Drums are a complex instrument to learn. You have to use all four of your limbs to play different surfaces and somehow stick with solid rhythms while doing that. Getting better at the drums is a steady process that takes time.
However, you’ll make more progress at a faster rate if you stick to certain strategies and mindsets. In this guide, we’re going to give you a bunch of different tips to get better at the drums.
The most important thing you need to do to get better at drumming is practice. Without practicing and working on your skills, you won’t see vast improvements.
Create a solid practice routine and do your best to stick to it. All the tips that we’ve mentioned below should form part of your practice routine over time.
Sticking to a practice routine is the best way to see improvements over time. Some drummers spend five minutes a day doing dedicated practice, while others spend over five hours a day.
However long you practice, make sure that it’s very intentional.
Metronomes are a drummer’s best friend, and they’re the best tool to use to work on patterns, grooves, and techniques.
As a drummer, you need to be able to keep solid timing. So, you need to regularly practice with a metronome so that it can keep you accountable when it comes to staying steady with a pulse.
You can also use metronomes to work on grooves and fills. If you can’t play something, play it very slowly with a metronome and then gradually speed it up over time to get faster.
Listening to lots of music makes you a better drummer and musician. It lets you hear what other drummers are playing, and that gives you an idea of what you need to learn to be able to play the styles of music that you love most.
Try to listen to varying styles of music as well. You can see how drums differ across styles, and then you can develop your own tastes when it comes to drumming. Listening to music will help you focus on what you want to learn to play on the drums, and that will make you better over time.
Getting a drum teacher is the fastest way to get better at the drums. A drum teacher will identify what you need to work on, and then they’ll keep you accountable for improving at it.
They’ll give you exercises and things to practice that are best suited for you and your needs. A drum teacher will also identify parts of your drumming that are holding you back.
They’ll help you correct those, and then you’ll be able to improve at a faster rate.
Having the ability to read drum sheet music makes learning things a lot easier. Instead of watching a video where someone slowly explains how to play a groove or fill, you can just read the notation and learn those a lot quicker.
You can also write down drum parts that you hear in songs and then work on them while reading what you’ve written down.
Technique is massively important on the drums. If you have bad technique in certain areas, it will hold you back from playing smoothly and comfortably. In turn, that will hold you back from speeding concepts up.
With good technique, you’ll feel very relaxed while drumming, and that will help you perfect concepts a lot quicker.
So, make sure to work on hand and foot techniques.
Getting inspired will motivate you to practice and improve. With no inspiration, it’s very difficult to bring yourself to a drum set and work on things that you’re not feeling very excited about.
What inspires you? Look for more of that, and then let it fuel your desire to play drums and improve. All the best drummers will be able to tell you exactly what inspired them to get to their stage.
Filming yourself play the drums will be scary at first, but it will help you iron out any techniques or concepts that you might be doing wrong.
You can check if your posture is right, and then you can listen to hear if what you’re playing on the drums sounds correct. It gives you an outside view of what you’re playing, and that will help you find things to practice and improve on.
Watching other drummers play is a good way to see how far you can get on the instrument. Make a list of your top five favorite drummers. Go onto YouTube and watch clips of them performing.
This will motivate you, and it may give you some ideas of what you want to practice. You can also see how those drummers do certain things, and then you can try to pull those things off in your own playing.
Learning to play another instrument will give you a broader idea of how music works. In turn, that will give you a better understanding of drums and what their role is within bands.
Drums are purely rhythmic. Learning to play the piano may cause you to approach the drums melodically at times, making you a better drummer and musician.
Rudiments are the key patterns to unlock thousands of ideas on the drums. If you learn all of them and get good at playing them on a practice pad, you’ll be able to develop groove and fill ideas fairly easily on the drums.
Start with the basic rudiments, and then move on to the more complex ones once you’re comfortable. Remember to work on leading rudiments with both your right and left hands.
Make a list of things you want to achieve with your drumming. When you’ve written them down on a piece of paper, you’ll be more motivated to achieve them, and that will make you get better at drumming.
There’s no better feeling than crossing goals off a list once you’ve hit them. Break down your goals into weekly, monthly, and yearly ones.
The journey of learning drums never ends. Even the best drummers in the world still practice regularly, and they make mistakes.
The key to getting better at the drums is to accept that you’ll be improving for the rest of your life, and you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself when you don’t hit a goal.
With a dedicated practice routine and someone to keep you accountable for techniques, a new drummer may take as little as a single year to get very good at the drums.
However, most new drummers take between one and five years to get to an intermediate level of playing. The more you practice and work hard at the instrument, the better you’ll get in a shorter time.
If you’re able to play a drum kit at home, you just need to practice as much as possible without bothering your housemates or neighbors.
If you don’t have the luxury of playing acoustic drums at home, you can use an electronic drum set to practice without making as loud of a noise.
You can also use a practice pad to work on rudiments, patterns, and techniques.
Drumming requires you to use both sides of your brain simultaneously. You need to have extensive hand-eye coordination skills, and then you need to combine those with creativity to make music.
Most other instruments don’t require the use of all four limbs, making drumming harder in that aspect.
However, drumming doesn’t require any knowledge of music theory for you to start playing and learning beats, so many people find playing the drums a bit easier.
Yes, drumming gets a lot easier the more you work on your skills. You may find playing paradiddles very difficult when you first start, but you’ll be able to play them quickly around the drum set after a while of developing solid muscle memory with them.
There are dozens of aspects to drumming, though, and many drummers never touch certain ones. A professional rock drummer may find playing Latin grooves very difficult. So, there’s always something to learn on the drum kit, no matter what skill level you’re at.
Getting better at drumming requires a lot of commitment, patience, and perseverance. We play such an amazing instrument, and you should enjoy every moment that you get to play it.
If we were to summarize getting better at the drums in just a few points, it would be to practice as much as you can, listen to music to become a better musician, and set goals to achieve over time.
Drum Teacher
Brett Clur has a Drum Performance Diploma from Trinity College London has been playing drums for over 20 years. He is passionate about advanced concepts and uses his years of experience to teach his students about them. While he is a full-time drum teacher, he is also working on growing a YouTube channel where shares his insights. You can see him playing there, or on Instagram where he posts daily videos.
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