How to Start Playing Drums: Your First 30 Days

Starting the drums is exciting and a little overwhelming. There is a lot of gear, a lot of advice and a lot of noise. The good news: you need very little to begin, and a month of short, focused sessions is enough to play your first real grooves along with music. Here is how to spend those first 30 days.

What you need (and what you don’t)

• Sticks. A pair of 5A wooden sticks suits most hands. If they feel heavy, try 7A.
• Something to hit. A practice pad is perfect for the first weeks — quiet, cheap and honest. An acoustic or electronic kit is great if you have one, but not required on day one.
• A metronome. Every item in StickHits has one built in.
• Hearing protection. An acoustic kit is loud enough to damage hearing over time. Musician’s earplugs or isolating headphones are a must.

You don’t need expensive cymbals, a double pedal or a pile of books. Those can wait until you know what you want to play.

Sit and hold the sticks

Set the throne so your thighs slope slightly down toward the knees, with your feet flat and relaxed on the pedals. Sit tall but loose — the snare should be roughly at the height of your belt buckle.

For the grip, hold each stick about a third of the way from the butt end, between the thumb and the first joint of the index finger. That point is the fulcrum. Wrap the other fingers loosely around the stick; they guide it, they don’t squeeze it. Both hands mirror each other — this is called matched grip, and it is what most drummers use today.

Your first stroke

Every drum stroke starts and ends in the same place. Lift the stick up, let it fall onto the pad using mostly the wrist, and let the rebound bring it back up to where it started. Think of dribbling a basketball: you don’t push the ball into the floor, you guide it. This is the full stroke, and the relaxed rebound you learn here is the foundation of everything — speed, endurance and a big sound.

Your first beat

The most common groove in pop and rock fits in one bar of four counts. Count “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” out loud and play:

• Hi-hat (right hand) on every count and every “&” — eight even notes.
• Bass drum (right foot) on 1 and 3.
• Snare (left hand) on 2 and 4.

Start with hands only, then add the foot. Play it slowly — 60 to 70 BPM is perfect — and loop it until it feels boring. Boring is the goal: it means your limbs know their jobs without you thinking about them. You’ll find this beat and dozens of relatives under Grooves.

A four-week plan

Week 1 — Hands and time

Ten to fifteen minutes a day. Five minutes of full strokes on the pad with a click at 60 BPM, alternating hands (RLRL). Then the single stroke roll and double stroke roll from Rudiments, slowly. Finish with the basic beat on a pad or with your hands on your knees and foot on the floor.

Week 2 — Your first grooves

Keep a short hands warm-up, then spend most of the time on two or three Beginner grooves. Move the bass drum around: try 1, the “&” of 2 and 3. Nudge the tempo up only when the groove feels relaxed at the current one.

Week 3 — Fills and form

Play three bars of groove and one bar of a simple fill — four sixteenth notes on the snare, then four on each tom — and come back to the groove on “1”. Landing on 1 is more important than the fill itself. The Fills section has each fill with a bar of groove in front, exactly for this.

Week 4 — Play with music

Pick a song with a steady beat and play your basic groove along with it. Don’t worry about copying every detail; keep the time and play the fills in roughly the right places. In StickHits, Full songs lets you play with the original recording or the song without drums.

Habits that make the difference

• Short and often beats long and rare. Fifteen minutes every day builds more than two hours on Sunday.
• Slow is fast. Clean at 70 BPM leads to clean at 120. Sloppy at 120 stays sloppy.
• Count out loud. It feels silly, and it fixes most timing problems.
• Record yourself. A phone recording is the most honest teacher you will ever have.
• Stay relaxed. Tension is the enemy of speed, endurance and sound. If something hurts, stop.

After 30 days you’ll have a handful of grooves, a couple of fills and the first real song under your belt. That is a great place to be. Keep going — the next month is even more fun.