Drums are a fun and exciting instrument to learn. The groove and over all feel of a song is often kept together by the drum beats being played. When you first smoothly play a simple beat with the snare, high hat cymbal and kick drum it’ll be great.

I’m going to share with you the basics process of learning the drums. If you’ve just got your first kit or are just starting out this article will get you playing in time on the snare, high hat and kick drum.

1 – Start with the High Hat

There’s a lot going on when you’re playing the drums. Your right and left hands are doing different things and now so is one of your feet. Before you introduce the kick drum to anything start out first with the high hat. You can start this process with the snare as well but following the pattern I outline is closer to what most songs follow.

Using just your right hand cross over across your chest and practice keeping an even beat and tempo on the high hat cymbal. If you have some knowledge of 4/4 time then practice keeping the beat like this: 1,2,3,4. The time between each strike of the high hat should be identical so you’re keeping an even tempo.

2 – Add the Snare Drum

Once you’ve mastered keeping common time on the high hat try adding in one hit of the snare drum on the 4 beat when you’re counting in your head.

While you’re still playing on the high hat 1,2,3,4 add in a hit to the snare on the 4 with your left hand stick. The first few times you try this you’re probably going to mess up the beat your keeping on the high hat, that’s alright it’s kind of like crossing wires in your brain when you tell your hands to do this. You’ll get it to work it just takes some practice.

3 – Add the Kick

If you’ve got that beat working with the snare and high hat it’s time to add in the bass drum. On the 1 beat now hit the kick drum. Continue with your two current pieces of 4 beats on the high hat cymbal and the one hit of the snare drum on the 4 beat.

This will take a bit of practice but you’re now telling your brain to do three different things and it takes some time to get it right.

This is a basic beginner beat when learning to play the drums. If you’re eager to learn more beats I’d suggest getting a dvd drum lesson. These self study lessons are quickly becoming the method of choice for adults to learn the drums at home.

One of the better products we’ve come across to help teach yourself the drums is Learn and Master Drums. This course is several DVDs of instruction and audio that you can use entirely at your own pace to learn the drums at home.

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