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Summary: Find a good drum instructor, who has experience and can accommodate your drumming level; learn how with tips from our expert percussionist and drum instructor in this free beginning drum video tutorial.
Views: 680 | Tags: beginner, drums, drum, play, beginning, basics, instruction, drumming, musiclessons
About the Expert
Mike Schminke Mike Schminke has been playing the drums for over 14 years. A former member of the Blue Island Tribe, Mike now plays in the Bobby St. Vincent Project in Los A... read more
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Questions & AnswersAlright, so you got a drum set, now what? The best thing to do is to find a teacher or at least a friend that plays the drums just so it can give you a head start on how to actually play. Some places to find a teacher; much like finding a drum set, you can go to Craig's List. There are people posted all the time wanting to find students to teach. The MySpace music classifieds is also a really great place to find a teacher. Once again, local listings and your local newspaper are also great places. Also, go to music shops. It is a great place to find information on bands. There is always a bulletin board right in the entry way about bands playing venues, teachers, and also kits. There are all sorts of things. So you find a teacher. Another thing, just like buying a drum set, again, is if you get a local recommendation or somebody who knows somebody, it is really important to find a teacher that you can actually connect with because it is easier to take direction from somebody you know and you can trust and I personally find it easier to learn from someone I have previously known or a recommendation from a friend. Once you find a teacher, unless you can practice in your house, you have to find some place to play and in a big city that can be kind of tough. Here in L.A. I have opted to go and find another band with a practice space and we just share it; cut the rent right in half, which I think is the best way to do it. Of course, if you can find somebody's garage to play in for free that might be the way to go. Once you got your teacher, practice space and you have been practicing for a while, you have hooked up with a band. A few tips on your fist gig. A lot of the times a venue is going to offer free alcohol which is cool, but learn to take it in moderation because while you might think you are playing like a rock star, people that are sober might have a different opinion. Other things you might want to bring to your first venue are a gig bag which would include more sticks because sticks will break. You want to include washers and little parts for your drum set and symbols. You want a gig tool kit which has Alan wrenches on it, a drum key for tuning your drums which is also very important. And anything that could go wrong I would prepare for on your first gig. One more thing to remember when you are practicing the drums is do not practice fancy. Do not practice as fast as you can and do not try to just do drum soloing the whole practice session. What you want to do when you first start is practice as simply and as solidly as you possibly can. Learn something slow and solid, then when you are 100% comfortable with it you can speed it up until you get really comfortable and you can add more things because the number one thing you want to do as a drummer is to hold the time, hold the temp for the rest of the band. Because, if you get off, everybody else gets off. So it is your number one duty to hold that time no matter what. One way to do that, of course, is to practice with a metronome. You can get them now really cheap. They have a little clip and go right on your belt and you can pick whatever beat you want and what I use is sound bending headphones which cuts out a great amount of noise so you can really hear that click and just play to a click. You can play a straight beat if you want. What I have done in the past and what I do now is I will just pick a click and play that same beat for 5 maybe 10 minutes just to get that beat to the point where someone will say "play that beat," and I will play it perfectly on time, anytime, all the time. A metronome really helps. Also, with the sound bending headphones you can use a mp3 player or an iPod and listen to your favorite songs and just play those. You can hear it really well because it cuts out a lot of the noise. Another thing to do as kind of an exercise is to put your music on random and just let it play. Because a lot of the times you get caught into playing just whatever you want to play and whatever songs you want to play, but if you just put it on random and force yourself, maybe a half hour or an hour everyday to just sit there and play whatever comes up, whether it is just jazz or even a movie soundtrack. Just make something up. It will really open up a lot of doors and things you have never tried before and it's actually really fun and a rewarding exercise, I think.
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