How much do you guys practice? My son is at Grade Four Percussion and Grade 3 Grumkit, and never ever practises at home. He assures me that he doesn't need to, but I find this hard to accept. He has a half hour lesson for each of the above per week and is in an orchestra and a percussion group. It is true that he can continue to get away with never doing any practice at home?

Does he practice at school, or anywhere else?

I think that's all I ever did on cornet at school (minus the lesson) and I was first cornet in the school band.

I don't think I'd ever really heard about regular practice at home until I started piano lessons at 14.

I had a practice pad for side drum technique, but apart from that I can honestly say I didn't do any practice at home until I had to audition for a regional orchestra when I was 16. Before then I picked up what was required from being in the school orchestra, a local beginners' orchestra, a schools divisional orchestra and eventually the local amateur orchestra. In other words I was playing a LOT of percussion - enough to get to the point where I could play professionally, even if not necessarily make a full-time career of it.

It's often very difficult to practise percussion at home. Do you have a kit? You can practise snare drum stuff on a practice pad, but the other stuff is quite difficult to practise due to the lack of instruments!

We do have a drumkit in the house, which I'm continually falling over, but I'm not allowed to put it away. It was in my bedroom for ages because that was the only place with a space. (Good fun when somebody fa*ts near the bass drum but otherwise not the most desireable of bedroom furniture.) So I'm a constant dilemma as to whether to put the dam thing in the roofspace, because he never practises. But I'm glad to hear that this is not so abnormal at this stage!

Don't worry, Dulciana. He's happy and doing fine so why worry now about the future? I'm sure that quite soon he'll realise that if he practises, he'll progress even faster! Might be worth you hvg a private chat with his tutors, too. Teenagers listen more to their teachers than their mums.

Erm...

Yes - practice is generally a good idea... Why is a drumkit different to any other instrument? Your son would need to practise piano/flute/trombone/oboe etc. if he wanted to be any good... And likewise with drumming - anybody who's any good will have practised!