Drums are a fun and exciting instrument to learn. The groove and over all feel of a song is often kept together by the drum beats being played. When you first smoothly play a simple beat with the snare, high hat cymbal and kick drum it’ll be great.
I want to introduce you to the basics of learning to play the drums in this article. I’m not going to teach you any beats, but rather give you some basic guidelines to use if you’ve just purchased a drum kit or are sitting down at a kit for the first time.
1 – Start off with the High Hat
There is a lot happening when you’re playing a beat on the drums. Your right and left hands are doing different things and now so is one of your feet. Before you introduce the kick drum to anything start out first with the high hat. You can also start with the snare but more often then not the high hat is played on every beat with most songs.
Use your right hand and practice keeping an even beat on the high hat. If you have some knowledge of 4/4 time then practice keeping the beat like this: 1,2,3,4. You want the time between each strike of the high hat to be the same.
2 – Time for the Snare Drum
Now that you’re maintaining the common time 4/4 beat on the cymbal high hat let’s add something else, let’s hit the snare on the 4 beat.
So you’re still playing 1, 2, 3, 4 on the high had, but now on the 4 hit the snare with your right hand stick. The first few times you try this you’re probably going to mess up the beat your keeping on the high hat, that’s alright it’s kind of like crossing wires in your brain when you tell your hands to do this. You’ll get it to work it just takes some practice.
3 – Time for Bass Drum
If you’re feeling good about the snare and the high hat let’s add in the kick drum. On the 1 beat now hit the kick drum. Continue to keep your 4/4 time on the high hat and and snare drum beat on the 4.
This will take a bit of practice but you’re now telling your brain to do three different things and it takes some time to get it right.
This is a basic beginner beat when learning to play the drums. If you’re eager to learn more beats I’d suggest getting a drum lesson dvd. These types of home study courses are quickly becoming the main choice for adults who want to learn to play drums.
One of the better products we’ve come across to help teach yourself the drums is Learn and Master Drums. The program comes with several DVDs of instruction and audio that you can use entirely at your own pace to learn the drums at home.