Drum Lessons in New York City

 


 Frequently Asked Questions

A: As a professional drummer, my experience covers a very broad spectrum of musical styles.

My earliest drumming gigs were playing rock music as a teenager in the clubs of the New Haven, Connecticut rock scene. My brother was a guitarist and keyboardist, and we worked together writing music and performing it with other local musicians.

Since moving to New York in 1995, the vast majority of my professional drumming has been for theatre productions. This type of drumming requires me to read well and to play many different styles of music convincingly. Shows like Grease and Little Shop of Horrors have called on me to be a rock/pop drummer. West Side Story and Hello, Dolly! required me to sound like a jazz drummer, a parade drummer, and a vaudeville show drummer.

In addition to my theatre gigs, I have also performed quite a bit with jazz groups such as the Rob Silverman Trio, and with rock groups such as Whirl.

The diversity of my own drumming background allows me to teach people with a wide range of musical goals. My students have included jazz enthusiasts, hip hoppers, and funk drummers. Still, the vast majority of my students come to me to learn rock drumming, as this is the most popular music of today.

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Q: What do you focus on in your teaching?

A: I tailor my approach to fit the level and the unique needs of each individual student.

If the student is a beginner, my primary goal is to help the student become as comfortable as possible, both physically and mentally, behind a set of drums. This means focusing on the most natural, most comfortable, and most effective ways of using the arms, legs, hands, and feet to create music. It also means guiding the student toward a familiarity with the various sound possibilities of the instrument itself, and toward a sense of creative abandon in accessing those sounds.

Once I feel that a student has attained a certain level of comfort and facility at the drumset, I turn my focus toward helping the student develop a solid drumming vocabulary. We cover all of the fundamental rhythms that constitute the typical drumming "bag of tricks"-rock beats, swing beats, soloing ideas, and everything else that drummers draw from when performing alone or with a group.

This is also the time when we begin to explore counting and reading drum music. Reading is an essential part of learning to play the drums well because it leads to a clear understanding of how rhythms are created. When we look at a rhythm on the page, we see a very precise arrangement of musical notes. The written music is like a detailed "map" of the rhythm, showing us the exact relationship between the different notes of the pattern we are learning. Reading these "maps" cannot help but improve our overall understanding of rhythm! On a practical level, students often find it easier to learn and to remember new rhythms with the assistance of this visual aide in front of them.

With more experienced students, we have the opportunity to customize the lessons in a very personal and specific way.

Sometimes a student will have a basic vocabulary on the drums, but they may have questions about specific drum techniques that they have seen or heard. We can use such questions as a starting point for exploration into unfamiliar areas of drumming. I generally reserve this teaching approach for students that have a fairly solid drumming foundation. If they do NOT have such a foundation, then I begin taking them through the steps to develop one. Otherwise, the student may have the question but not truly be ready to understand the answer!

Many times a more experienced student will be in a band, but feel a bit overwhelmed by the demands of playing with other musicians. In this case, we may listen to a recording of the band's music and work together on creating appropriate drum parts that are within the current abilities of the student.

Perhaps the MOST common scenario with experienced students is that they simply have a nagging feeling that they aren't playing up to their true potential. A student may have taken lessons before, and they may even have a broad drumming vocabulary. For some reason, however, they may still feel that there is something standing between them and their creativity. Such students often express a general sense of discomfort at the drums or a frustration with constant glitches and tempo problems. Ironically, the key to helping those students is usually to address the same thing that I address with my most INexperienced students- finding a natural and ergonomically effective approach to the physical playing of the instrument. Once this has been established, the student's previous drumming skills merge with the newfound ease of playing, and VOILA- the student is on their way to finally fulfilling their long-time dream of musical expression.

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Q: What if I don't own a drumset?

A: You are in good company! Most of the students I teach do NOT own a set of drums. In fact, most New York City drummers in general are not able to play drums in their apartments. Even those of us that do own drumsets are forced to keep them silently stored in a closet until gig time. This is one of the simple realities of living in a city. With this in mind, I show students how to practice the mechanics of drumming without access to a real drumset. This is quite simple actually. By playing with the sticks on a rubber pad, and by tapping one's feet directly on the floor, a student can easily internalize the physical movements that create music when applied to real drums during each lesson. If a student WOULD like to practice on a real drumset from time to time between lessons, it is possible to rent a drum room at places such as AM Studios, UltraSound Studios, and The Studio. The price for a drum room generally ranges from about $10 to about $30 per hour, depending on the specific day and time. Some students of mine have also been inspired to purchase electronic drum pads, or even full electronic drumsets. The cost of these devices can vary greatly, depending on the brand and configuration. They do offer a practical alternative to acoustic drums, as they sound almost completely silent to all but those wearing the headphones. If drumming proves to be a real passion for you, electronic drums could be a consideration sometime down the road.

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Q: How much should I practice?

A: The answer to this question varies, depending on each student's schedule and musical goals. All of us have other activities going on, so we each need to decide what role drumming will play in our unique life.

In general, students tend to make the fastest progress when they are able to practice on a regular basis. However, it has been my experience that ALL students DO make progress- even those students with the least amount of time available for practicing between lessons. Simply being exposed to drumming, week after week, invariably leads all students to higher and higher levels of drumming ability. With this in mind, I urge all students to take lessons for the sheer joy of drumming and going through the learning process at their own pace. It's FUN! As drummers, our main priority can be to fit this enriching activity into our lives in a way that is comfortable and makes sense for us.

When I myself practice, I find that I use my time most efficiently if I remember some basic concepts about learning new material. It has been helpful to me to understand that there are two basic approaches to practicing, each with specific advantages over the other.

The first approach is called "distributed practice." This is when we take a concept and touch base with it a little bit each day over a long period of time. For drumming concepts that are primarily mental, like reading, or memorizing songs, "distributed practice" tends to be the most effective. When we approach new material in this way, we are gradually moving it from our short-term memory into our long-term memory.

The second approach is called "massed practice." This is when we set aside a large chunk of time and go over a small amount of material again and again and again in one sitting. As many of us know from our school days, this "cramming" is not very effective for retaining mental information. We may get through the test, but two days later, we will have forgotten everything. The reason for this is that the material does not effectively transfer to the long-term memory with a "massed practice" approach. On the other hand, for the initial learning of a PHYSICAL skill, "massed practice" actually tends to be MORE effective. If a natural and ergonomically correct physical movement feels unfamiliar or awkward, it means that we have not yet built it into our "muscle memory." In other words, the movement has not yet become unconscious. The simplest way of achieving this is to repeat the movement again and again in one sitting until we have the sensation that it is "happening by itself," without our having to think about it. Once this occurs, reinforcing the movement each day (back to "distributed practice") will ensure that we retain the new skill. We eventually want to have the "it's happening by itself" sensation with all of our drumming movements so that our drumming looks, sounds, and feels effortless.

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Q: How long will it take me to "get good?"

A: Usually, when students ask me this question, they want to know when they will actually be able to play music on the drums. I have all of my students playing rhythms and exploring the various musical sounds of the complete drumset from the very first time we meet.

Within the next couple of lessons, I normally begin introducing the student to basic "rock beats." These are simple rhythms that are played with the entire body and sound instantly familiar to most students because of our constant exposure to pop radio. After a few weeks of reinforcing these rhythms, the student is well on the road to being able to play COUNTLESS songs. Most of today's popular music (including R&B, hip hop, country, and pop, in addition to rock) is based on a small handful of "rock beats" that can be internalized quickly and easily.

Fortunately, however, the drumset is also an instrument that lends itself to endless creative exploration. For every fundamental rhythm, there are infinite variations to be discovered and invented by each individual drummer. We are limited only by the boundaries of our own imagination! In fact, many of the world's greatest, most famous drummers still take drum lessons to continue growing and uncovering new ideas! They study with OTHER great drummers (who may be studying with OTHER great drummers, and so forth). This is one of the things that make drumming so inspiring. It is not something to be achieved and tucked into your back pocket. Drumming is an activity that will continue to challenge you and bring you joy for as long as you allow it to be in your life.

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Q: What if I have poor coordination and no sense of rhythm?

A: When we feel that we have "poor coordination" and "no sense of rhythm," it is because we are attempting to execute movements that are still unfamiliar to us; they have not yet become part of our "muscle memory." When we consider movements that ARE very familiar to us, we see that we actually have excellent coordination and rhythm. A perfect example of this is the seemingly simple act of walking down the street. We are constantly shifting our body weight to the leg that is touching the ground and away from the one that is in the air. The timing must be exact EVERY time, and yet we do it without even thinking about it. All the while, we dodge other pedestrians, talk on our cell phones, and speed up to beat the "Don't Walk" light!

Naturally, the movements that we learn in drum lessons are unfamiliar in the beginning. They may, indeed, have us feeling a bit clumsy and awkward when we first attempt them. This is true for all of us! With time and repetition, these movements become as automatic as walking, eating, speaking, and all of the other complicated tasks that we perform each day with ease.

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Q: How do drummers play different things with each limb at the same time? Isn't that hard to do?

A: Drumming often tends to be much easier than it looks and sounds. Fortunately for us, the common notion that drummers simultaneously play unrelated rhythms with each limb is a misconception. In truth, drumming has nothing to do with the age-old gag of trying to "pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time." Drummers create this illusion of independence among the limbs by figuring out the exact relationship between the parts played by each hand and foot. The complete rhythm is then learned as a full-body pattern. So, HAVE NO FEAR; drumming will not require you to be a person with four separate brains!

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Q: Am I too old to learn the drums?

A: So far, I have never encountered a student who was "too old" to learn the drums. I currently teach students ranging from 12 years old to over 50 years old, and all of them find that their efforts are greatly rewarded. They have fun, they learn to play the drums, and they forever silence that little voice in their head that says "What if...? I wish I had..."

It has been my experience that adult students are able to learn the drums very quickly. An adult generally has a well-developed attention span, as well as a strong capacity for understanding new concepts. Also, when an adult comes to me for lessons, it is frequently because they have been "thinking about playing the drums" for many years. The joy of finally putting their dream into motion inspires them to approach the learning process in a focused and committed way.

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Q: Is my child too young to play the drums?

A: I am currently accepting students as young as 12 years old. Over my many years as a drum instructor, I have had experience teaching students of every age level. This includes the very youngest of children. What I've discovered is that I personally work best with children who are at least 12. This does not mean that children younger than 12 are incapable of taking lessons. The appropriate age for starting drum lessons can vary greatly from student to student. It can also depend on the individual strengths and preferences of the teacher. If your child is younger than 12 years old, and you think that he or she would enjoy drum lessons, you can absolutely get started. It simply means finding a teacher whose approach is tailored to this unique age group.

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Q: Where do you teach?

A: All private lessons are held at my drum studio in Queens. It is located on 32nd Place, which is extremely close to Manhattan (just off the 33rd Street stop of the #7 train). Situated in a very clean and safe building, the studio is semi-soundproofed and equipped with a complete set of acoustic drums. This allows us greater creative freedom than if the lessons took place in a more restrictive space such as an apartment.

From time to time, in addition to private lessons, I have also occasionally offered introductory group classes. When these are offered, they are held in Manhattan on West 30th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues. To find out if an introductory group class is currently scheduled, please check the "Contact" page of this website. When offered, introductory group classes will be mentioned on the "Contact" page.

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Q: What is your teaching schedule?

A: Private lessons are offered in the afternoons and evenings on most weekdays and on Sundays.

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Q: What if I need to cancel or change the day or time of a lesson that I've scheduled?

A: Up until 4PM the day before a scheduled lesson, the student may cancel or change the day or time of the lesson by simply sending me an email through the "Contact" page of this website.

If it is after 4PM the day before a scheduled lesson, the student is responsible for paying for the canceled lesson the next time we meet.

All communication concerning cancellations and rescheduling is done through e-mail since I check this regularly, and it gives us both a written reminder of any schedule details that we arrive at.

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Q: How much does it cost?

A: All private lessons are $80 each and are one hour long. Payment is expected at the end of the session whenever we meet.

Most students find it convenient to take a lesson once per week. This is the traditional approach because it offers a sense of continuity to the scheduling, as well as to the course of study itself. However, some students prefer to meet more frequently for a very intense study experience. Other students find that meeting less frequently, such as one lesson every two weeks or every month, is most agreeable with their schedule or budget. All of these approaches are valid and workable.

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Q: What do I need to get for the lessons? Are there a lot of books to buy?

A: The studio where I teach is fully equipped with all of the drums and cymbals that we will ever need. For the first lesson, it is only necessary to bring yourself! I will loan you a pair of sticks, and we will dive right in.

After the first lesson, you will need to get a pair of drumsticks so that you can practice at home. The finest drumsticks in the world cost between about $6 and $8 a pair. They can be purchased at Drummers' World on 46th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. Also, within the first few months of lessons, it is important to buy a rubber drum pad. This will cost between $20 and $40, depending on the size, and can also be purchased at Drummers' World.

During the course of your study with me, I may recommend a book or two that I feel would be helpful for us to explore together. Drum books are usually quite inexpensive, since they are nearly always paperback and short in length. The most popular drum method books range from about $10 to about $25 in price.

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Q: How do I start?

A: Simply e-mail me through the "Contact" page of this website. I will get back to you within a couple of days to answer any further questions you may have. We can then compare our schedules and find a mutually agreeable time to meet for your first drum lesson!

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