Buchanan Music

Playing the drums is a fun hobby. However, you need to remember that it’s also one of the most difficult musical instruments to learn. If you want to play drums like rock legends Travis Barker or Lars Ulrich, then you need to be ready to work hard and to practice a lot.

So, what do you need in order to get started?

First of all, you will obviously need a drum set or a drum kit. But before you go to your local music store to purchase a drum set, you need to keep in mind that as a beginner drummer, you don’t have to get a drum set with an elaborate set up. The basic drum set will do.

The basic drum set will include one bass drum, a snare drum, 3 tom-toms, a crash cymbal, and a hi-hat. You will also need a chair, a bass pedal, and drum sticks.

Next, you will need to get proper lessons. You can go for online lessons, or you can also hire a professional drummer to give you private tutorials or lessons. There are also DVDs and video CDs, which contain drum lessons that you can purchase.

There are quite a lot of DVDs and CDs today that can teach you about the different drumming techniques and how to learn it the easy way. There are even exercises that you can do in order for you to practice your dexterity and coordination, which are very important in drumming.

Now that you have the equipment you need as well as a professional drummer to teach you on how to play the drums along with the DVDs and CDs that contain drum lessons, the next step is to make sure that no one will be upset by the noise you make when you play your drums during lessons or during practice.

Try creating a quiet room. If you have the cash for it, you can convert an entire room to a studio complete with fancy soundproofing and high tech acoustic materials. If you don’t have the money for high tech soundproofing, you can still create a quiet room with a little ingenuity and elbow grease. To make your own quiet room, you can line the walls and ceiling of the room with egg trays and carpet scraps.

This is basically a cheap way to sound proof a room. And, it works just as well as a professionally made quiet room.

Or, you can also get cymbal mutes and drum practice discs. Although these things may still get your drum set to produce noise, the noise levels will be a lot lower.

So, unless you want your neighbors or the police banging at your door and complaining about the noise, you may want to do these mentioned sound proofing methods.

These are basically the things you need in order for you to get started in learning how to play the drums.

As a drummer, you need to remember that playing the drums is not just about hitting and banging the drum heads and cymbals. Well, for the most part it is, but if you really want to produce great music, then you need to know how to accurately tune your drum kit. You have to remember that nothing can make the drums sound better than by tightly tuning the drums first.

With an accurately tuned drum set, even the average drummer can sound really good. This is why you have to learn how to tune your drums. By doing so, you will eventually increase the level of your performance.

As you may already know, the basic drum set will include a snare drum, a bass, tom-toms, and cymbals, such as the hi-hats, crash, and ride cymbals. When tuning your drum set, you may want to start with the snare drum. Tuning the snare drum is considered to be very precarious as the heads of this drum is known to bust easily.

To tune the snare drum, start by tuning the top head. Turn the lug with your drum key clockwise to increase the tension, and counter clockwise to release the tension. When you tighten the tension, you will produce a higher pitch and vice versa. To test the sound, tap on the drum about two inches from the lug you just tightened or loosened. The second lug that you should tighten should be the opposite lug to the first one you just tightened. When you hit the drum near the second lug you tightened, it should sound similar to the first one you turned. The third lug you should adjust should be the one next to the first lug you tightened the next should be the opposite lug and so on up until you have tightened the entire lugs.

You can tune the tom-toms next if you want. You need to remember that the toms have the most noticeable rendering of pitch, which means that it is very important for you to really do a good job in tuning these types of drums. Use the same alternating technique you used when you tuned your snare drum. After you get the bottom head to have equal tension, you can now tune the head, which is how you will adjust the pitch of the sound. Try to match the pitch with a piano, a pitch pipe or you can also match the pitch with a guitar.

After tuning your tom-toms, you can now move on to the bass drum. You have to start by tuning the head. The pitch can be tuned by adjusting the lugs on the back head. The sound of the bass drum will vary on the style of music you play as well as the other instruments your friends play with you, such as the guitar and bass.

Knowing how to tune your drums will definitely improve the way you play your drums. It will progress the way you sound and it will also increase your performance when you are playing with the band.

So, try to learn how to tune your drum set early on and you will be able to sound like a pro when playing the drums.