[Closed] Hitting things with sticks

Learn rudiments on a single pad/drum, doesn't need to be all the complicated ones, just get good at the basics. Once you have your hands playing evenly the rest will follow and you simply move the rudiments around the kit to create patterns.

That's actually really good advice. Every ounce of me wants to just smash every pad and cymbal but it makes sense to concentrate on just one pad for the time being.

Cheers.

First thing is to enjoy it. You're in for a world of fun and frustration. I love it, been playing about 4 years now and so glad I did. There's a lot of nonsense out on the internet though, as with everything.

One very important thing to thing about is ergonomics at the kit. This includes posture, have a look at how Dave Elitsch plays, he's a very very good drummer and person and is massively into the ergonomics of drumming.

But, if you really want to learn properly, get lessons.

Where are you based, somebody on here may be able to help.

Oh, I'll enjoy it. It's something I've always wanted to have a go at but have never really been in a position to do it.

I know what you mean about all the nonsense on the internet. All I seem to be seeing is miracle courses and videos that promise to make you an expert in 10 minutes.... They all seem to be trying to sell you something. Strange.

In my haste, I completely forgot that I'd need something to sit on. I have ordered a stool now.

At the moment I'm trying to get everything in a position that 'seems' ok for me but I am trying to find information on how a kit should be set up.

I'm based in Rugeley in Staffordshire. I have looked at profesional tuition but thought I'd give the self teaching method a go first.

Thanks for the advice.

Learn rudiments on a single pad/drum

Totally this. I bought my first practice pad and basic e-drum kit during the first UK Covid lockdown, and upgraded within 6 months.

To complement the kit get a practice-pad also in order to practice/learn sticking/rudiments. Practice, practice practice until muscle-memory kicks in. Because of both social distancing and zero drumming-budget I’ve relied heavily (exclusively) on youtube.

I can recommend Drumeo and Rob Beatdown Brown for general advice, and a few others. You’ll find someone who may explain things in a way that fits with your foibles. Work hard on limb-independence, it’s frustrating like a puzzle but when it clicks it can feel like you have wings.

My weakness here is not following my own advice (rudiments/discipline) because I get caught up in just (half-decently) playing along to music (via headphoes) that I enjoy. This is fun but it covers a multitude of sins and bad-habits become muscle-memory. So stick (!) with rudiments/metronome and nailing beats initially, at least for the most part. Structure practice sessions to work on key skills ie

- sticking/grip/strokes
- key rudiments (paradiddle, diff stroke rolls etc)
- limb independence/simple songs/beats
- metronome/accuracy

I started doing 20 minute sessions on this, every day morning and night. Then allowed self ‘free’ time to just play along to stuff/nail beats.

Someone mentioned posture. 👍🏼 spend as long as it takes studying as much info as you can about setup, throne-height, and relaxed playing. It took me a good few months of daily playing to figure out which discomforts/aches/pains were from being a soft beginner vs which were from bad posture and poor technique.

Discipline is key to progress (remind me to go back to rudiments)

Rudiments are great, but at the very beginning they are almost meaningless.
I'd honestly just look at getting a very basic "4 on the floor" beat nailed and go from there. That will get you playing along to music.

There is no quick way, it takes time, a long time. Do things slowly and then go slower. When you've got the timing of stuff absolutely spot on and that muscle memory works for you then start upping speed.

Metronomes are great to play with, you'll either be a natural at keeping time or realise just how hard it is to maintain and keep time.

What kit did you end up with?

Are you left handed? A friend of mine was self taught for years but struggled until he went for lessons and it was pointed out he was strongly left handed,but trying to play on a right handed set up....

It seems that the general advice is to not get ahead of myself. Start right at the beginning and nail the basics before moving on a step.

To be honest, that's what I want to do anyway. I'm just having trouble finding places to get help with the basics. I'll keep looking around the internet.

The kit I opted to buy was a TourTech TT 22M. The reviews it got are decent and apparently it's a good set to learn with. Not badly priced either.

The last thing I wanted was to buy something that I would want to sell to buy something more advanced in a few months. This kit will be good for a year or two I'd imagine before my skills require something more.

Thanks all for the advice.

I learned by playing with the kit at school. I tried lessons, but preferred just playing along to tracks on the whole kit so stopped quite quickly. As a result I'm ok if it's a basic 4/4, but beyond that i get out of my depth quite quickly. I wish I'd got more of a grounding in the rudiments.

Having not played for 15 years after leaving uni, i started playing again about 8 years ago, but packed in due to time pressures when i joined the local theatre and started acting. When lockdown came along i actually put my kit away in the attic, bury i did leave my stool, snare and practice pad out so i could work on rudiments - coming up for 2 years later, I've not once managed to practice...

What Keffezza said. Rudiments are useful/important, but learning to play basic beats will be much more enjoyable at the beginning. If you can learn basic 4s you'll be playing along to songs in no time.

As for YouTube, check out Drumeo. They have lots of beginners videos.

I've been playing for about 20 years, was self taught but my pal taught me to play a couple of very basic beats and that made the world of difference.

I’ve been drumming on a Roland electronic kit for a year now. I’ve subscribed to Drumeo.com and can’t recommend d it enough. Starts right from scratch with lessons. Like how high to set your drum stool kind of scratch. Check it out.

https://Drumeo.com

+1 for Drumeo. Also try Icanplaydrums.com, Jack Bennett is a great teacher.

I watched The Art Of Drumming on telly recently, good piece of advice from Chad Smith, find a nice simple groove and practice it for ten minutes at a time, then expand to 15, 20 etc.

Simple groove - assuming you’re right handed, count 1-2-3-4 on hi-hat or ride with your right hand. On 1 & 3, play the bass drum (kick) pedal with right foot. I play the kick pedal with my toe roughly half way along the foot plate, and I keep the pedal planted on the drum head until ready for the next stroke.
On 2 & 4 play the snare with your left hand.
Aim to keep a steady beat - use a metronome if you can.

Then expand the right hand pattern to 1-&-2-&-3-&-4-&. Keep the groove going. When you’re happy with that, start expanding the right foot - 1-&- 3-&-, keeping the snare on 2 and 4.

Start adding crash cymbals on the 1 of every other bar. You can drop the ‘and’.

If you’re left handed, reverse the handing described above.

Stay away from fills & double kick patterns for now.

Earlier today - view from the throne:

My band The Allergics earlier tonight in Gateshead. Two gigs in one day!

I’m hiding behind the singer!

What Keffezza said. Rudiments are useful/important, but learning to play basic beats will be much more enjoyable at the beginning.

+1. Although I’m glad I made the decision to do both. ie it doesn’t have to be one vs the other - you can structure your own practice time between

ie

Drum kit:

- Having fun/learning simple beats
- Using onboard module training (depending what kit you have)
- Training limb-independence

Dumb-pad/practice pad:

- working on rudiments
- working on sticking
- Building speed

When I got the first kit I was frustrated to learn how to play a beat and begin training limb-independence so chose these three videos.

With the first two I used the metronome starting at 60BM then building up speed gradually every day (10 minute sessions) until I stopped making mistakes and could up another 5BPM, until reaching much higher BPM and making no mistakes (your brain will let you know how quickly you can increase the speed daily)

I wanted to play a simple song and nail it just to keep the interest so plugged the tablet into the module and balanced the kit volume so it was just very slightly louder than the music:

https://youtu.be/jLkg4FDg-yo

It’s a long and repetitive song and a simple drum score, along with visual signals when and where to hit each note. So an easy win IMO (still took me ages tho 🤣)

Forgot to say, be sure to use youtube’s play speed function if you need to slow things down when learning. Godsend for me. (ADD/slow-processing)

When not using the practice pad I slide it under the kit on an old snare stand, just under the toms so it’s in my sight-line. Then put the tablet on that. You could also use a music-stand or there are various drum kit twblet holders on the market.

Are you left handed? A friend of mine was self taught for years but struggled until he went for lessons and it was pointed out he was strongly left handed,but trying to play on a right handed set up…

Worked for Ringo, it’s what gives him his distinctive style of drumming, a left-handed drummer playing a right-handed kit. He’s cited by many great drummers as an influence.

Some brilliant advice here. Thanks to you all.

I think firstly, I'll take a look at Drumeo as it's been mentioned a few times now.

The best route for me I think is the suggestion of nailing a very simple beat and adding to it once perfected. Along with some work on rudiments.

I've also taken onboard the importance of set-up and posture.

Can anyone who has experience of Drumeo tell me if they cover the VERY basic things like how to correctly hold a stick, drum set positioning, how to read music properly etc?

I have a basic understanding of reading music but.... well, it's basic.

Another question I have is about how you hear the music.. Sounds a bit stupid saying it but, apart from the obvious, is there any benefit to me buying a small amp/speaker to connect to the kit rather than playing exclusively with headphones?

Once again, many thanks for all the advice/help/info, I have taken it all onboard.

I'm in no way a Blink 182 enthusiast but any time I've seen Travis Barker talking about playing, usually in the context of warming up before playing hard, has been really good.

Edit. In fact my old band once got reviewed as a "knock-off Blink 182" for a show where we played almost nothing in 4. We couldn't decide whether it was funny or insulting.

2nd edit. It was insulting.

Yes Drumeo channel has videos on all that, just search directly on youtube: drumeo posture, drumeo throne height, drumeo how to hold sticks, etc. They probably have playlists for all those things.

But I’d recommend to also look around around and get a bigger picture too. I subscribe to about four or five drum channels and tend to cross-reference because tutors differ and some useful info can easily be missed. There are many ways to hold sticks (match grip, German, American, trad, etc), there are also no rules. But there are better and worse techniques for a given requirement/task/style/player.

The intro to this has a good explanation of grips.

(don't be put of by the title ^ you only really *need* to learn three main rudiments). But watch the intro re stick grips.

https://youtu.be/2vuyWk1yStY

Nice thread. Just bookmarking for the basyckel clan later...

OP

Here’s a useful channel I found that focuses on fundamentals and tios for beginners such as

holding sticks and fixing yr weak hand
reading music
increasing co-ordination

etc

I’m now about 18 months on from obtaining my first kit and I in retrospect this channel would have helped a lot! Taking a few steps back to fix old (bad) habits and work on new (good) skills is time well-spent

Online lessons are all well and good but there's no substitute for actually sitting down with someone, particularly when you're just starting out.

They'll cover

the VERY basic things like how to correctly hold a stick, drum set positioning, how to read music properly etc?

I'm a bit out of touch since moving away from the Midlands, but Tim Bowes used to run a drum school that I taught at a while ago. I think Ian Palmer also teaches. There'll be loads around the Midlands though - just try and find someone who's been doing it a while - there are a lot of music college grads who come straight out and start teaching, with mixed results.

Once you have the absolute basics down (and I would strongly recommend at least one or two lessons, simply to avoid potential injury down the line*) you can then veer off down whatever tangent takes your fancy.

Here's me a couple of months back:

*I say this as I suffered bad tendinitis after practising on a pad for a while with really bad technique. Nearly stopped me playing completely until I saw Ian and he helped me with my technique.

Full time drummer/drum teacher here! Drumeo is a good resource, as is a lot of other online stuff, however there isn't really a substitute for;

1. spending a lot of time playing, and;
2. getting personal advice from a tutor/pro level mate who knows what they're on about.

I spend a lot of my professional life debunking stuff people pick up from the youtube. Even if it's good advise on there it's often taken in the wrong way and makes peoples technique a right mess. The material is also so often the wrong level for them and they tie themselves in knots.

That's not always the case of course, there are loads of self taught drummers who have excellent technique and brilliant musicality. They probably didn't learn from drumeo tho, just listening to their favourite records.