Drum Lessons

I offer drum lessons to students of all ages and levels, from complete beginners to professionals.

Although all lessons will be tailored to the individual student’s needs, my main goal is to ensure that every lesson is a positive and inspirational experience.  It is very important to me that students leave feeling confident in their accomplishments, however large or small, and motivated to practice and continue exploring this amazing instrument.

There are a countless number of possible topics that can be covered, and these will vary depending on the level and specific interests of each student.  For the sake of showing some examples, though, here is a list of possible areas of study:

– Ability to play comfortably in various styles  (rock, jazz, funk, bossa nova, etc)

– Developing an effective practice routine

– Playing with dynamics (in my opinion, one of the most important and overlooked aspects of drumming)

– Developing speed, strength and endurance

– Reading and writing drumset notation

– Learning to figure out, transcribe and play drum parts from recordings

– Creating new, interesting and original drum parts

– Snare drum rudiments and their application to the drumset

– Developing 4-way coordination and independence

– Understanding polyrhythms and applying them to the drumset

– Advanced reading skills (from classical snare drum etudes to jazz/rock drumset charts)

– Locking in with other musicians and driving a band

– Always playing musically, melodically and expressively

If you are not sure what you want to focus on and just know that you want to learn the drums, that’s great!

If, on the other hand, you do have certain things in mind (for example, one student might want to focus mainly on heavy rock drumming while a different student may not be interested in drumset at all and instead want to focus only on classical snare drum études), that’s great too!

If you are interested in drum lessons, please e-mail me at matt@mattgrabermusic.com