There are several critical components of learning drums, which although you can still improve greatly at the drums without doing any of these, will allow you to really excel very quickly if you do take the time to master some of the basic aspects of learning to play the drums.
The first thing that every new drummer should do, and I say this as a jazz drummer with almost fifteen years experience playing the drums, is to listen constantly to as many different drummers as you can find. Of course you want to make a lot of these drummers within your particular genre, but don’t limit yourself to one style of music, because as you become better and better at the drums, you will be asked to play many different styles of music and it is important to know how to do so. Listening to lots of different types of drummers can be one of your keys to understanding how different drum techniques and styles of drumming work, so make sure that you spend at least a couple of hours per day listening to drummers when you first are learning to play the drums. And I want to stress that you need to be listening to the drummer himself, because this isn’t necessarily a natural thing to do, as many of us are programmed to listen mainly to the vocals. So make sure that you are really focusing on the drums, and you will find yourself soaking up ideas very quickly.
One of the other ways in which it is possible to improve very quickly at learning drums, besides by just simply listening, is to play along with as many songs as you can. When you play along with music, it basically has the same effect as playing with a metronome would, except for the fact that it is simply more fun to play along with real music. So put on your headphones or turn up your stereo and plan on jamming out with other music often, when you first start playing, as the benefits of this to your drumming and musicianship are myriad. Learning to play drums along with songs can help you to develop your timing and tempo, and will generally increase your confidence when the time comes to play with real musicians. Learning drums can be quite challenging, but if you take these basic approaches of improving your knowledge base by listening to as many drummers as possible, and improving your solidarity and musicianship by playing along with and learning songs, you will progress faster than you think is possible and people will be asking you how you got so good, so fast.
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