone away.

The Drum Set itself has held up pretty well, the only damage being two of the cymbals splitting:

Cymbal Damage 1 Cymbal Damage 2

I simply swapped them out for the two that i played less frequently, and they seem to be holding up fine.

Upgrades

This month I decided it was finally time to play in 4K with some of the graphics features on.

The new mini PC has a Ryzen 5 and Radeon Vega 8 graphics, which is enough for me to play in 4K at a solid 60fps with most graphics features on.

It also has a USBC Port, enabling using of my external display for standalone gaming in the future.

Future Plans

In the near future the skill I’m working on is playing the kick pedal heel up. This has become a critical need to be able to play some of the more difficult songs I enjoy.

Longer term I’m not sure what I want to do with these skill yet. I have really enjoyed having an active hobby ready to go at any time.

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