My first drum lessons were through an elementary school. The teacher didn’t even play drums. He played sax and never inspired me to practice or want to play drums. My idols like John Bonham, Eric Carr, and Steve Gadd had the inspiration issue covered.
Resenting my early drum education, I always try to teach drum lessons in a way that provides a constant balance between technique development and the things that inspire us to keep making music.
The following introductory lessons are ones that I’ve collected over the years. Anyone can be successful by following these methods as long as they put in the time, the results will come, especially if you play because you love the instrument and practice because you want to sound great.
I didn’t always have a teacher, which can be tricky — almost impossible. For help with this issue, check out this article because it has tips for learning drums on your own. But before we dive into the following lessons, it’s important to review the parts of the drumstick and the drum.
Drum Stick
The drumstick is comprised of the tip on one end and the butt on the other. Working from the butt toward the tip includes the shaft and then the shoulder where the shaft tapers toward the tip.
Parts of the Drum
The top drum head is the batter head, and the bottom drum head is the resonant head. Sometimes the bottom head on a snare drum is called the snare side head.
The rim of the drum holds the head down and the tension rods pull the rim down to tighten the head. Rims are usually flanged or diecast, with a few other designs such as wood hoops.
If you are beyond these beginner lessons, check out these 5 intermediate lessons or perhaps some jazz drum set lessons.
1. Gripping the Stick
Hold the stick comfortably – not too loosely, not too tightly. The fulcrum is the most important part of your grip. It’s the point from which the stick will pivot as it receives the rebound after striking a drum or other percussive instrument.
- Divide the drum stick into thirds and pinch the stick with your index finger and thumb where the butt-end third and the second third meet.
- Wrap your fingers around the stick, and make sure your fingers aren’t too tight when practicing your first stroke — the rebound stroke.
The two types of grip include matched Grip and traditional grip. Traditional grip employs a different way of holding the stick in each hand. This grip style accommodates the tilt of a traditional military drum as it is worn and played. I’ll go into to more depth on traditional grip in another module of lessons. Let’s stay focused on matched grip for this module.
Although there are three types of matched grip – French Grip, German Grip, and American Grip – I teach American Grip because it combines the strength of the German Grip with the relaxation afforded with the French Grip.
The American grip simply places the top of your hand at about a 45° angle. Although you can use your arm with techniques like the Moeller (more on that in another module), it’s important to develop different parts of the stroke in isolation. For example, the first lesson in this module instructs drummers to play the rebound strokes with the wrist.
Being able to control the rebound and use it to your advantage is the primary reason we develop technique. It’s a process that requires a lot of awareness of your relaxation and overall feel of the drumstick heading the drum and following through with the energy that the initial stroke gives back to your performance – the rebound.
2. Rebound Strokes
The difference between drummers who sound good and all the others starts with how well they manage the rebound. If the rebound is controlled to the point that it is stopped, the next stroke takes more energy to produce. Now, you’ve used energy to stop the stick and more energy to lift the stick away from the drum to prepare for the next stroke.
Rebound strokes, also called legato strokes, include a preparation, execution, and recovery.
- The preparation simply positions the tip of the stick far enough away from the batter head to execute the downward motion of the stroke.
- After the tip is accelerated toward the head and bounces back, the recovery of energy is key to maintaining control of the sticks to the degree that your ideas can be realized. That’s a lot of syllables to point out the importance of conserving energy.
When the stick rebounds from the head, try keeping it in the prepped position. This allows for conservation of energy by limiting the motion of having to stop the stick and then prep before playing another rebound stroke.
If you stop the rebound, it’s considered a controlled stroke. In some methods for drumming, this controlled stroke is called a staccato stroke. When playing combinations of accidents and taps, the controlled stroke allows you to play an accident and then a tap, which is a rebound stroke played while the tip of the stick is a shorter distance from the head. This is technique will also be explained in more depth in another module of lessons.
The following exercise is all about rebound strokes. It’s a two-bar exercise that repeats to address the development of both hands. Whenever you play technique or chop-building exercises, it’s important to develop both hands evenly. Starting the exercise on the left hand as many times as you start on the right can help balance your development.
Drum Set Key
The “(L)” at the beginning indicates that the left hand will start the third time through the exercise, which would be the second time focusing on the right hand.
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3. Playing a Groove
If you can count to four, then you can play a basic groove on drum set. Play the kick drum on 1 and 3, and play the snare drum on 2 and 4. Add the high hat or ride cymbal on all four counts, and that’s your first drum beat.
Making knew variations on basic drum beats is the fun part. For example, play the kick drum on 1 and the snare drum on 3 (see the second groove above). Continue to play the high hat or ride cymbal on all four counts. Make sure you count out loud as you play and practice new beats, rhythms, and techniques slowly.
Variations are also easy to create by changing the cymbal pattern. Try adding additional hits in between the counts. You can count this pattern 1-and 2-and 3-and 4-and (see first groove below). The variations that you can make with all eight of those simple hit opportunities are huge. Try patterns that only play two cymbals when you hit a snare drum, which can be counted 1, 2-and, 3, 4-and (see the second groove below).
4. Drum Fills
Drum fills are an opportunity for a drum set player to improvise and to add something new and interesting to a song. Sometimes the drum fill is a signal for new phrases in the song or sets up big ensemble hits to keep the band in time. Regardless of the reason for the drum fill, it’s important the drummers develop a vocabulary of fills and an appreciation for how drum fills add to the music.
Not all drum fills are created equally. Some occur for only one beat, whereas others can be all four beats or more. Some drum fills are very sophisticated in terms of the rudiments used to make the fill, and others can be very simple without losing their effectiveness.
The following drum fill exercises use the snare drum and two toms for the variations. Notice that the fills are at the end of the bar. This doesn’t mean that all drum fills have to be placed at the end of the bar. It’s just a common way to approach filling in between phrases in a song.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to not underestimate the power of a simple drum fill. Sometimes the song only needs a couple hits to mark changes or important moments in the song. Transitioning from the groove to the fill and from one drum to another can make or break the execution of a drum fill. The following include two examples of simple yet powerful drum fill exercises to help you move around the drums. Practice playing them in different combinations, transitioning from the groove to the fill and back the groove.
For more information on drum fills, check out this article about different types of fills. It includes more in-depth explanations and exercises to develop your coordination moving around the drums.
5. Phrasing a Song
Making music is about organizing ideas in ways that sound good. Although not everyone needs to like the music that you make, someone needs to like it for it to be music. We often call the strings of ideas that relate to one another a phrase.
Check out these 15 easy songs on drums for ideas about the best drummers phrase a song.
Some phrases of a song are loud and some are soft. Drummers need to make choices that support or match the dynamics (how loud or soft the music sounds). For example, quieter parts of a song benefit from closed hi hats, which are easier to control in terms of volume.
When the song gets louder, you can choose to play the hi hats louder by opening them up a little bit to make a sloshy sound. You could also choose a different instrument or a louder cymbal, like the ride or crash, to phrase that part of the song.
Drummers often play the ride cymbal during the louder phrases. The ride cymbal can be played with the …
- Tip on the crown of the cymbal,
- Shoulder or tip on the bell of the cymbal,
- It can be crashed by playing the shoulder of the stick on the crown, or
- The shaft or shoulder of the stick can be played on the edge of the cymbal.
Final Thoughts
These lessons are a beginning module of a full program. They are intended to be practiced cumulatively. I still practice all of these ideas every day I play my instrument. Sometimes they are the only way to further refine my performance of more complicated rhythms.