This is the first time I have learned to play music somebody else wrote. When I start a new lesson, it is SO hard to learn the pattern. It is such an unpleasant feeling until the pattern begins to settle in my brain. Once I get it down (takes me weeks and weeks), I can’t believe it was ever difficult. It becomes very fun. My question: will every new pattern for the rest of my life be this miserable, or does it get easier to learn new ones the more I have I have memorized?
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In my experience learning new patterns does get easier, but this is mostly because you sort of played them before.
What I mean by that is that there are certain things happening in beats and fills that are used so much that by the time you’ve been playing for a while you will have played similar things a million times and therefore it seems as if you’re learning the pattern faster.
As soon as you have to then really play something you’ve never played before, it will be weeks of work again to get comfortable. But again, once you’ve encorporated that new way of playing enough every beat that uses it will then be easier to learn.
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I get it. That is encouraging.
And @Robert_Mathijs I am so sorry to have missed the livestream. I work nights until 4:00 AM, and for some reason I cannot figure out what day or time to tune in. I consistently miss the stream and am ready for it at some random time after it’s over (right now, for example).
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Hy Lynn,
No problem. I did figure out at this point that livestreams on saturday work better than sunday 
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@Lynn: I think anything your brain does frequently, it ends up doing it easily. So it’s probably just a matter of practice. Think how difficult and slow was to read in the beginning when we were kids, and now it’s an automatic process.
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@eduard I know you are right. The brain must work very hard in the Quest For Groove. We are learning some pretty deep stuff here. I just have been getting this miserable feeling lately right before something starts to stick. I just had to ask the musicians here if it ever gets better. 
I think it definitely gets better with practice. I remember when I took some music lessons, I was struggling with reading music and tuning, but rhythm was the easiest (and funniest) for me. The truth is that I had been all my life tapping my feet, finger, and hands casually all the time, so simply I had been “practicing” for years before I joined the music school.
As Robert says, just 10min a day will make advange a lot on the medium/long run (in any discipline). Just make sure that you choose the activity that you enjoy, so those 10min are of joy, and not of “work”.
Cheers!
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