Building a solid and effective basis for the drums looks like this in my view – in no particular order:

- Learning snare drum exercises (good for technique and speed).

- Creating a vocabulary of drum beats and drum fills to play existing songs and to create new music.

Most lay-persons and drum lesson beginners have an idea what a drum beat is – anything from the “boom-boom-cha” of “We Will Rock You” to the four-on-the-floor bass drum of “Gangnam Style” can be considered a beat. The snare drum is well-known to many, especially when they learn that the snare drum is used extensively in marching bands and whenever we think of Military parades etc. But what are drum fills?

Drum fills mark the transition from one section of music to the next – for example from the verse to the chorus of a song. Drum fills really do “fill the time” hence the name. Often drum fills happen when the singer has stopped singing, for instance, at the end of vocal lines or also at the start of a song. A good example for a drum fill is right after the guitar starts “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana – the fill comes in at 0:07:

Beats, Fills and Then?

At the start, the private drum student is  learning the beats, drum fills and exercises separately. After mastering a few of these elements the next step is to bring them together to form a cohesive whole. This can be challenging – going from a drum beat into a drum fill and back out of the drum fill into a different drum beat is not an easy task. The brain and the extremities are performing many tasks at once, many of them fairly new to the body and the mind. Having patience with oneself and with the student is helpful. In the end of the day, I have never encountered a student in my private drum lessons who has not mastered these transitions, but every drum student has his/her own pace.

Learning a simple song from beginning to end complete with some transitional drum fills can be a valuable project, which gives the student confidence. Being able to play a whole song from start to finish with the recording of a band is a great feeling. When doing that, the student not only learns to play beats and fills, but also to keep time and follow other musicians – an exercise which builds important listening skills.

Following and Leading

The drums do follow, especially when playing along with a recording and/or a metronome, though in a “real” band situation the drummer functions as the conductor of the band in many areas, especially when setting and maintaining the tempo and marking the transitions with the drum fills. It is a very important position and many musicians state: a band is only as good as its drummer!