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Practicing is playing, and playing is fun. It’s why we work so hard to get better as drummers and musicians. But what does it take to practice drums? What material items do you need to have a successful practice session? Every drummer needs at least a pair of drum sticks to practice, but you can only get so far without some other essential items. You’ll need a metronome and practice pad. Although a variety of surfaces can act as suitable practice pads, I recommend use a gum rubber pad designed for drumming. The following list includes several recommendations for practice gear. These are items that I have purchased and used extensively and believe that they improve your chances of making more progress sooner than later. https://kit.co/rhythmnotes/drum-set-practice-gear Related: How to Practice Drums If You Want to Be Great 1. Drum Sticks Drum sticks come in so many shapes and sizes. Although I prefer to use Vic Firth 5B sticks on drum set, my practice pad sticks are SD1 General. The SD1s are more substantial in mass, which helps develop more muscle control. Some players use rudimentary drumming sticks, like the models in the Vic Firth Corpsmaster line. The Ralphy Jr model are a happy medium between the SD1s and the larger drum corps sticks. If you’re not used to these larger sticks, take it slow. Your muscles need to strengthen consistently over many years to avoid damage. The balance and pitch are the things that I look for in sticks. Even though Vic Firth is the “perfect pair,” I usually only find one or two pairs out of every 10 in the bin with two sticks that have the same pitch. Drumming on a pad exposes the pitch of the stick if you're gripping it properly. If the pitches are not matched, your strokes can sound uneven. 2. Metronome Any metronome will do, but a Tama Rhythm Watch will do better. It’s a design that’s been reliable for many years without changing because it works great. The Tama RW200 is my workhorse metronome, and I like it because of all the different subdivisions that can be mixed in at different volumes. If you want strategies for developing your timing fast, check out this article on ways to use a metronome. For smaller metronomes, I recommend the Boss DB-30C Dr. Beat. It’s a third of the cost of the Rhythm Watch, and it fits in your pocket. I clip it to the outside of my pocket and can hear it (and feel it) while I warm up. If you’re looking to really take your sense of time to a new level, try programming three bars of time in a four-bar loop on your drum machine. Make a variety of loops with fewer bars of time over the space of the four-bar loop. As you keep time, the goal is to line up with the drum machine when the downbeats come back in. If you don’t have a drum machine, use your metronome and sticks to record these loops with your phone voice message recorder. Related: Best Metronome Apps for Developing Your Internal Clock I use an Alesis SR-16 for my drum machine work. It’s been around for a long time and still gets the job done. It’s easy to program and allows you to do whatever you need to the groove to make it exactly how you want it. 3. Practice Pad Drumming starts with technique development, and technique development starts with a practice pad. I prefer the gum rubber practice pads like the RealFeel by Evans or the Vic Firth practice pads. These practice pads work your rebound in exaggerated ways. The combination of using thicker sticks with the rubber pad allows you to train your fingers, wrists, and arms to respond quickly to the instrument. Also, these pads are a lot quieter than drums or the old-style Remo pads. If you’re looking to quiet your drum set for practicing, check out the Vic Firth Drum Set Mute Prepack. These mutes rest on your drums and cymbals to cancel out most of the sound that annoys the neighbors. This prepack comes in several size configurations to accommodate your setup. With the practice pad comes the mirror. If you don’t have a mirror in your house, buy a tall one at Target (or wherever you shop). It’s very important that you see what your hands look like to train your brain to move the body consistently. 🔽 Click the link below for your free download. 🔽 Are you maximizing your results? FREE Download 4. Method Books Drum method books are fairly standard at this point. Although there are a lot of new books that drummers can use to learn without a teacher, I always recommend having a good teacher, even if it’s lessons from a YouTube channel that focuses on drumming. The fundamental book is Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone. This book will help you develop your hands and reading ability. Stone’s second book, Accents and Rebounds, is equally as good and vital to great playing. I skipped that book and used Master Studies by Joe Morello, Stone’s student who came up with the idea for Accents and Rebounds. For drum set, you can do a lot with Syncopation by Ted Reed. This book is great for coordination and reading on the drum set. The lessons build toward more complex reading passages, and drum teachers have been assigning pages from this book for decades. Check out this article for a full list of my 11 method books that I don’t want to live without. It includes teacher recommendations on how to use the books to get the most out of them. 5. Staff Paper Writing music notation is an important part of practicing. It’s good for players at all levels to spend practice time listening to drummers for purpose of writing down the grooves and fills. This is the best way to become fluent with notation and reading while picking up on the nuances of an individual drummers style and feel. What to buy? Blank Sheet Music Notebook (or loose sheets)100 to 200 pages8.5 x 11 or close to it.12 staves per page. Not everything needs to be charted out, but it’s important to write down a groove that you want to work on. When you take the time to listen to each stroke and the instrument it’s played on, you begin to respect these strokes, including your own. There’s nothing worse than a drummer who can’t seem to pay attention to his own kick drum pattern – or he plays the same one for every song. To avoid this situation, I’ve written down grooves during rehearsals as to not give each song it's proper attention and character during the recording session. Sometimes you don’t have much time to make decisions that affect an album of 10 to 14 songs. You want to able to write them down to see the phrasing and respect all of the strokes. Check out this article for more information on reading drum sheet music. 6. Device for Listening These days, our phones and other computers are the listening device, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can search almost any song ever recorded and listen for a monthly streaming fee. Although this means more people are not listening to entire albums like we used to, it means listeners are taking a chance on something that may not have ever heard otherwise. Make playlists to use while you practice drums. It’s important to stay organized in the digital world. Try making lists based on the drummer you like or the genre of music. Do the same with YouTube videos. The better organized you are, the more you’ll achieve through your practice time. 7. Headphones Headphones can range from a set of earbuds to isolation headphones. I use the Kat Percussion Ulta Isolation Headphones because the price is reasonable, and they protect my ears from loud playing. Vic Firth also makes a set of isolation headphones that are comparable to the ones I use. If you’re just practicing on a pad, isolation headphones aren’t necessary. You may not even need headphones while using your pad, but I include them on my gear list because people often don’t mind listening to me warm up on the pad. It’s the metronome beeping that can get annoying. 8. Play-Along Tracks Play-along tracks are important for all levels of development. It’s one thing to get good at playing with a metronome, but playing with other players is the way drummers become musicians. Ideally, you would find real people to play with. Since that’s not always an option, play-alongs offer a solid compromise. Check out some of these play-alongs. Hal Leonard Songs for BeginnersAlfred Ultimate Play Along for DrumsAnd any of the band-specific play-along booksGreen DayMetallicaJames BrownEaglesQueenBob MarleyDream Theater 9. Recording Equipment Listening to the playback of your playing is crucial to being able to honestly evaluate what’s good and what’s not. The recordings don’t lie. Try the Zoom H1n Handy Recorder. It’s great for recording your practice, a rehearsal, or even a live event that allows recording audio. If you need something with more inputs, try the Zoom H4n Pro Handy Recorder. The tracks can be downloaded to your computer and stored in a cloud platform like Google Drive. This allows you to access the mp3s anywhere you have access to the Internet. Most of the bands I’ve worked with over the last five years have some kind of work flow that’s similar, and it’s very effective. Final Thoughts Do you need all of this gear? Nope. These suggestions are to help you improve your practice experience. The items on this list only facilitate leveling up your drumming. Bottom line: the gear doesn’t make the music – you do.

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