Can you learn drums without lessons?

Dan86

Yes you can but lessons will speed up the process and teach good technique. 

I had snare lessons from aged 6, so been playing for 24 years. A few years of snare lessons, I had probably 5-10 lessons on a full kit, then the rest of my kit playing has been self taught.

Snare gave me a great start, learning rudiments is an excellent place to start and will really help the kit playing come more naturally once you're familiar with the snare. 

Obviously there are online lessons, youtube etc , all a great help, but nothing beats some 1-1 tuition. 

If you're anywhere near the Midlands then feel free to message me for a hand.

Dan

mrkb

I agree with having lessons. I've been playing 18 months, and my tutor is great at analysing weaknesses and giving techniques/practice routines to fix them. If I was self taught I'd skip over any problems and my technique would be limited in the long term.

Timmy

axisus said:

I've picked up other instruments by myself, but drumming seems like a different beast, with tricky elements of precision, coordination, timing etc. 

Is it doable oneself or better to get going with help?

 Hey axisus i teach and play drums for a living, here is my long-winded answer to your question

Yes and no. If you have a good ear and a basic level of coordination then you can get off to a good start your self. If not you will need help otherwise you will probably give up.

It's good to remember that the drumming greats who were self taught started playing straight away with other people and had the benefit of learning from other musicians.  So they might not have had one to one drum lessons but they would have had a band leader critique them and guide them how to play. Take up any opportunity to play with anyone you can, you normally learn the most from these situations. If you don't have any musical friends or have any opportunity to play with other people get lessons.

Equally as important as playing with other people is playing along to records. Pick one of you favourite albums and start learning the drum parts and try to play a long to it, even try and sing the parts as well. This will seem hard a first but it is the best way to learn and the sooner you start doing this the better.  If this is too hard or overwhelming get lessons.

Feel free to message me if you have any specific questions  

Trude

One of my favourite tricks is to pick an album that has no drums on it at all (but that is rhythmically interesting) and play along.  I do a lot of folk stuff, and I've found the Irish band Lunasa is perfect for this.  They have a lot of weird time signatures and tempo changes etc, all with strong rhythm coming from double bass and guitar.  It's great fun to see how different drum patterns can completely change the feel of a song - makes for a much more creative experience than just bashing along to AC/DC or whatever.

Rocker

colourofsound said:

Drums, to my knowledge, is the only instrument that involves 4 limb co-ordination using the whole of your body. It is fucking hard.

I watched a Church organist play and his workload was simply awesome. He played two banks of keys, one with EAC hand and the bass pedals with his feet. He had to slide over and back to reach some of the bass pedals. And he had to turn the page himself. Made me tired looking at him play. Glad to have seen it though.

ChrisCox1994

I wish i'd got lessons when i started, I'm now making up for bad technique i learned (burying the bass drum beater, proper sick technique using the rebound etc) and its a LOT harder now.

So if you're serious definitely do the "boring" stuff, learn your rudiments, you wont use them for the first year but when you get into choppier linear stuff (the fun stuff) you'll be well equipped - instead of doing what I am now which is paying my favourite function mates/drummers to come round and show me how to paradiddle properly!

...reminds me of guitarists who proudly say "I dont need theory" - they just don't know they need it yet.

(last bit only applies if you're serious, if you wanna play just for a laugh then just hit the things with huge grin on your face)