Drumbook provides free online drum lessons for drummers who are interested in improving their skill on the drum set. This website offers drum lessons for beginner, intermediate and advanced drummers.
The drum lessons offered on Drumbook will help you build your vocabulary on the drums and teach you to improvise in any style of music. Combined with regular practice, rehearsal and performance, these drum lessons will rapidly improve your drumming.
All the drum lessons on drumbook are completely free. They're formatted so that you can print them out with no advertising or menus.
Drum students are encouraged to find experienced drum tutors. There are also many great drumming books and DVDs to learn from. The materials listed in the resources section of this website are highly recommended.
The drum lessons are arranged by style and organized in order of difficulty so that you can focus on the areas of drumming that interest you. The drum lessons are divided into the following categories.
The beginner drum lessons section offers lessons on how to setup drums, how to play drums, drum notation and basic drum beats. These lessons are intended both for beginners and more experienced drummers. Beginners are encouraged to start with the first rock drum lesson after the beginner drum lessons.
The rock drum lessons start with beginner drum beats and progress to rock drum beats with open hi-hat, syncopation, and hi-hat sixteenth notes.
The funk drum lessons are a natural progression from the rock drum lessons. They introduce ghost notes, syncopated accents and linear drum grooves.
The jazz drum lessons offer exercises on jazz drum comping, three-voice comping, the jazz shuffle and the jazz waltz.
The Latin drum lessons cover popular Latin American drum kit grooves in both Afro-Cuban and Brazilian styles. The Latin drum lessons include the bossa nova, samba, mambo, cha-cha-cha, salsa, Afro-Cuban 6/8, songo, and Mozambique.
The drumming articles on Drumbook provide articles about how to tune drums, drum treatment and how to record drums.
There are many great drumming resources available. Check out the resources section for recommended drumming books and videos.
All the drum lessons on Drumbook include recordings of each exercise so that you can hear how they sound and learn by ear. To get the most out of the lessons on Drumbook follow these guidelines.
It's often tempting to try to play drum exercises fast, especially when you are listening to the lessons played at fast tempos. Begin by practicing the exercises at slow tempos, even if it feels uncomfortable. If you can't play a drum beat slowly then there's no way you can play it fast.
A great way to learn new drum grooves and develop coordination is to break up the exercises. Only play the first beat, then the first two beats, then the first three etc, until you can play the whole groove. If there is a particular part of an exercise that is difficult, isolate and repeat that section by itself.
The metronome is your best friend. Practicing with a metronome will teach you to play with steady time and keep in time with other musicians. Contrary to what some drummers think, metronomes don't slow down!
When you play in bands you'll play songs at a variety of tempos. Often you won't set the tempo, so you need to be comfortable playing at different speeds. It can be harder to play something very slowly than to play fast.
Once you have learnt a drum lesson, make up your own beats and experiment with your own ideas. The purpose of these lessons is to teach you to play creatively and spontaneously, not to turn you into a drumming robot.
We learn to play the drums so that we can make music with other musicians. You'll learn much more playing in bands than by playing at home by yourself. Play with other musicians at every opportunity, whether it's with friends, school bands, community bands or professionals.
Finally, the most important thing about drumming is to have fun and make music!