Learn To Play Drums - Top Tips For Learning To Play The Drums

Whether you are learning to play the drums as a serious career choice or as a hobbie it is important to have goals. Write out your long-term goals for drumming, then try to break them down into short-term goals. Review and re-write you goals regularly as you progress.

Ideally, find a teacher to get you started and show you the basics at least. Once you learn the basics, and know how to read a little music, pick up some instructional books like Drum Basics or DVDS that will teach you a style you are interested in.

Play by ear and practice fundamentals often. Start with material with a simple beat and few time changes and work your way up from there.

If you stay with your teacher but feel you are not learning or progressing enough get a different teacher - there is plenty to learn.

Plan your practice - if possible at the same time and place every day. Aim to practice for a minimum of 15-30 minutes every day. When learning to play the drums, drumming practice is everything for building skill and training your muscles, and if you stay organized you will quickly see the benefit.

Learning drums and playing drums is noisy and its is a good idea to go to your neighbors and explain to them that you will be practicing drumming. Usually if you let people know, especially if you know the time of day, most people are cool with that.

However if noise does become an issue there are some ways around this:

- Electronic drum kits are more expensive and have some disadvantages in that they are not as much fun but some are good quality and you can use them with headphones.

- You can buy a rubber pad to put on the drums. Even if you buy just one pad, it may not be as much fun, but there is a lot you can learn from one drum.

- Ask around and check out you local area to see if there is a practice room or a garage where you can wig out.

If you have a limited budget, drum lessons can be expensive. However it wouldn't be that hard at all to learn the drums on your own. There are many resources on the internet, and in music stores that would help you. Books such as Drum Basics are a good investment and will teach you the basics for learning the drums.

When dealing with a limited budget, first I would suggest getting a couple of drum set books from a music store and then look for a used drum set, or go to a store and talk to their percussion sales person about a good used drum set.

The price range is huge when it comes to drum sets, here is a site that can show you different prices on different sets http://www.music123.com/Acoustic-Drum-Se...

Remember that drums are not a lead instrument. You need to learn how to play with others to be a good drummer. You may find you can do a great drum solo, but that is not what drumming is all about, and you need to work with other musicians. Avoid the temptation to try to play over top of everyone else. A good drummer tries to make the band sound good, not just himself/herself.

Ideally you should try to learn proper stick control by playing a snare only at first. Once you have been either working with a teacher or getting instruction from a book or DVD guide and are starting to get pretty good then try to find some people to play with just for fun.

When learning to play the drums, the key to learning drums quickly is to go slowly at first.

Don't get in the habit of practicing new material too fast, and then pausing or stopping because of frequent mistakes. You may think that you are going to learn fast by practicing fast, but it actually takes you so much longer than if you had just practiced so slowly that you don't make a mistake.

This is the most important lesson to learn and if you understand this it will lesson the chance of bad habits. Playing evenly at whatever speed, is the habit you want to form because this is what you'll be doing when you perform.

When practicing your exercises, go slow enough that you don't make many mistakes. If you do make a mistake, try not to stop playing but continue on counting, as if to simulate a real playing environment, but at a slower pace.

If you do have to stop & restart, do so on the measure or piece of a measure you are having problems with and do it over and over until it's not a problem any more. Then play as before until you have can play the entire measure repetitively without errors.

In fact a good way to not rush your learning and get into the habit of playing mistakes, is to play each exercise in 10 stages. The first time you play it repetitively at your slowest speed, but stay very even. The last stage will be at your fastest speed, still staying even and without mistakes. Each stage in-between will be played at just the next notch faster without making mistakes. If you make a mistake or hesitate in your playing, it only means that you need to slow down just a little bit and stay at that speed for awhile until you increase the speed to the next stage.

Watch your back, shoulders, arms, hands and feet in a mirror or on video to insure good posture and technique.

Use your spare time while watching T.V., waiting for friends, etc. to work out your "chops", improve your sight reading & counting, or read drum books and magazines to keep learning & staying inspired. Keep an extra pair of sticks in your backpack, car, etc. Practice your coordination slap your hands on your knees as you keep a beat with your feet.

Involve as many senses as you can in the learning process.

Close your eyes and see the music in your head with the counting, sticking, and accents. It will help you memorize the pattern, get your eyes off the music, and able to focus on where you are hitting on the set and creating the sound you want.

When playing material that is slower to learn, move your arms and hands with grand movements. You can count and sing the accents much louder than the non-accented notes. In this case keep your eyes glued to the page - until you've learned it. The more you involve your senses, the faster you'll learn.

There is always something to learn, and sometimes this can be hard. In drumming you will find that there are a lot of things you need to learn which may cause you frustration but that are important because they are vehicles to other techniques.

Each song your learn is a new challenge, a new problem, but if you embrace this art someday you will wake up to see you can play anything you can think on the drums- and while this may take a while, it will be the most rewarding experience when it happens.

Good Luck!

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