I love Drums!
I’ve played guitar all my life … Never even thought about drums.
I dabbled in other instruments as the need arouse but never played a drum. I come from a very UN-musical family, so a few years back When my nephew Ryan wanted to learn to play drums I was psyched! Another musician in the family! Yeah! I did some research and then I went out and purchased him a nice inexpensive 5 piece starter set with a hi-hat, a crash and a ride cymbal for his birthday.
As I put the kit together and tuned it up for him I discovered drums are great fun to play! A few months later I got my own kit – not as nice as the one I got for my nephew but I immediately became obsessed with anything and everything related to drums and drumming!
Where do I start?
If you’ve purchased a new kit the first thing you have to do is to build it. There are a million little pieces of hardware in the box! Okay not a million but it seems that way when you dump all the nuts, bolts washers, and various other strange looking pieces out on the floor!
Pearl has a nice little page on assembling your new kit a kit … Click here
Tommy Igoe’s video “Getting Started On Drums” This is one of two DVD’s that should come packed with all new kits – IMHO. I also highly recommend Tommy’s Igoes “Groove Essentials”
Next step is to tune you kit – yes I said tune! Did you think we were going to skip this step? Scott Johnson aka “Prof. Sound” is the ultimate authority in this area … Prof. Sound's Drum Tuning Bible v3
Okay so now we have built and tuned our kit now what? Get some Hearing protection! Invest in a good set of Isolation Headphones, that way you can play along with you favorite CD’s without cranking up the volume and destroying you ears. I love my Vic Firths Isolation Headphones but there are many available – get some!
I suggest you begin with the link below called “Drum Notation” and work your way through to the “Basic Grooves.” Whatever you decide to do just remember the key to learning anything is to have fun doing it – if it’s not fun you won’t do it!
Basic Rock Beats Basic HipHop Beats Other Basic Beats
Drum Building Section
Adventures of A First Time Drum Builder
(or how to build a snare drum )
Drum Builders Guide
(a compiled list of FAQs from drum building forum sites)
The Creation of a New Finishing Technique
or
The Mis-Adventures of Another First Time Drum Builder
This is a new technique developed by Bob Coirio using MinWax Products
Drum Building Tools
(a list of common household tools I used in drum building)
Cornet Section Flute Section Ukulele Section
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© DJX2 2006
