Teaching suggestion greatly needed

I'm one of these "self taught" drummers and unfortunately have never received any formal lessons, which i plan on changing in the near future.
My problem is that i have a 7 year old nephew who really wants to learn to play drums and i'm not sure how to start him off so that he doesn't develop any bad habits. I've explained to his mom that I'M still learning and need much instruction even after 16 years of playing. She still would like me to give it a shot and i've agreed to for now until a "real" instuctor comes available.
For the next 2 months i won't have a kit available for him to practice on other then an electronic kit i have.
Today is his first "lesson" and i was thinking of starting off by showing him around a kit so he understands what a snare is, ride cymbal etc. Explain a drummers job is to keep time and hold down a groove etc.
I'm also planning on starting him off on basic rudiments with "singles" being the first exercise (stressing that speed isn't the aim yet but consistentcy and fluidity is)
How long should he practice his singles and how often a day?
When should i introduce "doubles" etc.
When should i move him onto a kit?
Any suggestions would greatly appreciated [img]smile.gif[/img]
Mani

You know - I'm about to start teaching my 7 year-old nephew too. I think the most important thing for a kid that young is just to play. Put on some old Michael Jackson, Beatles, Stevie Wonder and let them play along. Let them learn pop song form and structure. I think 7's a little young to worry about groove, etc. It should be fun and exploratory. Just my opinion. (and nothing wrong with throwing some early Miles and Monk in there from time to time)

Nice suggestions Greasleg. Personally, I wouldn't get bogged down in rudiments at all. Once you are comfortable that he is holding the sticks correctly, as Greasleg suggested, I would just allow him to jam along to music - with your guidance obviously!

At the age of 7, playing any instrument should be fun and enjoyable. Getting him to play doubles and singles at that young age would in my opinion, seem like a task and monotenous. I would say that it is far more important that he's able to hear where a song is going and to have some sense of form and shape in music. Once he has developed an ear for the beat and can play in time, I would then introduce some more 'technical stuff'.

Good luck and keep us posted! ....oh and leave the Contemporary Drummer +1 for at least a couple of weeks.

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Gah double post [img]frown.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 10, 2005 05:37 PM: Message edited by: Klemme ]</font>

A good idea would be to make his lems pretty much independent.

When i used to give som beginners lessons in high school, they usually had the bad habbit of hitting simultaniously all accents with hi hat, snare and bass drum.

Try to give him/her a simple pattern. with 2 and 4 on the snare. Then make him overstate the hits. FOOTS OFF on 2 and 4 and RIGHT/LEFT HAND OFF THE SNARE on 1 and 3. They usually find it funny as they quickly realize progress fairly quickly.

I also find it important to make the student aware of putting all of the energy they initially would put on the Hi-hat to be drawn into the hits on the Snaredrum and bassdrum, it's a bad habbit that sooner or later would have to be "fixed" .

To finish it's natural that your student will look up to you and see you as a rolemodel for developing his future playing. It is therefor very important that you act with musical tolerance, just because you don't like Thomas Lang or the drummer from Avril Lavigne, it shouldn't boundary him from seeking out ideas and learn from the records they play on.

Good luck and enjoy it!

Thanks for the suggestions. I was thinking that it was too soon for rudiments. I was just trying to make up for not being set up yet to give him the kind of lessons you guys suggest. I have very limited space and only have an electronic set, set up with headphones, so i think i'll just show him a straight 4-4 and let him go.
I'm moving into a house in about 2 months time so i'll be able to have a stereo and a couple of kits set up, so we can both jam etc.
Thanks!
Mani

I would give him a simple singles exercise to warm up on, just to have his grip under control. I call these my "Grip Exercises" for my students and have them work on them at the beginning of their practice session. The first one I give them (if they have never played before) is just 8 strokes on each hand repeated. Have them work at playing in a spot the size of a quarter in the middle of the drum or pad. This will help their accuracy. I also tell them to let the stick bounce bring their hand back up for the next stroke. Both hands need to come up to the same height and let gravity bring the stick down to the head (kind of like letting the stick and hand drop with the pivot point on the wrist). Also, I remind them to keep their fingers on the stick, but not white knuckle tight. I give them the analogy of a cartoon character taking a baseball bat and hitting a tree or something immoveable. The vibrations come right up their arm and can do some damage, which isn't good.

Once they have this down, I give them a fill-in exercise. I have them play one measure of 8th notes (4/4) on one hand, and then one measure of 16th notes with the opposite hand filling in the e's and a's. Have them repeat this, trying to get the 16th's even. Once comfortable, I have them start with the opposite hand that they started the 8th's with.

The next exercise I give them once they have mastered this is playing one measure of 8ths on the right (in 4/4), a measure of 16th's alternating and starting with the right w/a right hand paradiddle on the 4th beat. The next measure, they start 8th's in the left hand, followed by 16th's starting on the left with a left hand paradiddle on beat 4, which gets them back to the beginning of the exercise starting with their right hand. I have them repeat this.

I try to stress the importance of grip in that if you have a good start and everything is under control, that's one less thing they will have to worry about later. I write the exercises out as well, which gives them a bit of reading practice. All of my students read music, or will have to learn to do it if they want to study with me.

I teach from a music store in KC and most of my students are beginners. They usually start out on snare, and once we get to 8th notes in their reading of music, we begin drumset. I teach out of Joel Rothman's Basic Drumming, which I think is a great book for beginners. It has snare, drumset, some rudiments, rolls, accents studies, and stickings. Best bang for the buck.

Good luck with the lessons!!

Mike

I would start him off with lathams advanced funk studies, then in a weeks time, move up to gary chaffee's and gary chesters books. Make sure he's getting those blushdas right, the double drag and stroke, the double drag tap and Swiss Army Triplet.

Also, put on weckls 'island magic' and get him to play along to that.
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Haha Rudy...I was expecting a smily or hint of sarcasm somewhere along the line of your post...You nearly had me at one point. I visualize you as the teacher of this poor kid, who would probably burst out in tears if you came at him with this terminology. On a more serious note, I would really have a hard time putting myself in the position of an instructor for such a young child. I mean is rhythm and even distribution of strokes really that important when starting out. I would have a hard enough time just stressing the importance of rhythm or even groove. Do you think he/she will understand? I would strongly agree with giving the student a "tour" of the drum set, giving him in idea of what everything feels and looks like. Starting slowly is important - let him jam around a little and create some sounds. Perhaps the execution of singles distributed around the kit would be something I would include in my first lesson. Good luck!

EDIT: While I don't question your abilities, keep in mind how important proper guidance is when starting out at such a young age. His technique should be solid from the beginning - don't want him developing any nasty habits. If you really insist on instructing him seriously, you should maybe get some advice from professional instructors, or maybe even find him one. Then again, maybe I understood this wrong and the kid should just get a fun intro to the world of drumming.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 11, 2005 10:41 PM: Message edited by: Suspiria ]</font>

If your going to actually teach someone to play drums, DO NOT START ON DRUM SET. How can anyone on there first lsesson play a single stroke roll around the tomss if they do not even know a single stroke roll on a pad. Learning to hold sticks and rudiments to get hand position and getting a good stroke is much better than let's play the drum set now. That is more of baby sitting then actuall being a teacher. I have been teaching a long time and have had 5-7 years olds and they all have learned to hold sticks basic rudiments, to roll and learn notes before we EVER start to use 4 limbs on a set. If 2 limbs do not have any coordination then there is NO way that throwing the kid on the set is going to help him. OK, groove is fine but a 6 year old has NO idea what your talking about with that. There are guys in town that start the kid on set and then he gets to school band and has NO idea what is going on. But he can sure play a mean rock beat .........can't read and knows nothing of a roll, so all those lessons for 3 years with the neighbor guy really helped ....NOT.....I then get them and have to explain that they had a babysitter for the last 3 years and you learned as much as the teacher knew, swhichhich was how to play a rock beat. Teaching is not as easy way to make money if you take it serious, which in some cases is not happening, but more of a way to make the teacher think he knows something because he really does not have a gig but a straight job his whole life and used to play drums. Sorry for the rant but I got a new student yesterday that had taken lessons.....HA HA.....2 years if lessons and his buddy as school that started when school started knows more in that short time then his buddy being baby sat for lessons for 2 years. Have another starting today that there teacher did not show up all the time and never gave him a book or written material, all from just play what I did and that is perfect. I can just imagine what I will get today from the next new kid that I start today from another teacher in town. There are 2 kinds of drummer.......one that uses rudiments and know that he does and the other drummer that uses rudiments but does not know that he does. Ok, I am done ranting now......

I agree with you to a certain degree, but in my opinion, 7 is a bit young to be sitting on a pad. I started out playing drumset and learned rudiments, etc. through school band. Isn't that kind of the purpose of it? 7 year olds should be having fun. If they sit there too long and try to play a five stroke roll with no success rather than have some fun, I'd be concerned they'd lose interest. I personally think the most important thing for smaller kids to study is piano, number one, but that wasn't the subject of the thread.

Well, I look at it this way. They have come to me to teach them drums. If teaching them how to play is boring to them then they really are not ready to study then. I am not a baby sitting service or to be the happy go lucky we will do what the student wants to make him happy. If your tacking a trumpet lesson I am sure they learn to make a good tone and learn scales, so that must be boring, but to learn to play an instrument, sorry some is boring and tedious. Ihad one student that started when he was 6 and stopped and started off and on for about 3 years till he was ready to study and then had him all thru H.S. and thne stops in for a lesson off and on thru college. There are teachers that teach 40-60 kids a week and that is more of a baby sitting to me. I have had students come from these teachers and you hear how nice the guys is. Well after about 3 lessons the kid will say something like, "why didn;t my other teacher tell me this, it would have been so much easier if I had worked on my hands". BTW, the student that started yesterday from another teacher in town, knew exactly NOTHING for taking 3 months of lessons. Held stick with thumb and one finger and told me they just played beats and stuff and WOW, it works so much better what your showing me. That is in the first 10 minutes. I don't think it is ever to soon to learn correct and not just sort of play around on the drums. Considering they are paying me to teach them, a baby sitter is much cheaper and then let the baby sitter listen to the new prodigy bang on the drums. It is not like we do not move on till he can do a perfect roll, but the ability to have control of the sticks before just holding them like clubs and banging out a rock beat. I think this idea of letting the kid decide what he should do and tell the teacher is a fall out from public school were we cannot tell a kid he is not doing well or needs to step it up. No, we just say they need Ridalin and dose the kid with a drug. In my day you just needed to buckle down a bit and study harder..... [img]biggrin.gif[/img] I am sure that every band director that eventually gets my students in band class become the top players since they had a good foundation before getting there. Now you have the guy that had fun at his lessons and played beats, but cannnot read a lick, play a swing beat, but can sure play a LOUD rock beat out of time with no concern for were a fill my land. I just see to many kids that tell there mom what they want to learn and the kid is in 7th grade and has only been in band class for a month but thinks he is a drum god because his buddy tells him he is a good as Neil Peart......LOL....I liken this to if the kid does not think that learning basic math is boring and it is hard then we should just skip that part because it is not fun.....Ok, enough ranting again

Here, here, Don!!! Whatever happened to the days of being young and going to the local drum instructor, who sat you down with a pad and sticks & you worked technique for at least a year. Then, if the instructor said you were ready, you got a snare drum or even a drumset (if you already had the snare). Kids now just want the quick way to the set. I make mine sit down with the pad or snare and learn technique & reading. That tends to weed out the kids who want to play drums like Travis Barker, but don't want to put in the time. I'm not knockin' Travis, I think he's a helluva player, but he's put in A LOT of time to polish his craft. I wish my students would too.

I teach a lot of little kids, often as early as 4 or 5. Start with the music! Have them bring a CD of music they like to their first lesson. Put it on and ask them to find the pulse and play it (you can help them, play along with them etc...)Then ask them to divide the pulse in two equal parts (ie eighth notes). Do the same thing with sub division of three & four. Don't label anything as 16th notes quartes etc... Build from there. Once they understand, hear, and feel the various sub divisions then you can put labels to them and start reading.


The worst thing you can do is start out with. ? This 4/4 time, the quarter note gets the beat and there are four beats per measure? ?. You will see their eyes glaze over and all of the excitement they have for music will disappear.

Good luck

I tell the parents with little kids that we will try the lessons and see how they go. There is no way I would start a little kid on set since they cannot even reach the pedals. When I get a new student they are expecting a certain degree of learning and not jsut lets hit stuff. Most little kids are smarter than there parents give them credit for, and if they do not understand fractions then I deal with splitting a pie into pieces and they understand that let alone when they do get fractions in school at least they have one step up on that part of math. When I get a student how do I know that they all want to play set. I have had students only want drum corps rudimental stuff or are interested in legit percussion, so by baby sitting these kids and let them play set I feel I am doing a diservice op passing this drum information along. Not every person I teach do the exact same things. Have kids with NO band program at school and jsut want to do drumset, fine but they still learn to read so in the furture they can at least work on new things on there own for the rest of there lives. I just feel that too many kids want that instant gratification right now and they need to learn at a young age that some things do take work to do and that will help them with life later on. I am not there to torture the kid but to teach them something and I am also there counselor when they can't ask there parents. Had to give the dont do drug speech and talk to girl students if they should break up with there boyfriend since he said unless I give him a blow job tonight then we are done. I am the person they can ask and they know I will give them a straight answer to there problems. I guess I am the old school teacher that does not want a new student to have a drum setr and think he is going to learn a song. Like anyone can tell what song we are playing by ourselves. Want a pad and sticks and will see if this is going to work beofre you go spend money on a drums set. I don't work at a music store so there is no pressure to push a set. My father ran a drum shop in Portland and taught me and and I did all the boring rudiments and won snare drum solo's and was playing big band gigs at the age of 16, and don't think I would play like I do now mif dad just started me at 5 with lets just bang on the drums. No, I learned trad grip and worked on it and accomplished my stuff, but then it was either practice or ride my bike or go to play ball. Had pong eventually and that was not that exciting......*LOL*. I find to many kids get so mnay after school thinkgs going and then try to fit lessons in also. You talk to the student and he is not good at anything because they never spend enough time working on one thing to sort of get better at anything. Mediocrity seems to be the level that is OK with moist of them and not getting good at it......well, I can sort of play it, well try to play it like someone might actually want to play music with you.

I think a student can benefit from short term "instant gratification" (Here's a simple tune let's see you groove with it on the kit). I'm sure what first got them interested in drumming in the first place was watching some drummer play in some cool musical context. I think they should have a taste of this upfront.

On the other hand the student should also be put on that long road to solid technique development (delayed gratification). This means taking the time to woodshed on the rudiments with a metronome.

I always tell my students up front that learning the basics of drumming is BORING. (There's no way around it!) And, that the rewards for doing all that tedious stuff can be huge.

I just tell the students and parents what is going to be involved with lessons and that is how it works. Not to say that each student may be put on a different track of learning. If you get the students who has never played and shows up to first lesson with no sticks or even drums yet. Well that student will be on the pad learning basic strokes and rudiments the first lesson and then learn notes and possibly the bounce the 2nd lesson and so forth. The kid that walks in and maybe has played or studied with someone else. OK, show me what you have worked on before or play and then will explain......welll, ok that was cool, BUT......the problem you can;t get around the drums is because your strokes are all over the place and can't even play a single stroke roll even for very long. He also will get basic strokes but will also fix his BD technique also and maybe help him set is drums up right because no one had ever looked at his drums or jsut let his weird posture and placement of throne to snare and Hi Hat. We then start to catch up what is missing in his knowledge and by the time he leaves his beat is fixed and a little more even and got some advice on how to hold the sticks which maybe the last guy never looked at or was the next door neighbor that owned drums and was teaching him before. I guess I am a stickler for technique since I get a lot of guys that just do that with me and then how to get that to the set better after that process. I have pro's take a lesson and all we might work on his the left hand stroke to correct years of bad habits and funky weird callous growths on the hands...... [img]graemlins/cry.gif[/img] Then you get the kid that can play and wants to know all the cool Vinnie or Chambers licks. Or you end up steering the kid to better music and players and then they can laugh at Ashlee Simpson and wonder how come there is not any good music out there...... [img]biggrin.gif[/img] and turn them into liking fusion music and ruining them for life.

I am with Dazz.

You want to make it fun. Let them
really whack them and let them ex-
plore what's best for them, in terms
of grip etc. Just suggest things and
around what they are doing and are
into. Make them love it!

[img]cool.gif[/img]

OK, lets make a difference here. I am getting paid to teach the 7 year old and maybe it is your cousin and your doing it for free. The difference I see if your spending $100 on tennis lesson for your young little tennis prodigy and you want Billy to have fun so if the tennis teacher just lets him have fun and hit the ball and find his own grip that would be OK with a parent spending his or her hard earned money for a baby sitting tennis teacher. I think you might have some upset parents at tennis center or would we have Tiger Woods without him learning the basics at a very young age.(yeah, I know he plays golf) We all watched the kid on Letterman, he had a good grip hit the drums well, and used rudiments. I am sure if I was to start a 7 year old and let him play any way he wants to have fun then were is the next 10 year old little kid that comes along and blows everyone away coming from then. Somewere the teacher has to tell them that sometimes it is boring and there will be things in your life you have to work on and if it is worth working on why not do it right. I have the kid that has had the baby sitting teacher for say a couple years and then he shows up and has ZERO clue about anything but he can play 3 beats and hit everything within striking distance. Now I have to tell him that we need to learn Rudiments and you really did not learn anything the last couple years. There are enough band directors that no zero about drums and let the kids play anyway that want and hold sticks so bizarre. That is the place for letting the kid do what he wants, not me the teacher who is to mold there little youngster into the drummer not be one expensive baby sitter.