Is Drumming Hard to Learn?
Is it hard to learn the drums is a question that I get asked a lot as a teacher. And I always tell everyone the same thing. It all depends on how playing the drums is explained to them and if you are following a structured system. If it's being broken down in an easy to understand way, then most people can pick up how to play a simple drumbeat fairly easily. So, short term I would say it’s easy to play a few drumbeats and some simple drum fills, but long term as we get into more complicated drumming, there are some difficulties. But that goes with anything you want to learn, not just how to play the drums.
First beat
Learning your first drum beat and how to read the music notation is quite simple. Music notation is mostly a grid with specific notes and rests telling you when to play and where on the grid the note is, as well as the duration of the note. Check out this simple drumbeat notation below.
Explaination
The “x” on the top of the staff is telling you that you will be playing the hi-hat in 8th notes.
Those 8th notes are counted as “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” (& = and). Then the note in the middle of the staff tells you to play the snare drum on the “2” and the “4” with the hi-hat. And finally the last note on the bottom of the staff is the bass drum. The bass drum is played on the “1” and the “3” with the hi-hat. For a more detailed and broken down lesson , check out How to Play Your First Drum Beat.
Progressing
After learning the first drumbeat, we can then add the bass drum or snare drum in different positions that line up with the 8th note hi-hat. That hi-hat in the early stages of learning is your grid. Understanding these different bass drum and snare drum positions is how we learn to improvise and manipulate the structure to create new ideas. Check out the drumbeats below.
Ex.1 Ex.2 Ex.3
In the first example, we just add an extra bass drum note on the “&” of count “1” and to the “&” of count “3”. It’s as simple as that, though you will still need to work your body mechanics to play it smoothly. Repetition is key when learning the drums as it leads to muscle memory. When you develop muscle memory, you will be able to play your drumbeats without thinking. This is the goal!
In example 2, we take the same approach but with the snare drum. By adding a snare drum to the “&” of “2” and to the “&” of “4”, we get an entirely different feel than if we only played the “2” and “4” positions. Simple tweaks to a drumbeat is the way to progress without too much difficulty. And you will find that simple drumbeats are quite powerful when playing with other musicians. Simple always works!
Now, example 3, I show you how we can take it a bit farther. Though, when I teach students, I wouldn’t jump to playing ex. 3 after ex. 2. There are many other simple drumbeats to learn before filling the whole measure with bass drum and snare drum notes. This just gives you an idea of how you can play around the structure of the grid and where your progression on the drums will lead.
Can Be Hard to Learn
Now, coming back to the main question. Is it hard to learn how to play the drums? Here’s where it gets hard and causes most people not to pursue playing drums past the beginner stages. If you were to learn the first two examples and then try to play the 3rd example, you would find it difficult and possibly frustrating because you haven’t done the work in between to fully understand the body mechanics and feel of the different note positions. But if you were to follow a progressive system (Link) that covered all the positions and gradually lead up to playing the 3rd example, then you would find it much easier to play that more difficult drumbeat. Plus, in my private drum lessons you would be able to play 23 other drumbeats by the time you played ex.3. That’s a lot of drumbeats!
Extra Hard
Let’s take that concept even further and show you how to make the drums hard to learn and quite possibly make you what to quit the instrument. After learning a few simple drumbeats, most of us want to jump to an advanced drumbeat, something that sounds really cool and technical. So we jump to YouTube and watch our favorite drummers or a tutorial on how to play something with a high level of coordination. This is like jumping from chapter 1 to chapter 7 in a book and trying to understand what is happening in the story.
When we do this with drumming, we leave so many gaps in our knowledge and how these drumbeats are built. Let alone we haven’t developed the simple coordination concepts from the early stage drumbeats that would allow us to take on a more complicated drumming pattern. This will cause a lot of frustration in the learning process. And even if you are able to learn something complicated on the drums, you will be limited to that specific drumbeat or drum fill instead of having a fluent knowledge. Developing a fluent knowledge on the drums allows us to change drumbeats and drum fills on the fly (Improvising).
So are the drums hard to learn? They can be, but they don't have to be. If you follow a structured curriculum that will help you progress in simple steps, you will have a much easier time learning how to play the drums than if you learn random drumbeats from the internet. If you are looking for an easy to learn as well as a structured system, check out The Xgroove Flashcard System. It comes with PDF guides, videos of every flashcard and even ways to mix and match the cards to create your own ideas. It's a thousand drumbooks in 1 with unlimited combinations.
Important
Remember to be patient in this process. No one learned the drums overnight. Even with the easiest to understand system, you will come across difficulties in the learning process. But, once you push past those small difficulties you will have a better understanding of the drums and yourself. Knowing what needs to be done to push past the next plateau.
About The Xgroove
The Xgroove, founded by Las Vegas drummer and teacher Chad Peters, combines structured coordination work, deep grooves, and color-coded flashcards to help drummers progress with ease and confidence.
