Hit me with your rhythm stick

Last week I was learning accentuated hits on the high hat and cymbal.
That meant I had to hit the hi-hat quite hard and then instead of lifting the wrist to tap in the same way, you flop your wrist so that the end drops and hits the hi-hat lighter, so you hear a TAP tap TAP tap TAP tap TAP tap (if you do it right).

I was having trouble with this.
But then that was hardly surprising considering it looks like I've been holding the stick all wrong anyway. And if I'm not hitting the drums with the right hold and the right wrist action then naturally, everything else isn't going to be working right either.

We lowered the hi-hat for me and I've still not found the place where I don't feel like I'm toppling over when I'm playing. But of course since I was used to a higher hi hat, I'm now clunking into my left hand which is playing the snare more.

But yeah, I'm finding the wrist drop hard because it tends to just merge into a sawing movement and I'm finding it hard to hear whether it's accented or all sounding the same.

Seemingly my bass drum needs working on (everything needs working on - I'm a beginner!).
It's not strong enough and seemingly I'm not on the beat frequently.
I'm finding it hard to practice without a real bass drum though as my practice pad doesn't make enough noise (ironically) - especially if you've got the metronome earplugs in and are hitting a real high hat and cymbals etc.
Maybe it's time to ring that bloke who said he potentially could get me a real drumkit for £50....
(Although I personally thought it was just 'one of those things people say').

And anyway, my neighbours have done something to piss me off so I'm a lot less bothered about making horrendous amounts of noise.
Bah ha ha ha.
This is why you shouldn't fuck off your neighbours.

So. So I've been trying to work on my fills - just 4 basic ones to improve my timing and get me used to stopping and changing the beats etc and then re-starting the groove again. Which is actually really hard - I'll get it once or twice but then I'll lose it. I doubt I'd be able to keep it up for a song length at the moment.
No wonder all the best pop songs are so short - they wanted them over before they started doing them wrong...

And it took me a while to work out why I was only doing three bars of groove and then filling on the fourth - because the songs I was listening to didn't seem to conform to that formula.
But maybe music doesn't have a formula anyway.
I just assumed drums would be less 'do what the hell you like/what you feel you should be doing'.

My teacher is obviously cottoning onto the fact that I am square and like the structure though because he gave me a handout on drumming and how to hold the sticks.
But with a lot of these things it's hard to describe unless you have pictures and someone sitting there saying 'no, here, you should be doing it like THIS'.

Thankfully there was no 'play along to this song' this time (let's face it - if I can't keep up a groove with just a metronome then there's not much point in me trying to play along to a song I've never heard before).
I was having terrible trouble finding time to practice last week. When I got home it was often late and I was starving, and by the time I'd finished making and eating dinner it was too late to be hitting things. I started trying to squeeze in 15 minutes in the morning after the neighbours leave for work but again, sometimes I'm running late so I can't spare that 15 minutes.
And there is always that thought in the back of my head saying 'if you were a neighbour of this you'd go spare'.
But then I keep telling myself that they do just as worse things and don't even have the consideration to not do them after 9pm.
It's just reassuring myself that it's OK to make a bit of noise.
But yeah, whenever you think it will be OK to make some noise, like the weekend, you never get the time to actually make the noise.
And even when I practice for an hour, it's hard to know if you're getting any better.
I was thinking of using an old dictaphone to play back so I can hear if I'm off etc.

But what's a good metronome speed to be practising at?

Plus, I keep licking my lips or something because after each drum session they feel like I've been licking at them for ages.
It is possible it's the vibrations making me lick them - or maybe I'm just concentrating and biting them a lot or something but I'm not aware of it.
This could be that classic 'drummer's face' you see all the time. That look of concentration....