Seven Tips to Help You Become a Kickass Drummer
Learn secrets to becoming a great drummer with 7 practical tips.

Have you listened to the Silk Sonic album called An Evening with Silk Sonic? If you haven't, you need to, except if you have a problem with good music. If you have, you'll agree with me that the album was awesome because the artists showed their incredible ability in two different parts of music. Firstly, they displayed superb prowess in performing. Secondly, they dazzled us with their instrumental abilities.

The live band vibe with the main artists behind instruments was a nice touch that set them apart and spoke to their immense ability. As an indie artist, it's extra things like this that will keep you ahead of the curve. It's good to develop your onstage performing ability, but giving your audience more than just your raspy voice is a great way to rock the stage even harder.

In this article, I'll focus on drums. Usually in the background, you might be wondering how you can be the drummer and the lead vocalist. That's a conversation for another article. In this one, I'll be sharing seven practical tips to help you become a kickass drummer. I'll also recommend a good teacher to give you proper training on the subject.

Without any further ado, let's do it!

Seven Practical Drumming Tips

Slow before fast

Most of the exciting songs you'll want to learn as a drummer are fast and aggressive. A drummer in their element might look like chaos, but it's a burst of art mixed and shaken up with spontaneous aggression. To play that fast, you can't stop to look at what you're hitting. You have to be able to hit the right spots even with a blindfold on. That requires an immense level of skill. As a beginner, the bad news is you don't have it. The good news is you can develop it, but you have to follow the process.

Play slower music before getting faster. By starting at an easy pace and slowly working yourself up, you're getting yourself more and more familiar with the drum and making your movements more fluid.

Tear your limbs apart

Hold up your fingers and try to get each one of them to behave independently. Most people would have some trouble doing that. When learning to play piano, however, you need to be able to control them separately. It's the same thing for drums, except you're not worried about your fingers, you're worried about your limbs.

As you play, all four of your limbs are doing something different. To get it right, you must train each of your limbs to behave independently yet together at the same time. Each limb is hitting something different, but they all contribute to creating the music.

Get some background music

One of the fundamentals of playing drums is timing and rhythm, and the best way to get those is by playing some actual music. Whether it's a metronome or a car radio, you need background music to keep the rhythm in your head. The drummer dictates the rhythm and pace of the song, so if your timing is all over the place, you'll run the rest of your band into trouble. Play with background music until you have a music clock inside your head.

As I already mentioned in the first tip, start with slow music and slowly work your way up until you can't see your hands hit the drums.

Watch your grip

The way you hold your drumsticks affects your playing more than you think. There are two types of grips for drummers, traditional and matched. You'll use matched grip way more often, though, unless you're in a military-type band. There are also three types of matched grip: German, French, and American.

The German grip is the firmest one, the French grip the nimblest, and the American grip is somewhere in between the first two. Each type of grip is more effective in different playing styles. You'll learn more about the different grips as you get deeper and deeper into drumming.

Play different genres

When learning how to play drums, one of the best things you want to develop is flexibility, as in the ability to play a wide variety of songs. To be that flexible, you have to play different styles of music. Learn how to play fast, slow, funky, relaxed, and any other style that's required of you. Don't restrict yourself to any genre because eventually, it might limit you.

Practice as widely as you can. Play as many styles as you find entertaining. You don't want to hold yourself back early on, you want to explore as much as possible.

Avoid tight cymbals and off-target hits

Beginner drummers often make the mistake of clamping their cymbals so tight that it affects the sound. It also makes them stiffer so you risk cracking your cymbals if you continue like that for long. Loosen the cymbals and allow them to be as flexible, loud, and chaotic as they were intended to be. Another thing beginners don't seem to know is you need to hit the drums dead in the center because it produces the best sound.

So hit it hard, but hit it true. You need to learn how to hit the center without even looking. This will give you a more rounded and professional sound.

Play from your wrists

Playing drums can be physically exhausting. It's a ton of work for your hands to do and it'll be no surprise if you end up with aching shoulders at the end of a performance or practice session. One great way to help alleviate that stress is to play from your wrists. Instead of doing all the movements from your shoulders, playing from the wrists exerts less stress and allows you to be more flexible. It's almost like the drumsticks are hanging on a swivel and only need the slightest nudges to direct them to the right place.

You can also control the stick's rebound which keeps you relaxed throughout. Your playing will get smoother, and you'll be able to play for longer.

Final Thoughts

Drumming is one of the most physically exerting instruments and it requires a crazy amount of passion and power, yet also discipline and poise. If you can make playing drums even cooler than Anderson .Paak, the sky's your limit.

If you want to get a free teacher online, check out Music College TV. If you need to be held accountable, I can find a paid course for you too.